On this episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” Senior Editor Chris Bedford and Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky discuss how a year of irrational lockdowns and strict mandates has divided Americans on how involved the government and communities should be in policing residents and their neighbors about social distancing and other COVID-19 mitigation regulations.
“It quickly became like, around here in different areas of D.C., performance, and people who are willing to rat on you and tell on you and say that they’re better than you and to go after your priests, to go after anyone,” Bedford said. “And that’s, that’s a really bad thing for society to have that level of anger at each other. ‘I’m the new police officer around here.’ … That’s really dangerous.”
While distance from human experiences already plagued people before the pandemic due to the shift into a virtual era, the social distancing measures demanded over the last year seem to have added to that phenomenon in a way that might be difficult to reverse.
“We’re never going back to normal, and that is abundantly obvious,” Jashinsky said.
“You learn that entirely,” Bedford agreed. “And that comes with so many different forgotten things. People say it’s no big deal, it’s no big deal, it’s no big deal, and it’s kind of like the same thing we have with the masks, and now I can’t see half of the person’s face. No one can smile or frown or show any expression. We’re all just eyeballs.”
