By: Arthur Popowitz
George Orwell saw it coming more than 70 years ago, and Americans need to pay attention: Big Brother is watching.
In fact, the increasingly brazen Nanny State is doing far more than simply watching. In excess of a thousand New York City police officers were imposing their collective will on New Yorkers who dared to venture outside over the past few days, cracking down on the lack of social distancing and face masks, as Constitutional experts around the country warned that such coercion is illegal.
“It’s Orwellian to be watched like this,” one freaked-out 36-year-old park-goer told The New York Post at Staten Island’s Clove Lakes Park. “It’s friggin’ nuts,” she huffed of the patrols of NYPD cars, park police officers and bike cops — whose helmets were equipped with video cameras. “It’s like something out of “1984,” she continued, referencing George Orwell’s dystopian classic. “What is this, a military state now?”
The questions about individual freedom versus the state’s power to intimate are real, and being hotly debated around the world.
“I walk out of my building [in Chinatown] and I have a cop telling me it’s illegal for me to not wear a face mask outside,” a startled Malcolm Brown, 26, griped on the Great Lawn on the warmest day in the city since March 20,” according to the Post. “I started to really pay attention and I saw dozens of police vans everywhere,” he said. “It’s an overwhelming feeling. I understand they are keeping us safe, but do we really want to become China, where they’re recording you when you come out of your building?”
The irony is overwhelming. At the same time law-abiding Americans are being restricted to their homes, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is arguing for the mass release of dangerous criminals.
“COVID-19 could claim the lives of approximately 100,000 more people than current projections stipulate if jail populations are not dramatically and immediately reduced, according to a new epidemiological model released by the ACLU and academic research partners,” the group said. “The findings indicate that — even if communities across the United States continue practicing social distancing and following public health guidance — we will still experience much higher death rates if no substantial action is taken to reduce jail populations. The United States’ unique obsession with incarceration has become our Achilles heel when it comes to combatting the spread of COVID-19.”
The ACLU model used data pulled from more than 1,200 midsize and large jail systems around the country, whose surrounding communities account for 90 percent of the U.S. population, the group said. “It found that, unequivocally, keeping people out of jail saves lives — both inside the jail and in the surrounding community. Lives are at stake. The time to act is now.”
