Nothing that hasn't been said on these pages over the past six years, but the lesson can't be repeated enough

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David Strom:

Yes, This: A Must-Read Piece from Drew Holden About COVID Insanity

Strom: I've written plenty of articles about the COVID madness and the damage it has done. And I found this piece from Drew Holden about one aspect especially useful. It has the virtue of being brief, easy to read, and packed with important reminders of things we should never forget lest we allow the tyrants to get away with their totalitarian ways yet again. 

Oh, who am I kidding? The people who need to be reminded will try again; but remembering ourselves reminds us of what to look out for. 

Drew is doing a series of articles on the COVID years, and this was the first I happened to see and read. It focuses not specifically on the lies, although it certainly reminds us of them and who the liars were. 

The more important point, though, is the construction and implementation of the tyrannical enforcement mechanisms for the arbitrary imposition of restrictions on us. 

What made the COVID years totalitarian was not the authoritarian imposition of arbitrary rules; it was the whole-of-society mobilization that turned ordinary people into informants and little tyrants for the state. We didn't live in an analog of a military dictatorship that simply enforced rules with police powers; we lived in Maoist China, North Korea, or East Germany, where your neighbors became informants and enforcers, hounding us to comply and bow down to the Great Fauci. 

The media, influencers, and the harridan all the street propagated the same message: arbitrary and unscientific requirements, when decreed by Fauci to be The Science™, must be followed without question. As Holden pointed out, Fauci pulled the social distancing "advice" out of arse, but nobody cared to ask about silly things like "evidence." You must comply.

Do you remember the New York Times valorizing self-appointed social-distancing monitors? “Social Distancing Informants Have Their Eyes on You: Largely confined to their homes and worried about the spread of the coronavirus, members of the public are becoming unofficial watchdogs.”

Do you remember when legacy outlets like CBS News jumped in to support Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s Orwellian COVID hotline? “Coronavirus In Minnesota: Where To Call If You See People Who Aren’t Social Distancing.”

Do you remember the how-to guides about the best ways to confront strangers when you think they might not be following social distancing rules (more on those soon), dripping with moral superiority? Not opinion pieces, mind you, but reported news stories. And notice the question isn’t whether but how (or, I suppose, what).

“Neighbors Not Practicing Social Distancing? Here’s What to Do.” New York Times

“Here’s How to Get Others to Follow Social Distancing Rules,” TIME

“How to politely deal with people who break social distancing rules, according to etiquette experts.” Business Insider

“How to talk to your friends who still aren’t social distancing,” Philadelphia Inquirer

“How to talk to people who aren’t social distancing — and get them to listen,” Today

“The social etiquette of social distancing: How to say ‘back off,’ politely.” Los Angeles Times

With social distancing, the Left, the expert class, and the legacy media communicated to a vulnerable and scared public that their fellow citizens were just another vector of disease that they should fear, another threat — often a malignant one, if failing to respect social distancing and mask rules — to their safety.

Strom:

When all of us who were proven right point to other questionable narratives from The Science™, the same attacks are directed at us by people who were not only wrong about COVID, the most important issue of the 2020s, or perhaps the 20th century so far, but they go on the same lines of attacks, calling us flat-earthers. 

They learned nothing, because they think they were right on the big stuff, and justified in hounding us. 

Setting aside all the other problems, all the other deceptions, all the other untruths, this element of combative, insistent, anger toward and hatred of our fellow citizens – across the country or across the street – defined this era of American life, and I can’t begin to quantify how much damage that must have done to our social fabric. I don’t think we’ve even begun to reckon with it.

Obviously, I am far from the only one still furious. Most people who were hounded and ostracized, or who, God forbid, lost friends, family members, and jobs, are still angry. We are told to get over it. It is in the past. Move on. 

Yeah, well, no. The left learned nothing, acts the same way on myriad issues (climate change, anyone?), and will continue as before. 

Forgiveness and redemption to those who have absorbed the lesson and apologized; none at all for the still-present Stasi. 

Related: Remember this one?