In the 1921 movie, The Kid, Charlie Chaplin plays a “Tramp” who is working in-cahoots with a “Kid” who walks around town throwing stones at houses and businesses shattering their windows. Shortly thereafter, The Tramp, working as a window-repairman, shows up and fixes the window for a price. The Kid creates the problem, Charlie Chaplin fixes it, and the homeowner pays.
There is a criminology theory called the “broken window theory” which asserts that visible signs of crime and civil disorder, such as “broken windows” and vandalism, create an anti-social environment that encourages further crime and disorder, eventually leading to more serious crimes. So, stopping the breaking of windows and repairing vandalism reduces the chaos and disorder which in turn, reduces a climate of criminality.
Keynesian economic theorists, believe that “broken windows” can be very useful to society. They believe that “during the periods of high unemployment, it would be better for the government to pay workers to dig out holes and fill them up again, or even to break and fix windows, than doing nothing at all.” Like in the movie, breaking windows stimulate economic action; money is spent on a new window and to hire the repairman to install the new window. But the end result only gets us back to zero; a window in the wall that had already been there before it was intentionally broken. Economic activity is created but no new value is, and that’s the problem with intentionally breaking windows.
We used to have a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That was the philosophy of a hands-off, laissez-faire approach to governing. But many of our leaders today follow a different philosophy, similar to The Kid in the movie, “If it ain’t broke, break it.” So, they can “fix” it. They are political Keynesians relying on “broken windows” to create political action to get what they want. Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste… it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.” Which means, ‘let’s exploit the crisis, let’s exploit the pain and suffering of the people to get the stuff that we want.’
Politicians justify their existence, and even derive their power from addressing the problems they have either created or failed to fix previously. This is why very few problems ever get solved. The $14 trillion the United States spent on Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” created more poverty than it prevented. The “fix” usually breaks more things than needed to be fixed, which creates a very expensive vicious cycle.
The ultimate “broken window” was Covid-19. The Covid-lockdowns were unnecessary. Many of the politicians, such as; Newsom, Whitmer, Cuomo, Pelosi, Feinstein, believed they were unnecessary because they violated the lockdown orders they imposed on others. Recently, Matt Meyer, the head of the San Francisco Teachers’ Union who has kept the San Francisco public schools closed for 12 months, was caught dropping his daughter off at in-person private school proving he does not believe in-person school is a health risk. So why is he keeping the schools closed? He is “breaking a window”; exploiting a crisis, benefitting from others’ suffering.
Lockdowns were unnecessary, but useful, designed to drive our country into an economic and psychological ditch to influence the election. This time last year, Donald Trump was on his way to a landslide victory; The Democrats were close to losing the House and Senate; China had been knocked to its knees by Trump’s tariffs and negotiations; And Big Tech was facing a hard crack down from the Federal government. But as a result of Covid, the Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. China is positioned to become the world’s economic superpower, and Silicon Valley has more money and more power than before.
Is it a coincidence that the only states that ordered Covid-positive patients back into nursing homes causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths of seniors, were heavily-populated states with a Democrat Governor; NY Cuomo, MI Whitmer, CA Newsom, NJ Murphy, and PA Wolf? No Republican Governor made such an order. A 4th grader would have enough sense to ask, ‘why would you send people with a deadly virus to go live with old and weak people? Wouldn’t that make those people sick?’
Is it another coincidence that these states also enacted the harshest lockdowns of small businesses, churches, and public schools? So, they intentionally exposed the most vulnerable to Covid while placing extreme restrictions on the least vulnerable. It was almost as if these Governors wanted as many deaths of the elderly as possible, and as much destruction of the other citizens’ lives as possible. They knew that the complicit media would blame Trump for every Covid-death, every job lost, every ounce of misery. So, the more the merrier.
But people wouldn’t make decisions that will cause others to die, would they? Well, maybe. Enter Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm (never let a crisis go to waste) Emanuel. He was a member of Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force. In 2014, Zeke Emanuel wrote an editorial arguing that people should not live past age 75, because they become a burden to their families and society. So, at the same time Democrat Governors were intentionally exposing seniors to death by Covid, within the Democratic brain trust on Covid, there was a powerful individual who believes that people over the age of 75 dying in nursing homes is a preferred outcome, and possibly, he saw the coronavirus as a crisis “not to let go to waste” in that effort.
