Newton's Third Law

There comes a point after every storm, no matter how violent, concentrated, or intense, that the waves recede, the wind stops howling, the dust settles. With a look that can only be replicated in war, the survivors begin to assess the damage that was wrought.

Most of the time, people are just happy they made it through, glad they survived, and they begin to rebuild if they are able or find a new place to inhabit, to call home, and eventually make it home if they are not. When it’s a natural disaster like an earthquake, a hurricane, a tornado, a volcano, or a tsunami, there really isn’t anyone to blame. It was naturally occurring, something that has been happening since before recorded history, and mankind takes it as it comes, mourns if it is called for, then regroups, and goes on living because it’s the only option afforded to them.

There are situations, however, when the cause of the heartache and chaos, the cause of the tears and fear is either manmade or artificially inflated to the point of causing mass hysteria and panic. It is when the culprits can be readily identified, when the source of the hysterical prognostications and proclamations is evident to all, that Newton’s third law must be applied. The punishment for such individuals must be commensurate with the heartache they caused.

They must be punished not only because justice demands it, but to serve as an object lesson to all future generations, a cautionary tale so vivid and garish as to make anyone fifty years hence think twice about producing fear porn and passing it off as legitimate news.

When the dust settles, and it will, every rectally prolapsed sexual deviant pretending to be a journalist who somberly declared that that death was inevitable and imminent, every alarmist with quaffed hair that insisted if you were to ensure one more meal for your loved ones you’d have to stab another human being in Sam’s Club to get it, must be called to task, exposed, shamed, and made an example of.

For every parent that stayed up pacing half the night wondering if they would find diapers or wipes at the store the next morning, these ghouls must be punished. For every small business that will have to shutter its doors, these ghouls must be punished. For every person that can’t go to work to put food on the table for their family, these ghouls must be punished. For every missed opportunity to smile, for every dream that was dashed, for every untoward thought you were engineered into having about another human being just because they happened to cough within hearing distance, these ghouls must be punished.

There is a time for mercy, but the unrepentant are undeserving of it. Loving one’s enemies does not invalidate, nullify, or abrogate justice itself; the two are not mutually exclusive!

Mark these words: if those responsible for making the panic more harmful than the actual virus are not called to answer for their actions, they will simply do it again, and again, until our nerves are so frayed we either shut down altogether or jump out of our skin every time someone within a square mile sneezes.

What if this thing disappears as quickly as it came, and we don’t have the million-plus fresh graves every grotesque figure on television relishes repeating over and over? What if, after all the panic and hysteria, the number is not even a fraction of what they were projecting?

We will still have a cratered economy, a new precedent for governmental overreach, thousands upon thousands without jobs, a newfound and unhealthy dependence on all things government, and the ever-present realization that we’ve been had by a cabal of individuals who are good at framing a narrative and repeating alarmist propaganda tirelessly. It may take only a handful of days to bring this behemoth of an economy to a grinding standstill, but getting it back up and running will be a far longer and more difficult task to be sure. Call me callous, heartless, or whatever adjective you choose, but at some point, the law of diminishing returns must also come into play. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.