Barely a year ago, a colorful winged invasive insect from China, the Lanternfly, was supposed to be a harbinger of national disaster. Even though the bug had been well known in the U.S. since 2014 without provoking any alarms, just as the pandemic hysteria began to fade the Lanternfly became public enemy No. 1.
As the national disaster story went, if we saw them, we were to kill, Smash, Squash, get rid of it before they had a chance to lay between 30 to 50 eggs each in the fall. it! In other words – Panic! Deadly insects were on the loose threatening to take over our country. And if a horde of Chinese killer bugs ready to destroy our food supply wasn’t enough, your friendly local government was on its way to slap an expanding quarantine zone on your neighborhood to control the hoard.
Never mind that none of the scare tactics masquerading as news came true. Facts would have only interfered with the message. While there have been a few attempts to renew the last years’ terror campaign, the message has been toned down considerably. They will no longer “destroy” but could “cause” damage. Such a useful word, “could.”
Lanternfly lunacy is not any crazier than the other disaster stories the media have been dinning into our ears? Two years ago the government was insisting that those who refused the jab were walking death traps, notwithstanding clear medical evidence that the drugs didn’t prevent either infection or transmission.
Yet long after drug-pusher-in-chief Deborah Birx conceded to Congress that this divisive slander had no basis in fact and after notorious vaccine evangelist Paul Offit admitted that those drugs actually do cause myocarditis, the press went on cheerleading for more injections, not for better standards of drug safety. The same applies with the debunking of the mask madness.
What about climate change? So-called experts insist that minor fluctuations in global mean temperature are responsible for everything from obesity to the civil war in Syria, claims every bit as ridiculous as the idea that stamping bugs to death can save fruits and vegetables.
The ruling class is deeply impatient with that old-fashioned idea about the people governing themselves. And so our rulers are hunting relentlessly for any excuse to snatch away a few more of our rights, to siphon off a bit more of our privacy, to pry a little further in out our personal space. From COVID to climate change, from Trump’s continuing designs on the White House to the spotted lanternfly, all may look like separate stories but in fact they’re a single agenda in search of a pretext.
My point is, it doesn’t much matter which costume the overlords are dressing up their agenda in at a given moment. What matters is the agenda itself. Specific scare stories come and go, but the objective behind them will never change. The overlords will keep shifting form one scare story to another, each time shaking us down for another piece of our autonomy, until there’s nothing left. Only if we refuse to play along will the cycle end.
So remember the lanternfly and how we were lectured that it meant the End of the World. Especially remember it the next time you’re told that the entire globe is about to burn because people are driving cars or cooking with gas stoves, or that somebody’s sniffles are going to kill you, or that censorship is meant for your protection or that democracy and freedom aren’t really in your best interest. Same old song, just another lie.
You can read Michael Lesher’s article, Where Have All the Lanternflies Gone, published at Brownstone Institute at the link provided.
