Florida Gov. Ron Desantis this week signed into law a statewide ban on local COVID restrictions. Leftists across America reacted with predictable outrage, likely because Florida, Texas, South Dakota and other conservative states have proven that the Great Coronavirus Panic was nothing more than a political attack on President Trump after their Russian collusion hoax and failed impeachment fiasco. The human catastrophe in liberal states and the relatively low COVID impact in conservative-run states exposed the COVID panic as an obvious power grab by government officials and bureaucrats working to sabotage President Trump in an election year. But even in states controlled by Republicans, Democrat-run cities and local governments set up a patchwork of COVID restrictions. The new Florida law takes away that power.
If you traveled across the United States during the first few months of the COVID panic, you saw the complex mixture of business closures, restrictions, mandates and mask requirements, often varying widely from town to town. The predictions of millions of dead never came to fruition, as the virus has a greater than 99% recovery rate. The miserably wrong predictions and flip-flopping information, combined with the egotism and cult of personality surrounding career bureaucrat Anthony Fauci should have caused him and his disciples to slink away in shame. But they have no shame, and it was never about the virus.
At the beginning of the COVID hysteria, a few of us warned about the colossal danger of shredding the Constitution and locking people in their homes, banning religious services and ordering private businesses shut down in the name of an emergency. Those adamantly insisting on draconian and unconstitutional restrictions were the same people always seeking to increase government power.
A sure giveaway that the virus was simply an excuse to assume dictatorial control was the refusal even to discuss the medical necessity of such dramatic measures or the actual danger to public health. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” has been over a year now, with many Americans still living under COVID restrictions, even though every apocalyptic prediction by breathless bureaucrat experts was wrong. As the actual minimal threat of death from the disease became clear, those clinging to the power it brought them have transformed it into a partisan religion.
Once those in government acquire power, they have a way of clinging to it no matter what. The War on Poverty was sold as temporary spending to give the poor a boost up through food, housing and other benefits so they could spend their time and money bettering themselves and join the middle class. The Patriot Act was a temporary solution to an emergency. Like poverty and terrorism, the word “pandemic” is used loosely by politicians as a reason to set up permanent bureaucracies they can fill with supporters who will help them increase their power. The governors of Michigan, California and New York are examples of those exerting ruthless control over their citizens under the guise of “protecting” them from COVID, despite scientific evidence their edicts are actually making things worse.
As with the Patriot Act, coronavirus was quickly seized as a permanent political tool. In the post-9/11 national panic, the government appropriated for itself massive new powers under the pretext of an emergency brought about by the imminent threat of foreign terrorists. As expected, these new surveillance powers were weaponized for political purposes, against the Trump campaign in the 2016 election and then against the Trump administration. Those authorities are now being turned against ordinary supporters of President Trump under the guise of rooting out “domestic violent extremists” (the current ambiguous bogeyman that has replaced “terrorist” as the excuse to circumvent constitutional protections).
In the same manner, the coronavirus mandates and restrictions are being seized as a tool by liberals to support their political constituents and punish their critics. As the science excuse for imposing control has collapsed, COVID mania has transformed into a quasi-religion for those on the political left – a way to prove they are in control, to punish heretics and a way for leftists to publicly demonstrate their liberal piety with masks and public boasts of their vaccination.
The partisan power grab was obvious to even the most trusting Americans within a few months when BLM and Antifa riots, looting, protests and destruction of monuments were allowed to happen without the rigorous enforcement of COVID restrictions by leftist officials being imposed on ordinary, law-abiding citizens. As states throw off the COVID restrictions and bar local officials from imposing their own controls on Americans, the mask has come off as the shrieking hysteria by liberals reveals the actual purpose of restrictions was never really about the virus.
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