It seems hard to believe that six years ago, America was almost under totalitarian rule.
The odd thing is that it wasn’t centralized, like we typically see when the word “totalitarian” is used. Instead – thankfully – it was scattered, somewhat disorganized. It still resulted in fear, government overreach, schisms among even friends and family, and institutional hatred of part of society, but thankfully it wasn’t quite the classic coup that so many hoped would happen.
I’m talking about the pandemic, of course.
Let’s get something straight: although the numbers were enhanced to maintain the narrative of the nannystate Nazis in power, COVID-19 was real. I had it. My wife had it. I was hospitalized with it at one point and doctors in space suits were basically telling me I was going to die, while nurses and nurses’ aides in masks and gloves provided what actual care I did get before going home and recovering.
I know other folks who were dreadfully sick. I know of a few who may or may not have died from it, and know of many others whose deaths were attributed to the China Virus.
It was a real illness.
What was also real was the way so many people revealed their true selves.
I forgot my mask one day when I was going in a grocery store, but since I was healthy and skeptical, I went in, anyway. A store employee followed me around, glaring and recording me on her telephone.
When a buddy and I had lunch, we sat outside the restaurant, apart from other patrons. However, we didn’t wear masks. That resulted in folks whispering, taking pictures and I found out later, photos being posted on social media identifying and criticizing both of us for endangering other people.
Every week, I sat through the online briefing where then-Gov. Roy Cooper and DHHS Secretary Mandy Cohen changed the rules, told us we needed to sacrifice more for the greater good, and told us that having the windows open at church or family gatherings wasn’t enough, that we should avoid gatherings at almost any cost. It got to the point that I could tell whether they would be delivering “good” or “bad” news each week. If Cohen was wearing flats or practical shoes, the news was bad for those who wanted control, and good for the citizens. If she was wearing boots or heels, well, sometimes a girl wants to celebrate without telling the world, and what better way than a nice pair of shoes?
At Cooper’s carefully-worded direction, parks and recreation, utility and planning employees in larger cities were given the authority to ticket and fine business owners who allowed too many people inside their businesses. Churches were closed, or services were forced into parking lots, where Cooper and Cohen suggested cars be well separated, and windows kept closed.
Everyday citizens were urged to avoid the unvaccinated, to carry proof of vaccination, and even in some areas report folks who were not vaccinated. An app was created to help you determine whether the people around you were unvaxxed lepers or good little sheep waiting on the government to protect them.
I got sprayed in the face with Lysol – literally – when I coughed in my office cubicle one day. It was a usual smoker’s cough, by the way, more than a year before I got sick.
The procedure that might have prevented me from having to use a walking stick was cancelled, then rescheduled – but of course, because six months of the pandemic apparently did something to two years of MRIs, Xrays, and other tests I won’t go into, the whole process would have to start over again. Turns out I wasn’t the only patient being told that a couple hundred thousand dollars of insurance money would have to be approved again if I wanted to be able to walk like a normal person.
Yet people were allowed to protest and riot in support of criminals without masks. Cooper even marched with the protestors — while he had protestors who questioned the state’s reaction arrested.
There can be little doubt that those professional bureaucrats who fought President Trump throughout COVID had larger plans in store. There’s no doubt they lied to him and manipulated data to suit their own ends.
Then came the November 2020 elections, and the unconstitutional purge in the wake of Jan. 6. People were literally kicked off social media for knowing folks who had connections to anyone who went to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. I know people whose jobs were threatened because they dared express concerns that the 2020 elections were not honest. Those who joked about assassinating Trump or reducing him to homelessness could not tolerate anyone questioning if Joe Biden was already in cognitive decline.
The foundations for destroying the republic were, in my opinion, laid in COVID.
After all, the party that kicked in citizens’ doors for ordering a copy of the U.S. Constitution online was the same party espousing “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” By convincing a portion of the population that the government knows best, many hoped public pressure would force the dissenters into silent surrender or at least make it more palatable when the ruling party had enough political will and strength to punish a few radicals.
We came perilously close to losing the freedoms set down by the founders and defended for 260 years because of a manmade virus financed by tax dollars given to an enemy of the United States. Thankfully, Americans stirred and woke up.
Many of us had forgotten much of the pandemic until Dr. Anthony Fauci pleaded the Fifth Amendment 111 times while speaking to Congress the other week. It’s interesting that he received a full pre-emptive pardon from President Biden’s autopen operator, yet still wouldn’t answer a single question about how the pandemic response and crackdowns were as bad if not worse than the illness itself.
When he was no longer the darling of the media and those aren’t thrilled with a democratically-elected representative republic based on freedom, he made sure he was protected. It’s amazing, truly, how deep the man’s evil streak apparently ran.
It seems more likely than not that he had financial interests in the Wuhan lab where COVID-19 actually originated. He was at least partially responsible for helping fund the lab in an avowed enemy of the United State, using your money. He lied to the American people, the president, Congress and the media about COVID coming from pangolins in a meat market, then from bats. On an aside, he personally approved and may have personally profited from so-called tests where bags full of ants were attached to the faces of restrained beagle hounds.
He lied, or at least maintained culpable deniability, about the long-term effects of the COVID vaccines that might not kill a COVID virus, but by cracky they could and would cause all kinds of major health problems in otherwise healthy people, including heart failure in young people. His text messages show that there was good reason to believe the COVID vaccine might cause miscarriages and birth defects, but he said otherwsie.
And of course, those who have their eyes on the throne were in lockstep, bowing and fawning at his every gush about Taylor Swift or Barbara Streisand. He reveled in the downright schoolgirl behavior of so many self-proclaimed journalists on television. Then there were the electeds who cheerfully embraced every word he said as gospel.
Among those electeds was Roy Cooper.
I want to make something very clear: I am not a blind follower of any party, much less any candidate. But like you, I watched as Roy Cooper desperately ground down our state, trying to turn it into yet another leftwing enclave where drag queens can convince children they were born in the wrong bodies, and where Ramadan is celebrated and Easter services restricted.
I remember when he was attorney general and openly defied the will of the people, the governor and legislature when there was a law his party didn’t like. I remember when he ignored thousands of rape kits lying untested in state labs, then rushed them through so his protege would look good in his gubernatorial bid election.
Never mind his appointees’ disastrous mismanagement of every single major hurricane relief effort from Matthew to Helene. Never forget that funds were withheld from people living on their porches after Matthew and Florence, or being evicted from hotels to live in tents during snowstorms after Helene.
I remember when Cooper parroted Fauci and urged us to “Trust the science,” as long as it was the science that was government-approved.
When I look at Roy Cooper waving, shaking hands or speaking to a crowd, I see Dr. Anthony Fauci.
I see healthcare workers holding signs up to windows saying “She died in peace. I’m sorry.” I see poor, sad Joe Biden being manipulated by elite statists who want the power of the people turned over to their betters. I see people being urged to report their neighbors for crimes against the state.
Never, ever forget what Fauci and Biden’s minions like Cooper and Cohen did to this country, what they wanted to do, why they did it – and what they will do again if they are given the chance.
