What I Meant

What I meant by "taking over" was when one group of people move into an area and either exterminate and/or drive out and/or marginalize the indigenous inhabitants.  Two examples are when the Europeans took over the Western Hemisphere and when the Blacks took over most of Detroit.

My idea for autonomous zones was inspired by the early reports of those guys in Seattle who said they wanted to set up an autonomous zone.  Then they changed their minds and decided what they wanted was a cop free protest zone.  Like I said before, I liked the idea of the autonomous zone better.  In my plan, the zones would be as big as the inhabitants wanted to make them.  They would have to vote on it, and the losers would have to either assimilate or move out, the same as when anybody takes over anything.  Upon further reflection, I decided that it would be easier for each individual to become an autonomous zone unto themselves like I did.

Like I said, the corona virus has had a minimal effect on Northern Michigan, it is the measures taken to fight the virus that have impacted us the most.  Masks never did catch on around here.  Half or less of the people are wearing them and only two stores that I know of are trying to enforce the mask rule.  Probably the most serious effect for most of our residents was the closing of the restaurants and bars.  For me it was the permanent closing of the only small engine repair shop in town.  Funny thing, a new Ace Hardware opened right about the time the lockdown was imposed, and they never did close.  I recently found out that they are selling and repairing the Stihl brand of small engine equipment, which is what most of mine is.  Now I wonder if that had more to do with the other shop closing than the lockdown did.

It occurred to me today that the lockdown was an expensive experiment that failed.  It trashed the national economy and did not stop the virus like it was supposed to.  I have no reason to believe that the results would be any different if it was reimposed.  What is needed here is a medical cure or vaccine that works.  While Michigan's numbers peaked earlier than some other states, the virus is not gone by any means.  We came down from 200 deaths a day to a dozen or so.  I'm not convinced that the lockdown had anything to do with that, since it was only after our governor started lifting her restrictions that the numbers began to decline.

My wife found some yeast a couple weeks ago and we haven't seen any since.  It's not the kind I usually use, but it's good enough to flush down the toilet.  I won't be making bread any time soon anyway, since I discovered that I like store bought bagels better.  I can thank the lockdown for that, so some good did come out of it after all.