Aloha, Hawaii

In 1999, I was asked to deliver an economic outlook to a group of credit unions in Hawaii. My daughter was in third grade, and it had been her dream to go there, so we took her out of school that October and made it a family trip. We weren’t sure if or when we’d go back, so in addition to visiting Oahu, where my presentation was, we visited Maui and Kauai. It immediately became our favorite destination. Besides being indescribably beautiful, the Hawaiian people are warm and welcoming in a way most of us haven’t experienced.

I found out that it was an annual conference, and that it featured an economic outlook each year, so I made sure that I did a *great* job. Sure enough, I got invited back, and we all went each year through 2004. After that, the organization that sponsored the event was merged out of existence, but by that time our daughter was at a point in school where taking her out of class for ten days or so in October wasn’t really possible. However, we were able to really immerse ourselves in the aloha spirit, and we visited each of the major islands at least once.

When our daughter graduated high school, we asked her where she wanted to go to celebrate, and without hesitation she picked Hawaii, so we went to Maui again. In 2016, I had a two-week work gig in Honolulu, and my wife went with me, and later that year, we took a cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii that visited each of the major islands. Then last year, being a Hilton Diamond member, I received an offer for a great deal to visit the Big Island and attend a timeshare presentation. I have no intention of purchasing a timeshare, but the deal was too good to pass up.

We were going to go last September but had to postpone the trip. So we went in late February and early March to coincide with our anniversary. We returned home just when the realities of COVID were starting to hit home, but we didn’t experience any of that in Hawaii.

Hawaii ranks 46th among all states and D.C. in COVID cases per capita. It ranks 50th in deaths per capita. Only Wyoming and Alaska have the same or lower deaths per capita, and Hawaii’s population density is far greater than either of those states.

However, Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, issued the strictest lockdown order of any of the 50 states. Ige issued an order that requires all visitors to Hawaii to self-quarantine for 14 days. The requirement restricts visitors to their hotel rooms, and they can only leave their rooms for medical reasons. You can’t pick up food. You have to pay to have it delivered, or order room service (but most hotels aren’t doing room service at this time). Two weeks of paying for room service? Yeah, that’s in everybody’s budget.

Visitors that want to go to more than one island have to self-quarantine for 14 days on the first island before they can board their connecting flight, then self-quarantine for 14 days upon arrival at the second island. So if you wanted to visit Maui, but the only flight you could get had a connection in Honolulu, you’d have to spend 30 days flying and sitting in your hotel room before you could enjoy your vacation.

Ige tried to make hotels issue single-use key cards that would only work when visitors first check in, then call the police if they ask for a replacement card. The police can fine people or make them fly home immediately for breaking the quarantine. Ige’s order continues through October 15. After that, if you have a negative COVID test within 72 hours before arriving in Hawaii, you don’t have to self-quarantine – unless, again, you’re visiting more than one island. For some inexplicable reason, the self-quarantine order applies to all inter-island travel, even after the COVID test option kicks in.

But now, the state has become a full-on police state, and Ige is channeling Stalin. The state police have created a team of special agents to knock on hotel room doors of suspected offenders – sort of a group of malevolent Socialist Santa Clauses, checking to see who’s naughty or nice. But in this nightmarish Christmas, the nice get to stay put in their hotel rooms, while the naughty pay a fine or get sent home, or both.

Where do these agents get their information? The “Kapu Breakers.” This is a group of Hawaiian citizens who report people who may be breaking quarantine. They may be hotel workers, restaurant workers, cab drivers, etc. Check out their Facebook page, Hawaii Quarantine Kapu Breakers. It’s a closed group, but they do list their rules. Among them:

“Do NOT approach, do NOT confront or go after a QB. If you approach, confront or go after a QB (quarantine breaker) you will be reported to authorities. We do NOT allow vigilantism. We work closely with law enforcement. DON't ruin our relationship by being a vigilante.”

“NO SCREENSHOTS POSTED ELSEWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION. Our work can be potentially dangerous. Any screen shots that identify the group or members risks our safety. Do NOT post any names of any quarantine breakers elsewhere. You will tip them off and they will go dark to avoid being arrested.”

“DONT NAME MAKE ANY RACIAL COMMENTS, SLURS OR POSTS. Any expletives in front of racial descriptions is NOT allowed. Nazi, F**king Haole are NOT allowed or any other racial descriptions. Race is irrelevant to breaking quarantine and can get us into trouble.”

(All spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors belong to this group of geniuses.)

What’s a Haole, you ask? It’s a slur some native Hawaiians use to describe non-native Hawaiians, especially white people.

And it’s the height of irony that a group of people who rat out their fellow citizens to special agents of the state police would call anyone else a Nazi.

A few more statistics. Hawaii is heavily dependent on tourism, which accounts for 21% of state GDP. Its unemployment rate currently sits at 12.5%, third-highest in the nation. So these people are literally biting the hand that feeds them, and their fellow Hawaiians.

I never thought I’d live to see what I’d only read about in history books, and novels like 1984, but here we are. Welcome to the Left’s America (Ige is, not surprisingly, a Democrat, and the state has voted blue in all but two Presidential elections).

When Ige first laid out his extreme mandates, I blamed him, and felt sorry for the people of Hawaii. I still do feel sorry for the ones who aren’t a part of these groups (Hawaii Quarantine Kapu Breakers has 6,500 members, and Maui has its own Facebook group with just over 500 members, so these Stalinist “good citizens” only represent less than half of one percent of the state’s population. (For a further bit of irony, this group that “works closely with law enforcement” is probably in favor of defunding the police.)

Because these groups represent such a small number of Hawaiians, I won’t say that, after this whole grand social experiment created by COVID is over - meaning no travel restrictions, no masks, a different governor, etc. - I wouldn’t go back to Hawaii.

But I will say that I’m very glad we went this year, because this “f**ing Haole” also won’t say that it won’t be his last trip there.