The 2022 federal midterms may be over – at least the Election Day portion of them – but many, many festering issues regarding our political system remain unresolved by the prospect of a new, more conservative and common-sense oriented (slight) House majority.
It’s safe to say many conservatives, myself included, are salivating at the prospect of holding Democrats accountable for the awful events that have taken place in the past few years (which includes some aspects of the final year of the Trump administration when Democrats demagogued COVID to the point where near universal mail-in balloting became the norm).
A short list of Democrat travesties includes: a deep dive into what happened in Afghanistan, where the United States was embarrassed before a world audience as longtime Afghani allies were left to fend for themselves against a vengeful Taliban (and tens of billions of military stores were left behind, too); a serious look into the Biden family’s crooked business dealings, centered around sleazy presidential son Hunter Biden and the storehouse of evidence of dirty dealings on his laptop; a thorough investigation – and possible impeachments – into the utter failure to secure the southern border, and a determined mission to decipher Big Tech’s role in censoring free speech under the guise of “monitoring disinformation”.
Then there’s the COVID-19 fiasco that cries out for a no-stone-unturned exploration of our government’s role in one, creating the “gain of function” novel coronavirus from the Chinese Communist Party lab in Wuhan, China, two, getting to the bottom of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in fanning the flames of fright, and lastly, making sense of the health bureaucracy’s far-reaching unconstitutional recommendations and tragic decisions.
The utter failure is not something people will soon forget. But is it time to forgive? Is an “amnesty” for the perpetrators in store? Not if conservatives have a say in it. In a piece titled “There Can Be No ‘Amnesty’ On Lockdowns Without A Reckoning”, Joy Pullmann wrote at The Federalist:
“Covid wasn’t that ‘complicated.’ The global left simply believed Covid chaos would benefit their forever goal of consolidating power. So they simply suspended our constitutional and natural human rights to worship as we believe God commands, to speak and assemble freely, to be protected from search and seizure, to use our labor freely, to decide what medical treatments we will accept into our bodies, and to be governed by officials we can vote in or out instead of lifelong bureaucrats who are endlessly rewarded for devastating failures.
“These evil policy choices that could have been avoided cost lives and inflicted immeasurable human suffering. We deserve justice, not to live under a ‘new normal’ in which our constitutional rights can be subject to indefinite suspension at any time based on amplified panic. It’s the height of gaslighting to pretend otherwise...
“Getting the facts wrong may not be a moral failing, but smashing and grabbing fellow citizens’ natural rights because you were scared is indeed a major moral failing. That’s another reason the guilty must confess what they’ve done. Admitting ‘I was wrong about lockdowns and vaccine mandates’ is the first step toward re-establishing the trust lockdown advocates have broken.”
Let the “I was wrong” list start with everyone at the NIH, CDC, every politician in 2020 who used the COVID issue to convince scared, gullible low-information voters to choose senile Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, and lastly and most urgently, the “Kens and Karens” everyone knows among family and friends who helped perpetuate and fuel this travesty.
With last Tuesday’s election results as a guide, anticipate many, many, contentious family discussions over the coming holidays. If you think the aftermath of 2020 was bad, wait until you run into the buzzsaw of angry liberals ticked off over ceding a smidgen of power back to the Republicans – and by extension, former president Donald Trump.
Conservatives know from personal experience that self-righteous liberals never give an inch on anything, especially when they’re convinced they were right all along and relied on accurate information being doled out by “scientists” and “experts” at the time. It all depends on which “scientists” and “experts” you listened to, but liberals won’t ever acknowledge it.
Rather than debate liberals over “amnesty” for pandemic decisions, maybe we should just ask, “What if we’d just locked down the politicians and the bureaucrats and let everyone else judge for themselves what was prudent for their persons and their families based on the totality of debate?”
The world would be a better place today. Instead, the reminders of pandemic ludicrousness are everywhere. My son recently pointed out that the red-tape “social distancing” lines are still on the sidewalk outside of our local Costco, silent reminders that it wasn’t all that long ago admission was restricted at box stores in vain hope of “stopping the spread” – of what, I ask: defiance? Social disobedience? Sadly, most of us, myself included, were dutiful sheep, openly questioning whether any of the government’s suggestions or mandates would do any good, yet still there was something in the back of our minds wondering, “What if they’re right this time?”
