Will We Ever Get Accountability?

We Must Never Forget [The Daily Reckoning] April 21, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Will We Ever Get Accountability? - “Nonessential” and “essential” workers… - Paper-pushers are indispensable… - Where’s the accountability?… [IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY: From The Vice President Of Publishing]( Doug Hill, VP of Publishing, just recorded a 2-minute video clip making a major announcement for readers like you. And it could alter the course of your life forever… [Click Here To See This Important Message]( West Hartford, Connecticut Editor’s note: Three years after the pandemic, people have moved on with their lives and put the past behind them. But as Jeffrey Tucker shows you today, we can never forget that our “elites” dismissed millions of Americans as nonessential workers while declaring bureaucrats indispensable. [Jeffrey Tucker] JEFFREY TUCKER Dear Reader, In all my thinking about the lockdown years, I’ve only had time now to think carefully about this strange distinction between essential and nonessential. What did it mean in practice and where did it come from? The edict to divide the workforce came from a previously unknown agency called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA. The edict came down March 18, 2020, two days following the initial lockdown orders from Washington. Management and workers all over the country had to dig through regulations that came out of the blue to find out if they could go to work. The terms “essential” and “nonessential” were not used in the way one might initially intuit. It sharply demarcated the whole of the commercial world in ways that are inorganic to all of human experience. In the background was a very long history and cultural habit of using terms to identify professions and their interaction with difficult subjects like class. During the Middle Ages, we had lords, serfs, merchants, monks and thieves. As capitalism dawned, these strict demarcations melted away and people got access to money despite accidents of birth. Today we speak of “white collar” meaning dressed up for a professional setting, even if literal white collars are not common. We speak of the “working classes,” an odd term that implies others are not working because they are members of the leisure class; this is clearly a holdover from 19th-century habits of the aristocracy. In the 20th century, we invented the term “middle class” to refer to everyone who is not actually poor. The Department of Labor has traditionally deferred to common usage, and speaks of “professional services,” “information services,” “retail” and “hospitality,” while the tax authorities offer hundreds of professions into which you are supposed to fit yourself. The deployment of the terms “essential” and “nonessential,” however, has no precedent in our language. This is because of a view stemming from the democratic ethos and real-world commercial experience that everyone and everything are essential to everything else. Nonessential? When I worked as part of a department-store cleaning crew, I became profoundly aware of this. My job was not only to clean the restrooms — certainly essential — but also to pick tiny pins and needles from the carpets in the changing rooms. Missing one could end in terrible injury for customers. My job was as essential as the accountants or salespeople. What precisely did government in March 2020 mean by nonessential? It meant things like haircutters, make-up stylists, nail salons, gyms, bars, restaurants, small shops, bowling alleys, movie theaters and churches. These are all activities that some bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., decided that we could do without. After months of no haircuts, however, things started to get desperate as people cut their own hair and called someone to sneak over to the house. I had a friend who heard through the grapevine that there was a warehouse in New Jersey that had a secret knock for the backdoor to a barber. He tried it and it worked. Not one word was spoken. The haircut took seven minutes and he paid in cash, which is all the person would accept. He came and went and told no one. This is what it meant to be nonessential: a person or service that society could do without in a pinch. The lockdown order of March 16, 2020 (“indoor and outdoor venues where people congregate should be closed”) applied to them. But it did not apply to everyone and everything. [Download My New Survival Guide Today!]( I’ve created a BRAND-NEW “2023 Crisis Survival Guide” that I’m making available to all of my Strategic Intelligence readers today. This short 54-page document has everything you need to know to protect yourself and your family in times of crisis. Things like what foods to stock up on now, staying safe during periods of rioting and looting and more. Inside I break down all of the coming threats you face and how to prepare. [Click Here To Download Your Copy]( What was essential? This is where matters got very complicated. Did one want to be essential? Maybe but it depends on the profession. Truck drivers were essential. Nurses and doctors were essential. The people who keep the lights on, the water running and the buildings in good repair are essential. These are not laptoppers and Zoomers. They had actually to be there. Those professions include what are considered “working class” jobs but not all of them. Bartenders and cooks and waiters were not essential. [BREAKING: Elon Musk Bets Big On One Crypto.]