Somehow, I’d hoped that a silver lining of the pandemic would be a little more wariness among lawmakers about tripping over unforeseen circumstances.  But we’re back to normal, now, in ways good and bad, so the state Senate has returned to the pressing business of forbidding Rhode Island stores from offering customers the option of plastic bags:

The proposed has seen some support from lawmakers across previous sessions, though it has yet to reach the governor’s desk. In early 2020, it was approved by the full Senate, before the coronavirus pandemic abruptly cut the session short.

If signed into law, the bill would require stores to offer recyclable options instead of single-use plastic bags, penalizing those who do not comply.

We can understand that many younger Americans, who disproportionately number among energetic activists, don’t remember the experience of my youth, when the scourge of the planet was deforestation and banning paper bags was the solution.  But have we forgotten the pandemic?

The city of San Francisco is forbidding shoppers from carrying reusable bags into grocery stores out of fear that they could spread the coronavirus.

As part of its shelter-in-place ordinance, the California city barred stores from “permitting customers to bring their own bags, mugs, or other reusable items from home.” The city noted that transferring the bags back and forth led to unnecessary contact between employees and shoppers.

One gets the sense that, no matter how deteriorated our infrastructure and economy may become, this is the sort of thing that our state government will care about, and that its leaders will learn little from experience.  In the world of sheer lunacy imposed by the woke movement, it is as if the job of government has changed to maintaining some sense of normalcy in the face of the abnormal.  We couldn’t possibly be up against historic challenges and the deliberate undermining of our society if the occupants of our marble-domed State House have concluded that restricting residents’ access to convenient and useful is deserving of their attention, right?

No wonder so many people have simply checked out.  The intellectual shelves are empty, and we can only take what we can carry in our own hands.

Featured image by Robert Errani on Unsplash.