Another tool of the police state

One thing that millions of Americans have learned in the Pandemic Panic and Lockdown is that the “police forces” of American States and local governments are far from the only threat to liberty. What liberty we have left, that is.

The various “public health departments” located in every State and virtually every county, city, and Tribe, exercised their muscle. They have demonstrated that their agents and leaders rival uniformed cops in the way they can seize power, take away freedom, and punish people. Not just rival but exceed. And often without benefit of such niceties as “laws” and “courts” and human rights.

All of course, with the excuses “it is for your own good,” “it is for the children” and “it is essential to protect the public.” And today we see that the tools of oppression are just giving these unelected bureaucrats and power-hungry goons in white coats MORE power.

The latest? From the Cortez Journal, we read the gloating of one such unelected bureaucrat about his agency’s new tool to keep their thumb on people. Developed courtesy of the even MORE authoritarian, powerful Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, the San Juan Basin Health Department now has “DOMO.”

DOMO (any relation to the word “dominate” is purely coincidental, no doubt) is an application. It has the ability to tell local health officials the home base of active cellphones in their community. Then, the software weighs in the current state of the pandemic in that visitor’s home region. Y’all from San Antonio, Texas? Gasp! Hot spot there – get those tourists rounded up and deported out of La Plata County. Your cell phone is based in Farmington, New Mexico? Sorry, you can’t go to your summer cabin in Archuleta County: turn around and go back to that cesspool of disease in Farmington.

Except for this Pandemic Panic, most Americans have very little contact with their local, controlling public health department (PHD). (And yes, as with college professors, this does indeed make sense to mean “piled higher and deeper.”) THe PHD works behind the scenes, time and time and time.

Restaurant owners fear and loathe the PHD inspectors. No, NOT because they want to poison their customers, and not because they want mice and bugs to infest their kitchens. Because they know the bureaucrats are mostly about paperwork, phony citations, and fines, fines, and fines. (Not ALL, of course, as with cops, there are a few good, sincere, knowledgeable, and hardworking food safety inspectors out there. The other 95% make these good folks look bad.)

Engineers and septic system installers/constructors dread their nearly daily interaction with these PHD ‘crats. With a degree in “public health” or “government administration,” these types know more than engineers with years of experience and testing and professional licenses, and than contractors with decades of getting their hands dirty building, repairing, maintaining, and installing sewers and related items. Because the PHD has “The Word” – the 50 or 200 or whatever pages of regulations that were written by other bureaucrats on what is allowed and what is not. And they have “police powers” – their inspector can look at a hole in the ground with the pipes and infiltrators installed, and on a whim, tell the contractor (and home owner) to tear everything out and start over, because…

But it is in the panic of responding to a pandemic and the fear generated by a relatively-unknown disease that the PHD power really is visible. “Quarantine!” “Lockdown!” “Masks!” “Gloves!” “Medical people may die.” “If it saves only one life…”

These people whisper into the ears of power-lusting politicians and give them what they want to hear: “the people must be controlled for their own good.” And of course, the politicians lap that up, and swiftly put it into action.

Now with DOMO and all the other tracing tools that the compliant and eleutherophobic high-tech industry has provided to government and especially PHD, we can and will see more and more tools for the police state. Orwell and Huxley just touched the surface.

(Symptoms of Eleutherophobia include suspicion of others, a sense of servitude, nausea at the thought of freedom, social anxiety, tremors, difficulty of breathing and weeping. To overcome this fear usually requires information. A person should understand what freedom means and how it can provide personal and corporate liberty.)