By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Earlier this week, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot had big
news: The city is opening up its iconic Lakefront Trail after months of being
closed off as part of a COVID-19 lockdown.
That Lightfoot kept the trail closed even after Chicago
had experienced large-scale Black Lives Matter marches — thousands just last
weekend during the “Drag March for Change” — is one small instance of the
flagrant social-distancing hypocrisy across the country in recent weeks.
If it’s okay for throngs of people to pack the streets
and shout and chant to protest the death of George Floyd, it ought to be
permissible for someone to ride a bike along the lakeside while keeping to him-
or herself. In fact, one involves sustained interaction with other people, and
perhaps fights with the police, while the other is a solitary activity, or one
undertaken with a friend or a spouse.
Yet, Mayor Lightfoot welcomed the protestors — “We want
people to come and express their passion,” she said — and still kept the trail
shuttered.
Many of the same officials who were most zealous in
locking down their states and cities instantly made an exception for Black
Lives Matter protests. Their rigidity became laxity in a blink of an eye. Their
metric for reopening wasn’t the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
guidelines or any other public-health measure but the “wokeness” of the
activity in question.
Visiting the deathbed of a loved one with COVID-19? Absolutely
not. Having a proper funeral? No way. Gathering more than about ten
people at a graveside? No one should be allowed to put the public at risk in
such a way.
Bringing thousands of strangers to march together for
hours in spontaneous, disorderly groups? Thank you for your commitment to
positive change.
Attending a church service? Well, maybe in a couple of
months.
Holding a struggle session with religious trappings where
people confess their racism and vow to work to defund the police? Please,
let’s have more.
The wholly unserious Governor Gretchen Whitmer of
Michigan professed to be deeply disturbed by a protest against her arbitrary
lockdown rules, even though it largely consisted of people driving around the
state capitol in their cars. She spun nightmare scenarios of a spike in
COVID-19. That didn’t stop her earlier in the month from joining a march
against police brutality with hundreds of non–socially distanced people,
explaining that it was “an important moment” to show her “support.”
Virtue-signaling is now an essential activity in
Michigan.
To believe the leaders of Blue America, SARS-CoV-2 is the
first virus in human history to have a social conscience — virulent enough in
the ordinary course of events to justify the most restrictive social controls,
but not such a big deal if it might get in the way of marches for social
justice.
The likes of Mayor Bill de Blasio have justified the
different standards by arguing that fighting racism is important. Well, so is
mourning your dead, keeping your business from being ground to dust, and
worshiping your God. It’s a sign of a ludicrously blinkered worldview to
believe that a protest march deserves more consideration than these other
elemental human needs.
Another argument is that the protesters are willing to
put their health on the line for their cause, a sign of their deepfelt devotion
to their cause. But, until recently, it was said that people going outside
weren’t just endangering themselves but the most vulnerable residents in our
communities. Why wouldn’t that be true of the Black Lives Matter marches, too?
Don’t expect consistency, or even a serious attempt at
it. More than 1,000 public-health experts signed a letter calling the protests
“vital to the national public health,” thus immolating their credibility on a
pyre of motivated reasoning. It’s social distancing for people and activities
they find uncongenial, and different rules for their ideological allies.
What a contemptible betrayal of the public trust.
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