The lockdowns weren't going to work

 Have you all noticed that the more the COVID-19 virus spreads, the fewer restrictions are in place? When less than 100 people in the entire state were infected, all the schools, bars, and restaurants were shut down. Only essential workers were allowed to commute, everyone else was only allowed out to buy food.

Now there are over 100,000 cases in Indiana and the restaurants that haven’t gone out of business are allowed to operate at full capacity.

The lockdowns were never going to work. There were loopholes that some businesses were able to exploit, and there were individuals who just didn’t take the threat seriously. If AIDS couldn’t scare young people into celibacy, COVID-19 wasn’t going to stop college students from partying either. Almost every elected official has been to college, so you’d expect them to know how a frat brother’s brain works (it often doesn’t work at all). Any policy that requires 100% public compliance to succeed is doomed to failure.

We all knew, or should have known, that the pandemic was going to be a marathon and not a sprint. If staying at home for 14 days was all it took to stop the virus, we would have moved on by now. In hindsight, a governor had two choices: A)wreck the economy and fail to stop the spread of the virus or B) not wreck the economy but keep the public warned about the threat that the virus poses. The virus is going to spread in either scenario. Many politicians are tempted to choose Option A because it makes it look like they are taking harsh measures to stop the threat. But if the threat can’t be stopped, the harsh measures only make things worse.

In times of crisis when nobody is sure what to do, governments should err on the side of freedom and individuals should err on the side of caution. You probably shouldn’t go out tonight, and you know this. But if you need to go out for supplies, or even if sitting around the house all week has taken a toll on your mental health, the government shouldn’t try to stop you from going out.

More nonsense about "wasted votes"

Both Democrats and Repubilcans will act like you are wasting your vote if you vote Libertarian. It seems that Progressives have been exceptionally vocal about this recently. Some might think it’s because they lost two very close elections within the past 20 years. I suspect that many Progressives would rather that I vote for Donald Trump than Jo Jorgensen. They could be going after US citizens who never vote, but instead they are coming after me. The reason is that Libertarians don’t quite fit into their Manichean narrative. If I can’t be on their side, they want me on Trump’s side. For the Democrats to be the heroes, they need Trump to be the villain. Without that villain, what reason would we have to support them? A cult fears skeptics more than they fear Satan. If you don’t buy into their fairytail, it starts to unravel. To be sure, at least some Republicans have stopped pretending to be the good guys. But Progressives would rather live under Trump for another 4 years than have a Libertarian elected to any state or local office. They want to ignore us but they can’t stop talking about us.

On Cuties

 

There is a movie on Netflix that a lot of people are upset about called Mignonnes. It is a highly acclaimed French film starring many young French actresses. The film is being marketed in the US as Cuties.

Let’s get the easy part out of the way. I am not a Netflix subscriber, and this movie does not appeal to me. I have no intention or desire to watch it. It also not my intent to defend Netflix. They have their own PR department. It is my understanding that this film does not contain child porn. Since I have zero intention of watching this film, I have no way of verifying that. I’m guessing that there is some poor FBI agent who has to watch this type of shit to see if the government can make a case against whoever made it. Since the movie was made in France, it’s highly unlikely that anyone involved in making this movie will see the inside of a US courtroom.

I did see the trailer, and it brought to mind the pageant scene in Little Miss Sunshine. But Little Miss Sunshine was comedy, and not porn. Is Cuties meant as comedy? Who can tell when it came from a country that thinks Jerry Lewis is funny?

The movie is not controversial in France. The movie was seen over there for some time before it was seen over here. What seems to have sparked American outrage is Netflix’s marketing. I think this marketing was calculated to provoke outrage so that it would generate free publicity for the film. This type of marketing has worked for movies like Dogma and The Interview. Harry Potter skyrocketed into popularity in part because evangelical Christians denounced it as promoting witchcraft. All these folks have been sharing this image of these girls in their dance outfits so that I keep seeing it in my timeline. They are like “LOOK! LOOK HOW OFFENSIVE THIS IS!” We’re going to find out if the calculation pays off: if Netflix doesn’t remove the film, it might be because they are gaining more subscribers than they are losing.

If God forbid, you actually see child porn online, you can report it here. https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/cybertipline Do NOT save it or share it with others. But if you see something that doesn’t fit the legal definition of porn, all you can really do is watch something else.

Libertarians and Black Lives Matter

Libertarians support civil rights for all human beings. Throughout American history, various groups have suffer civil rights violations on account of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and cultural background. Today, the focus has been on police mistreatment of black people.

So black people have started a movement, and there is a slogan and a hashtag that goes along with it. #BlackLivesMatter. And there is a national organization and multiple local organization by that name as well. Some of them want to disband the police altogether, which arguably makes them more libertarian than even me. And some these groups have agendas that are unrelated to racism. They want to replace capitalism with socialism.

Any political movement centered around a single issue will attract people of various ideologies. Ten years ago, the Tea Party Movement stood against government overspending. Polls were taken showing that the Tea Party was more popular than the Republican Party. The GOP lured many Tea Partiers into their big tent and manage to get them to elect Donald Trump. It should be noted that under Trump, the national debt has been growing faster than the economy.

