I lived most of my life in leftist cities with leftist newspapers.  Having lived in the more conservative Southeast lately, I've been rather surprised to find that the urban papers are just as leftist, perhaps even more leftist.  That may help explain why the Salt Lake City Tribune, which operates in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, announced that the state's National Guard should imprison people without vaccinations in their own homes.

Salt Lake City is a lovely place.  Situated in the foothills of the Wasatch Range, it's built on a logical grid emanating from the Mormon Temple at the heart of the city.  The roads are wide and well maintained, the streets are clean, and the people are friendly.  I've been there several times and always enjoyed my visits.  Unlike the rest of Utah, Salt Lake City is a Democrat city.  While Utah generally voted 58.1% for Trump versus 37.6% for Biden, Salt Lake gave Biden 53.6% of its votes, and Trump got 42.5%.

Nevertheless, even that Democrat tilt doesn't explain the editorial that came from the Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.  The editorial board began by blaming Governor Spencer Cox for the fact that there are too few tests in the state and, therefore, telling people who feel sick to do what people who feel sick have always done: stay home.  (I was kind of under the impression that Biden blew it on the tests, but, because I feel that most testing is neurotic and not useful, I haven't paid a lot of attention to the issue.)

The editors next blamed Utah's government, generally, mostly Republicans, for being "apparently determined not to be caught governing in the face of this challenge."  The editors, in other words, are outraged that conservatives placed individual liberty over the restrictive regimes of lockdowns, masks, and mandates (which have done nothing to change outcomes in the cities and states that embraced them but have destroyed economies).  And the editors, who ought to know better because they work for a news agency, recite the standard Democrat lies about curing people by drinking bleach or taking a horse dewormer.

Image: Lovely Salt Lake City by Garrett.  CC BY 2.0.

After more party-line whining, the editors get to the "we have a dream" part of the editorial:

We might have headed off omicron with a herd immunity-level of vaccinations, but that would have required a vaccination mandate, which our leaders refused. Instead, we get, "No one could have seen this coming." That is patently untrue. They were told what to do, and they refused.

Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor's next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.

Again, despite being responsible for relaying the news to Americans, the editors seem to have missed the fact that vaccinated people are no longer protected against COVID — and, at the very least, the vaccines don't prevent omicron, something even the New York Times admitted.  Thus, these journalism solons are railing at their government for not forcing people to take a useless experimental jab.

Then, having exposed that ignorance, we get to the heart of the leftists' desires: force people to do something that makes those who wield power feel better and safer.  For that's what this is all about.  The editors literally want to use guns to trap people in their homes so that the editors can feel safer.

The problem with these kinds of crackpot newspapers in America's big cities is that they do change how people think.  In Orwellian fashion, they expose people to a skillful mixture of facts, along with lies of omission and lies of commission.  All of these factors seem to be present in the editorial, written by people who are still living in a state of absolute panic when they contemplate a virus that has an overall mortality rate of less than 1% and, more specifically, a variant that seems to have a statistically insignificant mortality rate and that will rip through all populations regardless of the citizens' vaccine status.

All of this means that COVID isn't about illness and health at all.  It's just about power.  Perhaps we should be grateful to the members of the Tribune's editorial board for making their position so plain.