Hawai’i is not immune from people clamoring for government to “open up” the economy again, but if you look and listen, their arguments are pretty foolish.

“I’m out here to protest and let the governor know that he needs to open everything back up,” said Rafael Soto, an Ewa Beach resident and pastor at a Baptist church in Hawaii Kai.

“We’re tired of him suppressing our freedoms. People need to get back to work. The churches need to open up. People are hurting, people are hungry. It’s ridiculous, open it back up, what’s the point?”

Protester Jack De Feo called the warning he got from police “fascist and Communist to the core.”

One said that “extending the lockdown is worse than the virus itself.”

Pastor Soto, if you don’t understand the point, I suggest you go look at the number of Americans who have died from COVID-19. It’s over 66,000 today. Mr. De Feo, get it right: fascism and communism are incompatible political systems and getting the equivalent of a traffic warning is hardly representative of either. To that anonymous person: economic hardship is very difficult and no one denies it, but death is pretty damned permanent. An economy can recover.

None of those protesters look very desperate to me; they look like whiny children who aren’t getting their way.

Notice that the people who are truly desperate are not protesting. No, they are waiting in lines for food distribution. They don’t have time to march on the State Capitol. They’re too busy trying to feed their families.