So politics can make for strange bedfellows, and hashtags can get hijacked. (#ImWithHer) Libertarians should still take an interest in the BLM movement. Here's why:

• 1. It isn't fair that black people are disproportionately arrested for victimless crimes.
• 2. If we stand with them, they might be interested in aligning with Libertarians
  
• 3. If we don't stand with them, they are more likely to align with the Marxists who have been standing with them.
• 4. It's not like we have anything to lose.
• 5. The solution that progressives might come up with is to have police arrest 8 white people for every black person that they arrest.

Black Lives Matter. There, I said it. Racists can cry about it like Chris Cantwell.

Please vote responsibly.

On Distance Learning

Republicans have suddenly made education a higher priority issue this year. Trump thinks distance learning is terrible. Even though he spent his K-12 years in brick and mortar schools, he failed to learn proper punctuation and capitalization.

Technology is way better now than when I was in school. We would be foolish to not take advantage of that during this crisis. Imagine if 100 years ago, parents argued that school buses were not as effective at transporting kids to school as tried-and-true horse drawn carriages. Today we have something even faster and safer than school buses: wifi. Why should schools and parents place children at an unnecessary risk during a pandemic?

Even after COVID-19, distance learning has unprecedented advantages. Kids with rare, special needs can be matched with qualified educators anywhere in the country. Kids with behavior problems who need to be kept physically separate from other students can still continue their education. School districts with teacher shortages can outsource from areas with teacher surpluses. This can make it easier for schools to find teachers and easier for teachers to find jobs.

Distance learning isn't even all that new. For almost two decades, soldiers have been earning college degrees while deployed abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the President dismisses distance learning as worthless, he is saying that these degrees that these brave men and women have earned are worthless.

Please vote responsibly.

End the Drug War

This is the most important election of our lives. You all hear that every 4 years. This year is different. In the past, people would threaten to leave the country if the wrong man was elected president. There is always that failsafe in the back of your mind: "Canada isn't such a bad place, maybe I could move there," you might think. But because of the pandemic, every other country has blocked all travel from the US. Nobody can leave now. This will likely be the case until there is a vaccine or COVID-19 just burns through all available victims. For better or for worse, we are stuck with each other. Since there is no where to run anymore, we need to find a way to end the escalating cycle of violence and chaos that is happening right now. We're approaching a point where not even isolated gated communities are completely safe.

For this and many other reasons, I propose that we end the War on Drugs. By repealing the Controlled Substance Act, we can dramatically reduce the violence that goes on in our cities. Gangs fight over drugs because it's an illegal product. Change the law, and they won't have anything to fight over. Our homicide rate could be as low as Western Europe.

As it stands now, the US has the most prisoners in the world. China has three times as many people as the US but still has fewer prisoners overall. One in 4 prison inmates on Planet Earth is locked away in the US. And it is not a coincidence that 1 in 4 COVID-19 cases are recorded in the US. The virus spreads so easily from inmate to inmate that prisons are practically coronafarms.

Drug addiction is a disease that is worse than any sentence that a judge will hand down in a drug case. Most diseases we can be open about: people will talk about their weight loss goals, rare congenital conditions,etc. Drug addicts have difficulty coming out in the open about their problems because they are at risk of going to jail. So they end up shunning friends and family and seek the company of other drug addicts. And yet even while in jail, addicts often find ways to get a hold of what got them there in the first place.

As it stands now, society shows more compassion to the wealthy white woman who is addicted to opiods than the black teenager with a baggie of weed in his back pocket. While we have a long road to go when it comes to racism, we can reduce it's negative effects. Racist cops can easily plant evidence without being caught by their own body cameras: simply stand with the camera facing away from the suspect vehicle, pull a baggie out of one's side pocket, toss it on the floor of the vehicle, and pretend to find it for the first time where the body camera can see it. While I have full confidence that most police are honest, hard working public servants, highly publicized accounts of police corruption gives minorities reason to believe that there is way more corruption than politicians are willing to admit. By ending the Drug War, honest cops have a better chance to win the trust that they deserve.

I'm Robert Enders, the 2020 Libertarian candidate for US House of Representatives (IN-3). I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, and I don't use illegal drugs. My goal is to end the War on Drugs so that I don't have to hear gunshots in my neighborhood anymore.

Congressman Jim Banks and the Reopen Our School Act

The Reopen Our Schools Act is a mind boggling travesty. During this crisis, parents and schools should have the right to decide whether or not to have kids back in the classroom without the federal government getting involved. For that matter school districts should forego federal funds if they have dangerous strings attached.

Congressman Jim Banks co-authored this bill. He claims that children are at low risk of contracting COVID-19. My guess is that the reason for this is because the kids have been staying home. Children have died from this illness. And while children might be at a lower risk of death, they can transmit the virus to their parents and others.

Dr Fauci has said that whether or not schools re-open might depend on the region. Since the Reopen Our Schools Act would apply to the entire country, this might encourage a lot of schools to reopen when the risk of infection is still high.

Folks, I’m running against Jim Banks in the 2020 election this November. You’ll hear a lot more about my campaign soon. #PleaseVoteResponsibly