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May 12, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
09:45
Will We Ever Go Back to Normal? ⎜The Dennis Prager Radio Show
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It's an interesting question whether people will be able to go back to normal now that this has become normal.
The human being is a creature of habit.
What you do, you get used to.
I remember Candid Camera once had, as a stunt, They put up a sign in Midtown Manhattan on a very busy street.
I'm sure you all remember busy streets.
And the sign said, Backward Walking Zone.
So a couple of anonymous, obviously, employees of Candid Camera walked backwards.
And everybody walked backwards.
They saw the sign.
Saw two people walking backwards, and they walked backwards.
I'm not saying this with contempt for the people who did it.
I might well have done it too, just thinking I would have thought it was hilarious.
I would not have known it was a candid camera stunt, but I would have thought it was hilarious.
Anyway, if you walk backwards for a long enough period of time, walking backwards becomes normal.
I've been reading all these articles that a lot of people just...
Won't any longer go into work because they found working at home so convenient.
There is obviously, like everything in life, there's a blessing and a curse involved in that.
The blessing is that you could spend more time at home, and the curse in it is less human interaction.
I deeply worry about the less human interaction.
The workplace...
Is a place to get out of your house.
If you work at home, and a lot of people do, and that's fine.
But if you work at home, to a certain extent, you are in a permanent quarantine.
Now, the difference is, of course, you get out and go to a restaurant, go to a coffee shop, or do whatever you want.
You go shopping.
But nevertheless, the bulk of your time in life is then spent in your house.
This would be a first in human history.
People left their houses.
Obviously, in the agricultural age, people would then leave their house and go onto their land with their animals and their crops.
So, sort of, beware what you wish for.
It may be wonderful, and it may not be.
I come into the studio to be with people.
I could broadcast from home.
When I am on the road, I broadcast with my wonderful little machine, often from a hotel room.
You can't tell the difference unless I say, I'm here, here I am in Wisconsin, or whatever it might be.
But it is a healthy thing to, in my case, be with my producer and my engineer.
So there's a terrible price paid.
If masks become the norm, then we have done something obviously unprecedented.
We have become anonymous to all people.
We are all wearing a veil.
You know how odd many of you would feel if you go to a culture where the women are veiled?
Now the men and women will be veiled.
So the new norm is difficult to imagine.
Do you see a picture on the United Airlines?
The flight was packed and everybody was wearing a mask.
You didn't see that picture?
What was it?
Oh, yes, a cardiologist took the picture because he was objecting the spacing.
They said that middle seats would be empty, but in fact the middle seats were sold.
And so that's why I saw the picture, because he was complaining about that fact.
You know...
I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
That's how I feel right now.
But you know how congested planes were when people didn't wear masks and got agitated at the congestion.
One can only imagine now, just, you know, a cross-country flight is five hours.
You're on the plane an hour before.
You're in the airport an hour before that at least.
That's two hours.
That's seven hours.
And it's more than that, because when you get there, you still have a half hour.
So it's seven and a half hours of mask wearing.
The airlines are hurting anyway.
People will not want to fly under those circumstances.
I read somewhere, I have to get this to you, that of the topmost...
Dangerous things vis-a-vis the virus.
The cruise ships didn't even make it onto the top 50. Did you see that?
I can't believe I didn't save it.
And it was in a regular mainstream media source.
We're having a cruise, now that I mention that.
The cruise we were supposed to take in two weeks obviously was cancelled.
So we're going in September.
Listeners and I calling it the Freedom Cruise.
It's like our way of saying we are free.
And if you want to come with us, it begins in Copenhagen, correct?
And I will be giving some talks in Copenhagen.
It'll be very exciting.
And ends up where?
In London.
In London.
So just go to my website, DennisPrager.com.
Where will they find it?
Cited on the show.
Cited on the show.
C-I-T-E-D, not S-I-T-E-D, for the record.
There is a question here that is posed by a state senator in the Wall Street Journal.
Dan McConchie, a Republican, is an Illinois state senator.
And he is asking the question that I have asked, why do governors have the power to tell me that I can't go into a store?
The acceptance of this by a broad swath of the American people is upsetting to me.
As governors across the country destroy their state's economies in the name of public health, there is shockingly little oversight of their actions.
In 41 states, there is little or no legislative input on gubernatorial state of emergency proclamations.
You hear that?
41. Half those legislatures lack the ability to block any exercise of a governor's power when done in the name of an emergency.
That leaves elected representatives unable to defend their constituents against executive overreach.
Only two states, Georgia and Oklahoma, require any affirmative action of the legislature to approve the governor's initial declaration.
Seven others require legislative approval of subsequent extensions after an initial emergency declaration expires.
That leaves 19 states, including Illinois, where an emergency declaration that closes private business, restricts commerce, and limits the free movement of residents has no limits at all.
Consider the questionable decisions of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who banned the sale of, quote, non-essential, unquote, items such as furniture, carpeting, and paint.
That applied even in stores that were allowed to open.
It remained unexplained how cherry-picking what customers can and can't buy at Home Depot limits the spread of coronavirus any better than, say, simply limiting the number of shoppers allowed in at any one time.
Here in Illinois, some of Governor Pritzker's limits on commerce can hardly be defended as based in science.
Even under his latest executive order released Thursday, I can visit Target to buy furniture, Walmart to buy clothing, or my grocery store to buy flowers.
But I can't go inside a furniture store, a clothing store, or a florist.
Even though those stores could easily adopt the same safety measures required of the retail outlets permitted to open.
And stay open.
I did the math.
If the United States had the same death rate per million as Sweden, the country that didn't lock down, I will tell you how many would die.
I did the math.
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