Two years into the pandemic, we in America are now mostly arguing about masks.
We’ve suffered pretty repressive measures, here. But we haven’t had to cope with:
- Being literally imprisoned in your home. Stopped from going out even to get food.
- Having fences erected around your home. “What if a fire breaks out?” one Shanghai resident asked a reporter. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind can seal person’s homes.” (Well, fire is not a virus.)
- Being ejected from your home and forced into public barracks for people infected with COVID-19.
- Being ejected from your home so that it can be disinfected.
- Being subjected to a “zero COVID-19” policy, zero common sense.
This is the fate of millions in Shanghai and elsewhere in China.
In the U.S., maybe you were harassed for conducting unmasked church services or keeping your shop open. Maybe you got arrested for paddle boarding, alone, in the Pacific Ocean.
It got pretty bad. But what we are seeing in Shanghai is the reality of a totalitarian regime when it chooses to fully exercise its power to repress. At any moment, the Chinazi state may make it impossible for millions to take the simplest steps to survive.
Shanghai residents may not even complain about their fate. To the extent they have voiced any complaints publicly, the Chinese government has struggled to eliminate all traces of the complaints.
Here, at least, we can gripe.
But what does a people do when not allowed to protest or argue against their oppressors?
They scream. At night, the people of Shanghai yell out their windows.
Think of it as the soundtrack of mass misery.
