Animals Need Social Distancing Too

Corona virus

Photo: WebMD.com

A comedic uncle called today to ask how we are surviving in our lockdown quarantine, if we have food and medicine, if we are lonely, cabin feverish, closer than ever, or ready to kill each other.  

He told us that his son and best friend were coming out of their police-imposed two-week quarantine upon their return flight from a European Union country. The police made sure they went straight home and stayed there for two weeks. In order to provide groceries and medication for his elderly parents, his son could now receive a special travel document within the city presentable to police roadblocks upon request.

My uncle did not seem to be too upset about the lockdown  – having survived decades of totalitarian communism, he was used to road blocks, travel restrictions, curfews, and those aggressive and drunk on their power comrade underlings shouting, “show me the papers.”

We were all used to being told which buildings we could enter, which zones we could access, which stores we could shop in, and which were verboten to the proletariat minions.

We walked slowly past areas out of reach for us, wondering what was behind the tall walls, the wired fences, and behind the fancy closed gates and doors with armed guards in sight, patrolling back and forth with menacing looks.

Even the dollar shops, not the type where items cost a dollar, but those which sold goods in hard currency, German marks and U.S. dollars, had guards posted outside to make sure no unwashed masses made it passed the doors. Merchandise that we could only dream of was on sale for foreign visitors, the communist elites and their cronies, who could own foreign currency without the fear of being jailed or worse.

The city hall was off limits to foreign nationals and it upset foreign visitors greatly that they had so little freedom of movement – they could not wait to go back to their countries like the U.S. where people were allowed to enter any public buildings.

The population learned to despise closed doors and lack of access because it infringed even further on their loss of personal freedom. Few remembered the time during the monarchy when they could have walked freely into any buildings. But when the socialists took power, everything changed and the collective memory disappeared, subjugated to the new socialist indoctrination.

It was bad enough being kept prisoner within the borders of the country, without any possibility of ever escaping to the free world even for a short visit, but to be told that you could not enter certain places in your own country, was much worse.

It’s not that we were envious. We just wanted some freedom of movement, choice, and speech. We could see how the elites lived, where they lived, how they drove personal cars while we walked, took the bus and the train, how they went on lavish vacations, to restaurants that we were not even allowed in, much less afford to dine there on a bare minimum salary.

So, we all learned to despise locked doors and gates, those who locked them and kept us away, and the heavily armed menacing guards who kept us at a safe distance.

To this day, my heart skips a beat when someone wants to see “my papers” and I get angry when I see a closed door or gate to something that taxpayers like me have paid for to develop, i.e. a park, a museum, a forest, a memorial, and a famous landmark maintained with taxpayer money.

The huge national forest nearby was closed. Sixteen thousand acres of thick woods with endless trails, waterfalls, and creeks seemed like a good place to get away from people and keep a safe distance from human contact and potential spread of the Corona virus, but the benevolent bureaucrats who care so much about our health thought otherwise and locked us out. After all, it is for our own good, for the collective good.

Even the boardwalk over the swamp was closed as well, perhaps animals, birds, fish, turtles, beavers, and snakes need six feet of “social distancing” too.  One young man, ignoring the locked gate, had jumped the fence and was walking alone on the boardwalk, enjoying the serenity and sounds of nature. Nobody was going to keep this guy away from nature, not even a locked gate.

Do we really understand that quarantine was designed to restrict the movements of the sick or the potentially sick while the movements of the healthy are being restricted by bureaucratic authoritarianism?

It is very difficult to discern facts from misinformation coming from the global and national main stream media, various government entities, and individuals in positions of power, so ordinary and confused citizens imagine biological, economic, and psychological warfare coming from China in partnership with international communists/globalists and the domestic segments of both knowledgeable and ignorant “resistance,” the one that never stopped trying to get rid of the duly-elected President Trump.

After ruminating over the locked gates, we went back home to start our third week of government-imposed “lockdown/social distancing.” I don’t know why but the feelings of dread I had under the socialist regime decades ago enveloped me again and hung like a heavy cloak.







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Illegals Dump Their Trash in the Picnic Area of the Local Park

Plastic pollution in our national parks

Photo: Wikipedia

On sunny weekends and national holidays, the local park closes very early as the parking occupancy reaches its full capacity. The park is then closed to cars and boats but left open to foot traffic. The road leading up to the park entrance becomes crammed on both sides with parked cars. The occupants with their large families drag or carry on their backs coolers on a two-mile trek to the marina side of the park where a large picnic area and a fishing pier are located. Nobody speaks a word of English, only Spanish.

