When the elites see control slipping away, they resort to fear tactics.

“Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.” — Glenn Greenwald, “The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun — Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants”.

Mr Greenwald wasn’t writing about COVID-19, but the efforts of the Biden, and past, Administrations to fight terrorism by restricting civil liberties. There is a lot with which I disagree with Mr Greenwald, but on this, he’s dead on target.

Fear, of course, was what governments used to get a free people to go along with restrictions on their constitutional rights. Now that almost everyplace in the United States has lifted restrictions — Pennsylvania’s mask mandate ended today — we are seeing the fearful wanting them back:

Gottlieb says parts of U.S. could see “very dense outbreaks” as Delta variant spreads

By Kimani Hayes | June 28, 2021 | 7:39 AM EDT | CBS NEWS

Washington — As the U.S. continues to navigate its way through the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said areas of the country could experience “very dense outbreaks” with the concerning Delta variant continuing to circulate.

“It’s going to be hyper-regionalized, where there are certain pockets of the country [where] we can have very dense outbreaks,” Gottlieb said Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

The most vulnerable areas continue to be those with low vaccination rates and low rates of immunity from prior infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many southern states have vaccination rates that lag behind the national average.

“I think as you look across the United States, if you’re a community that has low vaccination rates and you also think that there was low immunity from prior infection, so the virus really hasn’t coursed through the local population, those communities are vulnerable,” he said. “So, I think governors need to be thinking about how they build out health care resources in areas of the country where you still have a lot of vulnerability.”

Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a state where hospital admissions are up 30%, expressed concern about the Delta COVID-19 variant and low vaccination rates in his state.

“The Delta variant is a great concern to us. We see that impacting our increasing cases and hospitalizations,” Hutchinson said on “Face the Nation.” The governor also noted that vaccine hesitancy is high in his state, which he attributed to conspiracy theories, the pause in Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot regimen in April and individuals simply not believing in the efficacy of the virus.

There’s more at the original.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), having scheduled the end of almost all of the restrictions for following day anyway, argued before the state Supreme Court that he needs the laws passed, over his veto, by the state legislature earlier this year to be declared unconstitutional, because they would restrict his executive authority to fight a pandemic like COVID-19. One can argue that the restrictions on the Governor’s authority under KRS 39A were unwise, which is what his mouthpiece, Amy Cubbage, did, but unwise is not an argument that a law is unconstitutional. I, however, do not trust the state Supreme Court not to make its usual obeisance to Mr Beshear and let him get away with things again. Despite the best efforts of Republicans, and Kentucky’s voters,^[1]In 2020, Republican candidates for the General Assembly ran against the Governor’s orders, and voters rewarded them with 14 additional seats in the state House of representatives, for a 75-25 … Continue reading Governor Beshear has pretty much gotten away with his dictatorial and unconstitutional actions. At this point, the battle is to keep him from being able to do it again. I am not confident that the state Supreme Court will follow the law; they’ve been far too compliant with the Governor’s wishes. But, with the restrictions over, there is no reason at for the justices to ignore the laws passed by the General Assembly other than the argument of what might happen sometime in the future.

It’s easy enough to see coming: just a few cases of the new ‘Delta variant,” and the Governor might once again issue his mandatory mask orders and attempt to close down ‘non-essential’ businesses, because dictators gotta dictate!