(Nov. 23, 2020, 4:50 p.m.) -- What is this unreal world we all now live in, where looters too often aren't met with earnest police resistance and too often are lauded for their evil deeds and too often aren't even prosecuted, where our country's presidential election is being viewed by many voters as being crooked on an industrialized scale, where governors issue arbitrary lockdown orders chillingly reminiscent of how proceedings are conducted in Communist China and other such dictatorial societies?

Are we actually living in a dystopian country out of George Orwell's frightening "1984" novel in which we're now being controlled by unified segments of corporate, technological, bureaucratic, media and political elites who have formed a totalitarian dominance of our lives?

I'm sure that's not the case, although so much that has unfolded the past nine months just here in Long Beach certainly feels that way to me, since I've seen first hand the horrifying damage that has ensued by the myopic, erroneous, unwarranted decisions meted out by the numskulls who pass as our civic leaders.

The latest, of course, is the announcement that all restaurants and bars must shut down in our city for what figures to be at least a month because of the recent Covid-19 surge.

Why?

Just because the Los Angeles County Health Department did so, Long Beach has its own health department with more than 300 employees and doesn't have to follow the dictates of LA, although its top administrator, the Smith College graduate Kelly Colopy, has marched in perfect lockstep with its policies during the Coronavirus pandemic in demonstrating what a brave, visionary, independent thinker she is.

And, inevitably, Kelly Colopy followed her usual tack this time, as she had one of her top health officers, a Dr. Anissa Davis, say in a release, in rationalizing the latest LB restaurant shutdown, "that Covid-19 hospitalizations have increased by 200 percent."

To which the former LB councilman Gary DeLong took passionate issue, claiming that there were 45 Covid-19 hospitalizations in Long Beach on November 1 and 51 on November 20, which is a 13.3 percent increase. It appears to me that Dr. Davis is attempting to justify her continued poor pandemic decisions."

It appears to me that Kelly Colopy, whose investigative hordes have too often zealously harassed LB restaurateurs and tavern owners during the past eight months, continues to have a frighteningly negative impact on myriad local businesses.

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"I think as many as 65 percent of the restaurants in Long Beach might not be returning if they're forced to close during the Holiday Season," says John Morris, the venerable Pine Ave. restaurant pioneer who now operates the Boathouse on Alamitos Bay.

"No way I can survive another lockdown," says a disheartened Phil Trani, the Toots Shor of LB whose eponymous establishment on the north side of the city has been a 31 year fixture. "I can't make it financially. I can only lose so much. This will be the final nail. I'll be shutting down."

"This is a total travesty," says Mike Neufeld, owner of the popular Gaslamp nightclub on PCH who's been open only three nights a week in recent months. "I'm extremely disappointed that our health department followed what the LA County health department did. You'd think they'd throw us a life line, instead of letting us drown. We were in the red as it is with just outdoor dining. But now they're keeping us from having no dining and making no money."

:"Has there been any proof that outdoor dining with tables six feet apart has been responsible for the surge in Covid-19?" wonders Nico's George Mlouk. "I haven't seen any such data. They just arbitrarily decided to shut down all restaurants without any consideration of the immense repercussions it will have on the owners and their employees. This is just awful."

The former LB mayor, Bob Foster, who has been vocal in his support of local restaurants and critical of a few local agencies including the one mismanaged by Kelly Colopy, doesn't pull any punches about the latest political misstep in town.

"There's been no evidence offered that outdoor dining at restaurants has been responsible for spreading the Coronavirus disease," he said. "I understand that you can't have large gatherings and that you should wear masks. But shutting down all the restaurants in Long Beach is pretty ridiculous."

What else is new this year in LB?

Too many things have been ridiculous.

The often-AWOL mayor, Robert Garcia, has spent more time in recent days trying to land a position in the Biden Administration via his long-time friendship with Kamala Harris than he has working on behalf of his constituents.

Alas, he was present on that ignominious evening back on May 31st in a terrible downtown event that forever will be known as the Great Long Beach Memorial Day Pillage & Plunder Festival in which 231 businesses were looted.

He allegedly gave the stand-down order to the sterling LB Chief of Police, Mr. Robert Luna, who dutifully obeyed much to the despair of so many LB merchants including Terry Antonelli, whose sacred shrine, L'Opera, was ransacked and has cost Antonelli $1 million to rebuild.

The new LBUSD superintendent, the vastly overpaid, numbingly under performing Jill Baker, has made a mess of our local school system, prohibiting students from attending schools and forcing them to stay at home where, oh, they can catch up on the latest video games and make a mockery out of the so-called virtual on-line education they're now forced to endure but in reality a large portion choose to blithely ignore.

I'm sure Jill Baker cares deeply for her terribly deprived students who are missing so much, but I doubt she will lose any sleep about their misfortune in light of the four-year, $1.360 million contract she was gifted by the world's dumbest entity, the LB Board of Education.

Indeed, I don't think any of these enlightened figures who have caused so much chaos and distress and uncertainty with their restrictive edicts -- the Newsoms, the Garcettis, the Garcias, the Colopys, the Bakers, ad nauseam -- are in a state of great anxiety since, well, they are all well-indemnified by beleagured taxpayers who are forced to support their eternal lunacy.

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