With Beach Restriction and Bar Closures Government Officials Are Creating a Recipe for More Violent Riots

In time for the Independence Day weekend, a time when citizens of this great nation celebrate the freedom of our constitutional republican form of government, local and state officials issued a renewed and strengthened set of restrictions based on a "spike" in coronavirus cases.

Beaches in Los Angeles and other counties are closed for the Fourth of July weekend - a huge weekend for visiting the shore. Bars and indoor seating at restaurants, both recently reopened, have been closed again. Santa Monica instituted fines for those refusing to wear face coverings.

This is such a good idea. It's such a spectacularly wise and reasoned decision. After two-and-a-half months of keeping people in house arrest, then finally easing restrictions on normal, human activities, to then tighten matters up again and take away the small freedoms so recently restored - that is a terrific, well-considered, common-sense approach.

Oh, hardly.

Do our elected leaders and scientific experts have cat litter for brains? Do they not understand that the conflagration of riots, violence, and looting that accompanied so many "mostly peaceful" protests at the end of May and through June had barely anything to do with police brutality? They were the result of locking people in their homes, scolding and shaming them into avoiding all real social contact, and basically trying to bottle up normal human behavior. It was inevitable and completely predictable that this unnatural imprisonment would cause a severe and violent backlash.

I predicted it myself as did many others. And I predict now - with no happiness - that there will be more violent backlash. As serious as the coronavirus may be, trying to constrict normal human interaction and snipping off freedoms that citizens believe are their right will result in a reaction that is even more serious.

We have already seen mobs take over parts of cities. We have seen widespread arson, looting, and horrific gangs of unbridled individuals who've discarded every vestige of civilized behavior beat helpless bystanders. We've seen crazed mobs tear down statues from one coast to the other - statues that have nothing to do with police brutality or racism. Deep anger is all that connects the pattern of this destruction.

It's not anger about systemic racism. That would not explain the destruction of a statue of Ulysses S. Grant or the demand to destroy a statue of Abraham Lincoln. It's not even support of the Marxist organization Black Lives Matter. Few who participate in the group's protests even know for what they stand.

People are mad as hell about being herded into their homes like sheep. They're furious about being denied the ability to congregate with their friends and to participate in all the normal human interaction that people have engaged in since we lived in caves and used stone tools.

There is a price to pay for slowing down the inevitable spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Any elected leader who attempts to deflect responsibility for the violent backlash to come onto people who were unable to tolerate another day of social imprisonment should be summarily voted out of office on the next election day. These spineless officials don't have the guts to admit that there is no stopping this virus. All they are doing is slowing it down and dragging out the torture of unemployment, business closings, and terrible loneliness.

In addition, they are doing their best to create a perfect recipe for a riot. Actually, for a whole batch of them.

They are not fit to govern.