Dr. Emanuel is not alone. Proponents of government run healthcare don’t mind when the elderly die, either. Death of the elderly means significantly less money the state pays in Medicare expenses. Barack Obama, the man whose name is on Obamacare, said in his 2013 State of the Union Address, “the biggest driver of our long-term debt is the rising cost of health care for an aging population. And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms.” He speaks as if he cares more about saving Medicare than saving the lives of the aging population. And what were the reforms he was referring to? Obama once told senior citizens that “maybe you're better off not having the (life-saving) surgery, but taking the painkiller."
Politicians have been pushing government control of “end-of-life care” for many years which simply means ending elderly people’s lives as quickly, and as cost effectively as possible. Covid-positive patients in nursing homes is a win all around for the Democrats; kill off as many elderly nursing home patients as possible which saves money in their much-revered Medicare program, and blame all the deaths on Trump which will help them win the Presidency.
Maybe Governor Cuomo’s current #metoo scandal is not solely a distraction from his deadly nursing home policy, but the shiny object taking everyone’s eyes off all 5 Democrat Governors deadly nursing home policies and the real reasons behind them.
Joe Biden and the Democrats care so much about stopping the spread of Covid in our country that they have completely opened the border, creating a surge of over 4,000 illegal immigrants per day into America without a Covid test or a vaccine, creating a border crisis that is overwhelming the system. All of these policies, opening nursing homes and the border to Covid-positive people while shutting down businesses, schools and churches are designed to create chaos, and misery, and death, which they can exploit politically.
The crisis of Covid allowed certain politicians to unconstitutionally change the election laws in many of the battleground states which handed an uncharismatic, uninspiring, cognitively compromised Presidential candidate the most votes in United States election history. The “broken window” was Covid, the “fix” they benefitted from was changing the election laws. It’s interesting that very few election laws were changed in non-battleground states, as if those states were immune to Covid. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. has a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to reshape election rules via HR 1, which means, continue to exploit the Covid crisis to nationalize the election law changes making every election as susceptible to as much fraud as possible.
The $1.9 trillion “Covid-Relief” Bill that recently passed the House and Senate is another exploitation of the broken window. This “Covid-Relief” Bill is very light on Covid-relief and very heavy on political pay backs with less than 9% going to Covid-relief, and less than 1% going to vaccines. They are not even trying to pretend anymore. In the old days, there would be about a 50-50 split between stated-spending and pork barrel spending. This bill has a 10-90 split. They are using Covid to do the things they would not normally get done.
Throughout 2020, we watched tens of thousands of windows broken, building burned down, stores looted, cars set on fire while the same politicians who condemned the Capital riots cheered those riots on for months. To them, riots were good as long as they could exploit the chaos. There has not been much improvement in race relations since November, but how many BLM and Antifa riots have there been in the last four months now that the election is over, and no one can benefit politically from the chaos? We probably won’t see many of these riots until the summer and fall of 2022, and definitely 2024.
Since June 2020, the Democrats have called for “defunding the police”, and recently, the Democratically-led house passed, H.R. 1280, a.k.a. “The George Floyd Bill” to defund the police. Exploiting that tragedy to create more chaos they can exploit. House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy said, “H.R. 1280 would cost police departments hundreds of millions of dollars — the equivalent of taking 3,000 cops or more off the streets.” Defunding the police creates the chaos, the “broken windows”, they can exploit to grab more and more power for themselves.
The Capital riot on January 6 is another “broken window” that has allowed the Democrats to not only lock down the Capital, but to target their political opponents. They are using the riots as the justification to go after those they disagree with; anyone they deem “dangerous” can be shut down, banned, and even arrested. They impeached Trump for the riot, so they could ban him from running for office again. They are exploiting the riot so expertly; it is almost as if they wanted the riot to occur so they could do these things they could not do before.
Remember, evil people exploit crises. Evil people benefit from the suffering and death of others. Look at all the people who are better off today than they were 12 months ago. They didn’t just make a few extra bucks off of breaking windows, they fully empowered themselves by breaking a country, and exploiting the death of millions of people. And that is a glimpse into the moral and ethical character of those who will be leading this country both politically and economically. It does not look promising.
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Judd Garrett is a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He is a frequent contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.
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