Dragon Slayers
The 1950s classic The Caine Mutiny depicts a paranoid career naval officer, aptly named Captain Queeg, who is intimidated by a group of non-career officers conscripted to service during World War II. These junior officers are generally more impressive and successful than their Captain and begin to question his leadership. Sensing that he is losing control of his ship, Queeg is overcome by paranoia, so he recreates a scene that drew him praise and promotion early in his career, discovery of the theft of food from the ship’s food stores. Though his new investigation does eventually prove theft occurred, it is only of a small amount of ice cream, hardly an issue with which a ship’s captain should be concerned. The incident only serves to reinforce suspicions that Captain Queeg is paranoid and unstable, leading the junior officers to take control of the ship.
Eighteen months ago, career government workers finally got their 15 minutes of fame. “COVID 19 is upon us! Stay inside and we’ll take it from here. Lockdowns, masks, social distancing will save us all.” After a year of virus passing through the population in waves just as viruses always do, the citizens of the US were granted a reprieve. Come outside, take off your masks and hug each other! Why? Lockdowns didn’t work. Masks didn’t work. Social distancing didn’t work. Sure, these career government workers claimed victory, and attributed this victory to their own valiant efforts and policies. The virus was vanquished. “Hail the dragon slayers.”
Alas, the COVID dragon reappeared, it seems seasonality was the victor after all and not our deified dragon fighters. But what is their response? They say, “let’s revisit our former success, ‘Mask up everyone!’” even though after eighteen months, we know that such policies were more than useless and now seem downright silly. To put the government’s actions in terms that Captain Queeg could understand, “We seem to have some missing ice cream in the ship’s stores, never fear, I’ve got this.”
Time to take over the ship.