I personally vowed not to shop at Costco (which was one of the first big retailers to impose a mask mandate) until the powers-that-be rescinded their absurd in-store face diaper rules, but I quickly (I believe I made it three weeks) relented on my stand when I realized that the family needed affordable food and swallowing pride hurt less than questioning where we might purchase our next meal due to the shortages everywhere.
I also recall making the two-hour drive (in early April, 2020) down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, which we’d never visited before, only to be turned back at the bridge to the island by stern looking cops in police cars with lights flashing who informed us that only residents were allowed to set foot on the island. So much for going to see the Wright Brothers’ monument at Kitty Hawk. I still haven’t been there, though I’m told the island is now open!
Thanks to our gallant government benefactors for keeping us safe! Particularly grateful should be the nation’s youth, who missed out on nearly two years’ worth of developmental academic skills and vital social life to sit at home, sleep in, play LOTS of video games, pad the visitation numbers of social media sites and become familiar with every inch of the backyard, which was the only place they were semi-permitted to be themselves since the public facilities were all closed.
Since the kids couldn’t leave the grounds under threat of government censure, it must’ve felt more like a prison yard to them than a fun place.
There are lingering signs of that lockdown school policy all around us, too. The floor near our dining room table bears the marks where my son’s chair was positioned for school days. And our bank account shows less money since we deemed it necessary to shell out for a private school that was open when the public schools were still sticking to non-in-person instruction.
We were fortunate to have the means to send him to a school with actual human beings present. Others weren’t so lucky. A church friend who started at the local college the year before the pandemic forfeited almost two full years’ worth of his college experience to dwell in his old room staring at his computer with Lady Gaga wallpaper (kidding about that last part). How much fun was lost? How many memories never made? How to get the time back?
Can we just pass the lockdowns off as necessary at the time? Anti-American leftists won’t excuse the fact some of the Founding Fathers held slaves in their portion of history, even though it was against the law to manumit those in bondage until after the end of the Revolutionary War when the policy was changed.
Should we similarly take a page from the leftists’ “No amnesty for past wrongs” playbook?
Perhaps we should. We had the benefit of common sense and plenty of voices who were willing to speak out against the inanity. I remember a trip to Lowe’s during the height of the mask mandates and coming across a couple who openly defied the oppressive, stupid restrictions. The woman admitted she worked in a care facility and didn’t believe the paper or cloth barriers would do any good – and that everyone but her had had COVID already, and she figured she either had had it herself and didn’t even know it -- or was naturally immune.
Such defiance was rare, but noticeable. These stalwart citizens won’t be willing to forgive the political class that caused all of this, and neither should we. The elites screwed up. Democrats were barking the loudest about “responsibility to our neighbor” and “stay safe” and “pull that mask up, friend.”
No more. It’s time to get our peaceful, hindsight-fueled revenge.
But what about those closest to us? A wise friend wrote me, “For the most part, a civil, mutual COVID ‘forgive me for what I said in the heat of the moment’ is probably the best policy for family and friends. I can see where it would be helpful to return to the usual things that irked us about them (God knows they existed before then). After all, pitchers don’t like it when sluggers embellish homerun trots, so we should just round the bases in hopes they’ll learn a lesson THIS time.
“However, what's glossed over is that the masking and vaccine know-it-all's, self-appointed hall safety monitors (and most of the MSM) took it MANY notches higher – they turned it up to (Spinal Tap) ‘11’ which is better than 10…Which led to asserting that the people who didn't tow the government line were some a) MAGA conspiracy theorist, b) knuckle- dragging flat-Earther, c) Q-Anon/Proud boy/Nazi/Hitler, d) Jan.6-er, e) white/male/racist/sexist/homophobe/etc…
“But worse than the name-calling was the officially sanctioned public ridicule, the demonization and boldfaced lies about not caring for their fellow human beings. And in some cases, the denial of services/employment, termination and loss of income or reputation.
“As Don Corleone said at the meeting of the Five Families: ’That I do not forgive. And I'm gonna blame some of the people in this room.’”
Not too long ago, senile president Joe Biden received his latest vaccine booster shot and used the occasion to once again shame citizens into following his lead. All the evidence in the world won’t cause the public face of the Democrat party to depart from the standard government lines regarding COVID. We may forgive – eventually. But we won’t forget. And someone needs to pay.
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