Left-leaning outlets have continued to publish COVID alarmism while normalizing those wishing to mold society to persist in a doomsday bunker. While it would be wise for Americans to recognize a return to normal is a necessity—and that any attempts to communicate Americans should allow a virus to keep them Online™️ forever is destructive—the country is reaping the mental and physical health issues Democrats sowed.
By fundamentally altering people’s lives and forcing them online for more than a year, as well as muzzling them through Big Tech speech controls, the left and its allies bear significant responsibility for the anxiety people may experience as they return to in-person life. And, of course, life only is in-person.
Americans certainly didn’t choose this path. Democrat-run states, such as New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and Massachusetts, took “stop the spread” as an eternal mandate, shuttering businesses and sending unemployment checks like it is government-sponsored Christmas every week. Amid our heavily restricted civil liberties, it was only inevitable Americans would turn to advanced technology, and thus, social media.
Zoom stock is up about 62 percent in the past year—peaking at $588 a share. Americans were obliged to embrace the software in record numbers, living in virtual cubicles with custom Photo Booth-like backgrounds.
Zoom and similar programs provide an alternative, artificial means for communication: One in which we each take turns muting and unmuting, messaging in a chatbox as a supplement for dialogue unaccounted for. It’s hardly the preferable, genuine way to interact with one another. But to the elites who seemingly wish to get a tattoo of Dr. Anthony Fauci on their chests, it was a tribute.
Living in the remote world does not terminate with a physical relationship-stifling video platform. Social media usage has ballooned, with Nielson data from near the beginning of lockdowns in 2020 showing major immersion. Due to the number of people working from home—or unemployed and not permitted by a tyrannical government to go to the bar or movie theatre—tech stocks grew substantially in value. In the past year, Facebook remains up 41 percent, Twitter by 81 percent, Snapchat by 217 percent, Netflix by 22 percent, and Google by 66 percent.
Social media, as has been documented continually, has major downsides. A California State University study from 2013 found a link between tech usage and clinical symptoms of psychiatric disorders. A 2017 study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found young adults with more social media use (SMU) “seem to feel more socially isolated than their counterparts with lower SMU” and that “[f]uture research should focus on determining directionality and elucidating reasons for these associations.”
One poll from early May found 64 percent of Americans say social media does more to divide than unite us. This sentiment was apparent in varying ranges in all ages, races, and political affiliations. Aside from the abundantly clear problematic nature of abandoning the physical world in favor of a glass screen with buttons, which we can thank the Biden administration for offering as normal, Big Tech took it a step further.
In banning President Donald Trump from its platforms, Big Tech signaled its intention to quash conservative ideas at all costs. Then came the purging of thousands of accounts without notice or just rationale, as well as the continued labels warning people that something may be “misinformation” or “offensive.” While conservatives are targeted on Twitter, it is apparently a-okay in the eyes of the oligarchs that the murderous Iran dictator or Communist Chinese propagandists retain their profiles.
Not only did Big Tech profit immensely off the Democratic Party’s lockdown policies, but Democrats profited in speech credit from their allies purging ideas deemed not aligned with the socially “appropriate” orthodoxy. This orthodoxy is simple: Submit to diversity, equity, and inclusion—and if you don’t prepare to be excluded.
Americans have been muzzled, told to hide away and cover their faces, and stay home. There are real costs to these unfortunate decisions by our ruling class, and they take shape in mental and physical health problems.
In the first nine months of the pandemic and lockdowns, Americans were found to be six times more depressed and anxious than in 2019. A German study on lockdowns published in March reaffirmed this, finding that “[a]s a result of the restrictions to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, we are facing a situation of increased risk of social isolation and loneliness” and that such isolation and loneliness led to “higher depressive symptoms.”
Coupled with the record number of people on streaming services and watching television in their homes for toxic amounts of time, weight gain has become a worsening epidemic in and of itself. Two in five American respondents were found in a January survey to have gained an average of 14 pounds.
While these facts have remained public, those cloaked in safety-speak have offered that the death toll provides a proper motive to padlock society. Indeed, more than 600,000 people have passed—with a majority being 80-plus years old and immunocompromised to some degree.
Aside from the worsened health outcomes from the implementation of lockdowns, studies have shown they are ineffective in curbing excess fatalities. As James Pierson and Naomi Schaefer Riley summed up in City Journal, “If states are supposed to be laboratories of democracy, the results of the past year’s experiments are in. We are not safer at home.”
States are slowly opening up, even blue ones. New Jersey is slated for a June 4 reopening and Illinois on June 11. Assuming hospitalizations remain low, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom will open California on June 15. Still, Oregon and New Mexico have not set a date yet and are relying on vaccination rates to make a determination.
It is critical Americans get back out into the world—even though many of us already have—and communicate face-to-face with others. Living Online™️ and denying our physical existence in fellowship with others is too costly to reject.
In making Americans reliant on Big Tech, while crafting slanted and arbitrary rules for how such platforms should function, Democrats and their tech allies have been the force behind the major cultural disintegration in this country.
Crime has skyrocketed, censorship is rampant, businesses have shuttered forever, and the country is nauseatingly divided. After what the corrupt government and corporations did to Americans, it is warranted for people to feel a sense of anxiety as they leave their homes.
Leaving home in the first place is the important part though: Because the world is bigger and more beautiful than it is through a piece of glass made in China. The ruling class did this to us all, and as always Americans will bear the grunt for their actions.
Source: The Federalist