The park happens to be a historical site as the heavily wooded land was donated by illustrious families who have contributed many generations of great Americans to the state and to our country and have left an indelible print in our country’s history.

But our picnickers are only interested in cooking outdoors, drinking beer, and fishing. They are legal and illegal aliens who have flooded the area in the last ten years, crossing the border to find Americans who are willing to employ them. Additionally, they receive welfare and earned income tax credit for their children in the U.S. and even for those left behind south of the border.

Most work off the books and never pay income taxes even though the government has created ITIN with the IRS. The Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) was established for the use of individuals who are not U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents.

Illegals pay sales taxes and the fees to wire money via Western Union back to their home countries. But, in one given year, our federal government has paid $4.1 billion in earned income tax credit to foreign nationals who entered our country illegally. The earned income tax credit is not a tax “refund” but a direct, free cash payment from the U.S. Treasury to low-income immigrants who owe no taxes. “It is a dramatic cash transfer from lawful resident to unlawful residents.” https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/20149-illegal-immigrants-eligible-for-earned-income-tax-credit-other-benefits

They enjoy picnics for the day and leave behind a lot of food waste, wrappers, and plastics, which they seldom take to the many garbage bins conveniently located throughout the parking areas. Illegal aliens just leave the trash be – the rivers and creeks are going to carry them out to sea, they think. It is how they grew up – dump garbage out the window into the streets where they live, the creeks, on the side of roads, in the woods, lakes, and wherever they happen to be.

I have seen this irresponsible behavior on my trip to Mexico. In a very busy outdoor restaurant in Tijuana, frequented that day by many locals, there was human feces on the floor of the restaurant, buzzed by flies, but nobody seemed to notice or care and kept eating. The smell of urine and feces was quite pungent around bridges and walls.

When the park closes early in the day to car traffic, American locals who pay taxes for the maintenance of this and other parks cannot take their boats to the marina and put it on water to enjoy the weekend with their families. Canoers cannot take their canoes out for the day either. The fishing pier is crowded as well, even though signs clearly state in English that the fish is not fit for consumption.

The population in our county has grown by leaps and bounds, 40 percent since the last census, and, according to officials, the growth was mostly due to illegal aliens. Wherever they go, they leave trash behind.

Take the beaches in Florida. When they get off work, they picnic on the beach on late afternoons and leave their trash behind. The people hired to clean the beach behind them, know that they are the principal culprits who leave recyclables, cigarette butts, and food packaging behind. The taxpayers in the area dedicate a large budget for beach cleanup from food, drinks, and recyclable containers left behind.

Some Americans leave trash behind as well, especially on beaches. But ours is a culture that teaches children to pick up refuse after themselves. Third world cultures that do not have trash pickup at all and do not emphasize the importance of having a clean environment, contribute greatly to the pollution of rivers and eventually of oceans.

Floating marine debris, at all depths, include plastics, paper, wood, metal, and other manufactured materials. The Ocean Conservancy Trash Free Seas Alliance estimated that “8 million metric tons of plastic such as containers, bottles, shoes, are dumped into the ocean each year.”

Among the items collected during the International Coastal Cleanup Day in 2017: cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bottles, plastic bottle caps, plastic grocery bags, other plastic bags, straws, stirrers, plastic take-out containers, foam take-out containers, and plastic lids.

Other strange items found were appliances, toothbrushes, shopping carts, mattresses, underwear, toilets, wigs, hair extensions, pregnancy tests, condoms, and even hot tubs. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/06/27/ocean-beach-pollution-plastic-trash/738173002/

Could we possibly educate people of the importance to keep our roads, parks, rivers, and streets clean? It takes generations to change a person’s mentality and what they are used to doing because they think, if it was good for my parents and grandparents, it is good enough for me.

Economically speaking, a beneficial externality such as parks and waterways are not private property and belong to no one in particular. People use waterways and parks as free dumping grounds for their waste. A beneficial externality for the enjoyment of all, i.e., a park or the use of it, becomes a detrimental externality when it is polluted deliberately.

It is a known fact that the centralized, socialist governments that these people have fled from have a dismal environmental record and an equally dismal record in teaching its citizens not to abuse and pollute nature indiscriminately, not caring that they leave a worse environment behind for their children and grandchildren.  Illegals abuse nature because they are not directly responsible for paying for its enjoyment unless one counts the small entrance fee per car. Those who walk in, do not pay.

It is sad to see the beauty of nature surrounding us being spoiled by people who stole into our country but have no interest in “once in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Once in Rome, they carry their bad, third world habits, behavior, and life with them. You cannot force civilized behavior on someone by giving them money, welfare, and the opportunity to evade the law.