Michiganders are a fairly hearty bunch. Our state was built by lumberjacks, sailors, pioneers, miners, and factory workers, is covered by sprawling National and State Forests, and is surrounded on three sides by the pristine-but-temperamental waters of the Great Lakes.
We're a people who love our flannel, our IPAs, and showing you where we live using our hands. Like hobbits, most of us live quiet, peaceful lives, content to camp, hunt, fish, sail, garden, and watch the Detroit Lions tank their thousandth game in a row.
We're also a friendly bunch known for our Midwestern hospitality. Unfortunately, this willingness to apologize profusely and go the extra mile for our neighbor has also made us reluctant to hold our queen, Her Majesty Gretchen Whitmer (May She Live Forever), accountable when she oversteps the bounds of power.
Despite two Michigan Supreme Court rulings that Whitmer's orders past the first 28 days of the pandemic are invalid, she has continued to enforce her will by weaponizing the state health department to threaten any business that refuses to close on her whims.
For the last three weeks, struggling Michigan restaurants have been shuttered once again by her edicts. Thousands of restaurant workers have stopped collecting paychecks, not to mention the thousands of other workers in food distribution, sanitation, and event planning. Many of the establishments will close permanently.
Fortunately, there is a group of restaurants that have refused to close and are joining with activist groups to stand for liberty.
Take the inspiring story of Jimmy's Roadhouse in the middle of the state as an example. Try to make it through this video without feeling 'MURICA surge through your veins:
Now that the three weeks of her new order are over, Whitmer is threatening to keep restaurants shuttered for a few more weeks.
It's important to make sure the uneducated little folk don't do things like have holiday cheer, after all.
In response, hundreds of new restaurants have stepped up to push back.
"I called my restaurant groups in southeastern Michigan to band together," said Joe Vicari, who represents a group of restaurants in the Detroit area. "We had about 400 restaurants come together. We're standing united. We want to get to a solution with the governor to reopen restaurants."
His wife, Rosalie Vicari (who wrote a scathing indictment of the governor a week back), also said that many restaurants initially tried to stay open, but were threatened repeatedly by their local cities if they refused, leaving only a few dozen restaurants in more rural locales to openly defy the wishes of Her Majesty.
"We learned very quickly it's hard to fight City Hall," she said. "When you work in an industry that is controlled by licenses, a food license and a liquor license that the state holds, you don't have a lot of say."
There's a reason government creates licensing as a means of control in the first place.
That last point and the issue of rebellion aside, let's ask if it was all worth it. To our southern border, Indiana is open. It has been for practically the entire year. Michiganders have been driving in droves to visit Indiana for dining and shopping, deciding to simply get around the rules instead of openly protesting them (gotta love a passive-aggressive Midwestern display like that).
So, how effective have Whitmer's lockdowns been? Let's look at the data. One of the following set of graphs represents Michigan, while the other represents Indiana, where restaurants have remained open since the initial two-week lockdown in March. Do you see a vast difference?
I don't either.
As Rosalie Vicari said, their restaurants had followed the science by taking temperatures, increasing sanitation measures, requiring masks, distancing tables, and limiting the number of guests. Yet despite only 4% of 'Rona cases being tracked to restaurants, our wonderful queen shut them all down while allowing places like malls to remain open and packed with no sanitation measures.
"This week while driving, I passed a mall at 7:30 in the evening. There were wall-to-wall cars in the parking lot," she said. "A friend who was at the same mall that evening told me the mall was packed. No temperature scans, people without masks, no social distancing. But somehow, it makes more sense to our governor to close restaurants. Hair salons and gyms can remain open, but restaurants needed to close. If this makes sense to anyone, please let me know, because for the life of me, I can't understand it."
Neither can I, Rosalie.