( [Click Here Now For The Details]( Paper-Pushers Are Essential Workers But also included here was government, of course. Can’t do without that. Additionally this included media, which turned out to be hugely important in the pandemic period. Education was essential even if it could be conducted online. Finance was essential because, you know, people have to make money in stock markets and banking. All in all, the category of essential included the “lowest” ranks of the social pecking order — garbage collectors and meat processors — and also the highest ranks of society from media professionals to permanent bureaucrats. [image 1] It was an odd pairing, a complete bifurcation between highest and lowest. It was the served and the servers. The serfs and the lords. The ruling class and those who deliver food to their storesteps. When The New York Times said we should go medieval on the virus, they meant it. That’s exactly what happened. This even applied to surgery and medical services. “Elective surgeries,” meaning anything on a schedule including diagnostic checkups, were forbidden while “emergency surgeries” were permitted. Why are there no real investigations into how this came to be? Think of totalitarian societies like in The Hunger Games, with a District One and everyone else, or perhaps the old Soviet Union in which the party elites dined in luxury and everyone else stood in bread lines, or perhaps a scene from Oliver! in which the owners of the orphanage got fat while the kids in the workhouse lived on gruel until they could escape to live in the underground economy. It appears that the pandemic planners think of society the same way. When they had the chance to decide what was essential and nonessential, they chose a society massively segregated between the rulers and those who make their lives possible, while everyone else was dispensable. This is not an accident. This is how they see the world and perhaps how they want it to function in the future. This is not conspiracy theory. This really happened. They did it to us only three years ago, and that should tell us something. It is contrary to every democratic principle and flies in the face of everything we call civilization. But they did it anyway. This reality gives us a peek into a mindset that is deeply troubling and should truly alarm us all. Where’s the Accountability? So far as I know, none of the authors of this policy have been dragged before Congress to testify. They have never given testimony in court. A search of The New York Times turns up no news that tiny CISA agency, created only in 2018, blew apart the whole of the organic class markers that have charted our progress for the last 1,000 years. It was a shocking and brutal action and yet merits no comment at all from the ruling regime in government, media, or otherwise. Now that we know for sure who and what our rulers consider essential and nonessential, what are we going to do about it? Should someone be called to account for this? Or will we continue to allow our overlords to gradually make the reality of life under lockdowns our permanent condition? Regards, Jeffrey Tucker for The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: Jim Rickards fears that [the world is about to experience its biggest crisis since World War II.]( And it has nothing to do with inflation, a stock market crash or anything like that. Jim says it’s much bigger, and the consequences would be far more devastating. What is it? As the UN warns [“famines of biblical proportions”]( are coming… and it’s going to impact all of us. That shouldn’t come as a shock. Right now, we’re experiencing… - A war between Russia and Ukraine, the world’s first- and fifth-largest wheat exporters, which could cut off over 30% of the world’s wheat supply - “The worst drought in decades,” which experts say could substantially lower food production globally – by as much as 53% in some areas - A shortage in fertilizer, which has sent prices to never-before-seen levels. As a result, many farmers are opting not to plant this year because the costs are too high. All of this is creating a perfect storm that could result in a famine the likes of which hasn’t been seen in centuries. Which is why Jim’s sounding the alarm today for every American to stock up on food and other essentials now… [click here for more...]( What does Jim recommend you do? [Click here now to find out how to survive the coming famine.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [Jeffrey Tucker] Tucker]( is an independent editorial consultant who served as Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2023 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your The Daily Reckoning e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from The Daily Reckoning, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@dailyreckoning.com. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. We allow the editors of our publications to recommend securities that they own themselves. However, our policy prohibits editors from exiting a personal trade while the recommendation to subscribers is open. In no circumstance may an editor sell a security before subscribers have a fair opportunity to exit. The length of time an editor must wait after subscribers have been advised to exit a play depends on the type of publication. All other employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of a printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. The Daily Reckoning is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. Please read our [Privacy Statement.]( If you are having trouble receiving your The Daily Reckoning subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting The Daily Reckoning.](