A Modest Proposal
In April of 2022 a resurgence of the Covid 19 epidemic is taking place in China:
"The lockdown was supposed to end yesterday, but has been extended indefinitely until authorities have had an opportunity to 'review the data', as China Daily reported."
Having recently emerged from authoritarian measures of our own, in the U.S.A., my heart goes out to the Chinese people. The frustration resulting from the ineffectiveness of all measures to stop the virus has had one benign effect, that of uniting us. To be sure, the political leadership in China is doing its utmost to remedy the situation. Nonetheless, a social fatigue is setting in, a secondary reaction on the heels of the initial problem. It is straining nerves:
"Many have accused the CCP of violating its contract with the people. And in one particularly memorable scene, thousands of Shanghaiers took to their balconies to chant in protest, in defiance of the CCP's lockdown strictures."
Please believe it is as difficult, emotionally, for those of us outside of the area of quarantine, as it is for the victims, directly involved. I will admit to being morbidly fascinated by tales of the eating of dogs by the most desperately impoverished strata of Chinese society. It is not dogs that concern me. It is people reduced to consuming pets as food:
"She is currently staring at me right now with sad puppy eyes like 'why aren’t we going out?' and I don’t know how to explain it to her," Vicky told Al Jazeera by Skype.
Reports from China indicate pets of the deceased are euthanized in compliance with policy. The mandatory confinement of persons causes cabin fever in those affected by quarantine, with housing already strained, and now with additional restrictions on open windows:
"...as locals chanted from their balconies, government drones responded and warned them to retreat inside and not "open their windows" (apparently a violation of the lockdown rules)."
Most alarmingly, the government measures to stop the spread include restrictions on children, as anecdotal information gleaned from free-world social media attests:
"China is separating Covid positive children from their parents"
The situation is dire. Frustration drives me to ridicule. These reports put me in mind of Swift's "A Modest Proposal," published anonymously, in 1729. The premise is widely-known (or should be). Eerily similar, the calculated extermination of people for the impossible eradication of a contagious disease, barely restrained by the last shred of humanity in the Chinese government.
They can do it, no doubt about that. Rationally, humans are also animals, and the virus jumps from animals to humans. When it tests positive in a herd of livestock the entire herd is "culled." It's not that far-fetched to imagine a "herd" of humans culled the same way. The British government has even referred to "herd immunity," agreeably to a humanitarian purpose, but with disagreeable vocabulary.
The burgeoning population of China has been an issue as long as I can remember. As Swift's Proposal was penned as satire on the materialistic utilitarianism of his times, so there is a pragmatic inducement to kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) in Shanghai, today. I will demur from elaborating details of the hypothetical implementation of such a program. I lack Swift's wit and, more importantly, his outrage. The Chinese people are not my people. I am not one of them, as Jonathan Swift was one of the Irish children he wrote of, to be culled for slaughter.
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