An Orwellian State–Biden, Stasi, And The Children’s Task Force Against COVID

President Biden’s new Children’s Task Force Against COVID was organized as part of his Universal Mask Mandate (UMM), the cornerstone of his new virus policy.  Under a new virus czar, informed and advised by a team of experts, this mandate was to be applied without exception and violators would be subject to fines and imprisonment.  The virus, the President said, was simply too dangerous, too rampant, and too destructive to be left to individual choice.  The question of policing came up early and often before the law was enacted – how would the country be able to enforce it, and would there not be violent resistance?  “We are a new nation”, he said, “in the Year Zero”.  Although his advisors cautioned him against using a phrase Pol Pot used to describe the Khmer Rouge Revolution and its vision of a pure Maoist state, he felt that the parallel was fitting.  While he would never endorse Communism in any shape or form, there was nothing wrong with learning from it.  ‘Year Zero’ described exactly how Biden felt after winning the election from Donald Trump in 2020.  All of that man’s retrograde, anti-progressive policies would have to go with no exception.  Biden had promised a more compassionate, kind, united country, and the only way to do it was to begin anew.  No ceiling on taxing the rich, punitive restrictions on private enterprise, locking down the predatory Wall Street banks, reinstating concessionary and limitless financial support to minority communities, and an aggressive program to reform the way the country thought about gender, religion, and community.  The path to Utopia would not be an easy one, but one that must be taken.

Betty Randall was one of the first children on her block to sign up as a volunteer for the new Task Force.  Her job would be to photograph violators and to turn over her cell phone images would be turned over to the District of Columbia Police Department’s special COVID unit organized to use facial recognition software to identify those who had been observed without masks, to call on them, arrest them, and mete out appropriate punishment.  Because of the severity of the pandemic and the new President’s absolute commitment to wiping it out within American borders, there would be no warnings, no easy penalties.  First time violators would be assessed the maximum fine possible under the law with no provisions for down payments or installments.  Their bank accounts would be garnisheed if they failed to comply.  Second offenders would be imprisoned.  Because Biden acted with the support of a Democratic House and Senate, his powers were virtually limitless.  No matter how the Republican minority might rant about invasion of privacy, draconian laws, and erosion of individual rights, Biden looked the other way.,  “You lost”, he said, “and you will now pay the price”.

Betty took up the job with enthusiasm.  Her parents had been early Biden supporters, inveterate Trump haters, and committed lock, stock, and barrel to the progressive cause. Individual civil rights would have to take a back seat to communitarian goals, and if a few people were unfairly prosecuted, so be it.  You cannot make an omelet without breaking some eggs, they said.  They had been ardent supporters of university first-claim abuse courts which quickly and summarily caught, prosecuted, and punished men who were accused of abusing and raping women.  They had been all for affirmative action programs which abrogated the rights of whites and Asians in favor of blacks.  They were solidly behind programs to make any-term abortion legal and easily obtainable; and they backed legal decisions which neutered individual religious conviction if the community (gays, women, minorities) was negatively affected.

The Randalls had educated their daughter well, and before she was out of grade school, she had become as passionately for Biden and his progressive agenda as any adult.  Of course as a youngster she could not possibly understand his policies and programs, nor assess their validity and likely impact, but this was irrelevant now that the time had come for action.  Understanding the implications of her actions or not, she enthusiastically volunteered for the Children’s Task Force Against COVID.  After a brief training program – in particular the art of surreptitious photographing – she was sent out into the streets of her leafy Upper Northwest neighborhood. 

Her job was easy, for the residents of her uncrowded, semi-urban neighborhood were used to going out without masks – not in defiance but for practical reasons.  The streets and sidewalks were broad, walkers and runners gave each other wide berth, and rules of social distancing were respected.  However political progressives for whom wearing a mask was not only virus protection but a symbol of communitarian faith and a badge of belonging had already begun to call out the maskless. There were enough of them for the entire neighborhood to be put on notice.  The recruitment and deployment of child informers was a logical next step.  Children would never be suspected, and their identities would be protected by the DC police who would act on their information.  Before long Betty and her classmates had become adept at inconspicuousness; and even once word got out that these child volunteers were being deployed, their work went unimpeded.

In fact, the Biden COVID task force had already anticipated this, and they deliberately held the number of child volunteers well below the number of applicants.  The fear of arrest and punishment as almost as bad as actual arrest.  The impossibility of telling who was an informant was an important psychological tool used by the Biden team.  Before long, mask compliance went up significantly.  As a response the handlers of these child informers devised schemes to catch offenders unawares – on early morning walks with the dog,  5am trips to Starbucks, and out getting the paper. 

The child informant program was so successful, that the Biden Administration decided to expand its mandate, following his national guidelines.  No more than two people, masked or otherwise, could congregate in any venue, inside or out, regardless of social distance.  Children were deployed to the few parks open to the public where women who were used to tending to their toddlers in groups were caught unawares.  They snapped pictures of offenders on city streets, neighborhood shopping centers, and churchyards. 

It was bad enough for Biden to invoke the specter of one of the Twentieth Century’s most murderous despots, but to promote the complicity of children in his punitive schemes was reminiscent of the days of Stasi, the brutal East German State Security Service which was, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, exposed for the official terrorist organization it was.  Under the Stasi regime children played an important role.  Indoctrinated, brainwashed, encouraged, and threatened, these children were instrumental in turning in parents, siblings, family and friends.  The accused had no rights.  Accusation by faithful, trained, honest children was enough.

Yet because of Biden’s Congressional support and victory at the polls, he – like all politicians – became arrogant and authoritarian; and before long the Children’s Task Force was just one of many Stasi-like intrusions into American life.  Thanks to the ‘Defund the Police’ movement popular prior to the election, Biden was able to carry out their wishes; but at the same time reformed and restructured police forces.  Now they were less forces of law and order – the progressive state rejected the idea of ‘crime’ which was nothing more than legitimate acts of civil disobedience – and surveillance-and-arrest units in the fight against COVID.  Funding for these new police units was seemingly without limit, and the most advanced surveillance software was provided to them at no cost.  The anti-terrorist cameras that had been placed throughout urban areas increased by a factor of 100; and the software used was more sophisticated than any yet developed.  The police were now able to watch virtually every move of every citizen once he stepped out of his house.

Yet the Children’s Task Force Against COVID was still a valuable tool in Biden’s fight.  While surveillance cameras could do most of the work, the intimidation factor of child informers was incalculable.  ‘J’accuse!’ out of the mouths of babes was frightening and more insidious than any other measure.  It was innocence denied, a clear and unmistakable statement that President Biden meant business, an arrogation of power no one had ever suspected of this man, and a corruption of youth from which it would take generations to recover.

This erasure of innocence, this unthinkable corruption of youth, this perverse turning of children against their families, neighbors, and friends was unconscionable to the opposition, and was not lost on Biden’s party faithful who  although co-opted and disciplined by the President and his radical advisors were still concerned about re-election.  Even they, the party of Ends Justify Means, were jittery about their chances in a few short months.  Children, he did this to children! A corruption far worse than anything Donald Trump had ever done or Richard Nixon before him.  It was unconscionable. 

As of this writing it is impossible to predict how this insane plot will turn out.  What is true is that the nation is more divided than it ever was, more angry, more restive, more insulted, and more hurt than at any time in the Trump years.  Whether or not the same determination and political ambition can topple Biden is an open question.