[Am Conservative] Last Christmas, Governor Gretchen Whitmer released one of the wildest, most mind-warping videos I’ve ever seen. It begins with her shouting, "Thank you for joining us!!" over a Zoom call, before introducing none other than Santa Claus. Several scripted and possibly terrified children then prompt Santa to talk about how he wears a mask at the North Pole and uses hand sanitizer before eating cookies, all while Whitmer hovers imperiously in the corner like some yuletide Big Brother. The video ends with her gently informing the tykes that this year they won’t be able to visit their grandparents for the holidays.Watching that, I kept expecting the Soviet national anthem to start playing or Whitmer’s eyes to turn into rotating swirls. I believe the editorial line here at TAC prevents me from advocating drug use, but holy moly, that must be some trip. Yet it’s also typical of Whitmer, who more than any other governor has used the coronavirus to exalt herself into a kind of self-unaware epidemiological monarch. Now, her kingdom is starting to crumble. Check the New York Times’s COVID map and you’ll notice only one state is colored in crimson, indicating a severe level of infection risk: Michigan. Over the last two weeks, the daily average of hospitalizations has increased nationally by 9 percent; in Michigan, it’s 42 percent.
Whitmer claimed she needed unprecedented unilateral power in order to beat back COVID. Now, her state and her state alone is undergoing a deadly surge.