Carmel, California – This tourist town’s Ocean Avenue main street is lightly trafficked on a Monday morning despite 65-degree weather and bslue skies. COVID rules daily life here. A few, masked pedestrians walked the streets, home of some of northern Californian’s most beautiful beaches. Shops are plastered with signs requiring masks to enter. Store attendants bark at patrons to pull their masks over their noses. Store traffic is light.
A continent away in Naples, Florida and the central, 3rd Street shopping area is bustling with people. Pedestrians browse shops, jam restaurants, and masks are rarely seen. Despite similar weather and demographics, the two sunshine states are a world apart – one living in fear, the other free.
I have traveled extensively across the US in recent months and it’s a tale of two countries, red and blue, often living within miles of one another. Democratic policies - not the virus – have reshaped parts of America. Here are some examples of our State of dis-Union:
Oakland County, Michigan – Public schools like Conant Elementary are in session in Oakland County north of Detroit. Education is a ticket out of poverty, but due to Democratic Party COVID policies, the poor have gotten poorer.
Cross into Detroit and public schools like Edmonson Elementary School were shuttered for the month of January (including charter schools) for fear of COVID-19’s Omicron variant. Remote learning has been the COVID normal in Detroit.
Omicron’s symptoms are mild, say doctors, and the COVID-19 virus is of little mortal threat to children. Yet, the district consistently defaulted to remote learning in a district where some 80 percent of households are run by a single parent. The exception is Detroit private schools. University of Detroit private secondary school, for example, maintained in-class learning since the beginning of the epidemic.
Detroit – The Motor City is a ghost town on weekdays.
Despite the lack of state COVID mandates, Detroit is a Democratic bastion with local government and corporate mask mandates. A small crowd of 50 people attended the North American Car of the Year awards January 11th in the palatial Huntington Place Convention Center were forced to wear masks.
Corporations have mandated masks and encouraged employees to work from home, emptying out a downtown that was abuzz before the pandemic hit in 2020 with new bars and restaurants. Multiple eateries shuttered as their clientele disappeared. Parking garages are empty. Streets vacant.
Just 300 miles east in of Indianapolis, 68,000 partisans descended on Lucas Oil Arena in downtown Indianapolis on January 10 to cheer their respective Alabama and Georgia football teams in the national championship. Regardless of their differences, they enjoyed a mask-less indoor environment in the free state of Indiana. Crowds congregated in Indianapolis bars and restaurants after the game, enjoying the moment.
Toledo, Ohio – The Biden Administration is forcing an electric-vehicle overhaul of the American auto industry in the name of fighting what it calls the “climate crisis.” This despite lukewarm consumer demand. EVs make up just three percent of US sales - 80 percent of them Teslas.
I am one of those Tesla owners.
The Model 3 is quick, high-tech, ambitious. On a trip from Detroit to Charleston, West Virginia, the Tesla’s cutting-edge Autopilot system drove itself for large portions of I-75. But I also had to stop in Toledo to recharge for 30 minutes in a Meijer parking lot. All told, my 12-hour round trip took an extra 2 hours 20 minutes due to recharging stops. Compare that to a comparable, gas-powered car which could make the trip with two, 5-minute refuelings.
No wonder the only other EVs (despite over a dozen models on the market) I saw across three states were Teslas at superchargers. Yet, major automakers echo Democratic Party rhetoric that the planet is in crisis, that their autos are the cause, and that they must go all-electric. “Our pursuit of sustainability and climate equity remain. . . vital,” said General Motors CEO Mary Barra, introducing an electric Chevy pickup at this January’s Consumer Electronics Show.
Automakers concede that selling EVs is a challenge, but they are counting on governments to ban gas cars over the next decade and build a refueling infrastructure to rival gas stations.
Phoenix, Arizona – While America’s establishment media has always leaned left, the pandemic solidified its transition as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party and government power. At the heart of this is the Associated Press which has morphed from a neutral journalistic institution to the US equivalent of TASS news agency.
Whether in the Arizona Republic or USA Today, AP is America’s ubiquitous national news source. As government propaganda, it shapes the news to favor Party narratives. AP’s coverage of the Black Lives Matter and Freedom Convoy protests exemplify how differently the wire service treated two civil liberties movements. AP heaped respect on the often-violent BLM movement as launching a “national reckoning on race” to further The Party narrative of “systemic racism.”
By contrast, AP in February, 2022 marginalized the peaceful, working-class Freedom Convoy as a vessel for “disinformation in Canada and simmering populist and right-wing anger.” AP downplayed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s disturbing declaration of martial law while casting the Convoy in its January 6th Party narrative as a divisive movement fueled by “Fox News personalities and conservatives like Trump.”
AP is not alone. Establishment outlets like Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, which claims a commitment to “elevating the standards of journalism,” aim to enforce Party doctrine through Big Tech social media platforms. Niemen on February 23 advocated for Facebook censorship of news contrary to The Party line on climate change.
“A ‘Toxic Ten’ of 10 websites — including Breitbart, Newsmax, and the Daily Wire — was responsible for nearly 70% of engagement on Facebook with climate denial content,” said Niemen, scolding Facebook for “failing to label many posts . . . most likely to publish climate change misinformation.”
The Democratic Party and its media allies have used the pandemic to expand government power. That control will not easily disappear.
Payne is The Detroit News auto columnist, 910 AM Car Radio Show host, a syndicated cartoonist with Andrews McMeel, and Townhall contributor.