I & I Editorial BoardA little more than three years ago, the kakistocrats who indulge the raw political power they hold over much of our country forced us down a dark road of ruin by demanding that everyone wear a mask while also forbidding us from living as free people. There are clear signs they wish to do it again. As we have done before, we implore our American brothers and sisters to stand hard against the forces of subjugation.
No masks. No lockdowns. No vaccine mandates. Not only is our liberty at stake, so is our health, our mental well-being, and a future that belongs to each of us, not the ruling class.
The justifications that were given for all the tyranny that was thrown at us beginning in early 2020 were shoddy. There were contradictions, reversals, and outright lies. People lost their lives because the heavy-handed policy prescriptions shook the rhythm of our lives, which for many included regular health care checkups.
We still don’t know, and likely won’t for years if not longer, how much wreckage was caused by the overwhelming volume of despotic policies, especially regarding children and the elderly.
There was much personal loss, too. People were canceled and marginalized. The careers of many who dared to hold and express opinions not approved by the American junta were destroyed. Has there ever been a moment similar to this in the history of this nation? The purge had more in common the colonial-era witch hunts than the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Then there were the empty funerals, postponed weddings, and canceled birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, and gatherings for worship. It was almost as if the tyrants were trying to tear down our society and create a new one in which they would reign supreme and tell us what to do, because, of course, it’s “good for us.” Maybe they were. It’s not out of the realm.
While we know that COVID-19 was fatal to those least able to handle the virus, we also know that the collateral damage from the lockdowns caused premature deaths. For instance, there were more excess deaths in 2020-2021 among Americans under 45 who didn’t have the virus than those who did. The members of this cohort were “largely unharmed by Covid,” yet “their aggregate mortality rates increased 26% above previous trends. While that increase was “larger than the percentage jump in deaths for senior citizens, where the COVID toll was largely concentrated,” the fact “received scant notice.” It contradicted the narrative.
Furthermore, non-COVID mortality among those 45-64 and over-65 “was also elevated, but with almost all elevated causes associated with chronic conditions such as circulatory disease, diabetes, obesity, or liver disease.”
The same researchers found, as well, that “from April 2020 through at least the end of 2021, Americans died from non-Covid causes at an average annual rate 97,000 in excess of previous trends.”
Roughly 32,000 of the deaths were caused by hypertension and heart disease. Deaths from diabetes or obesity, drug-induced causes, and alcohol-induced causes “were each elevated 12,000 to 15,000 above previous (upward) trends.”
This should have been expected. Under normal conditions, people would have visited their doctors, rushed to emergency rooms, had their regular health screenings, drank less alcohol, and in general taken better care of themselves. But the “experts” and the politicians and the unelected public health overlords thought they could do a better job of taking care of people than they could themselves.
That is, when they weren’t acting on their authoritarian impulses.
Last week we called for Americans to exercise civil disobedience if mask mandates return. This week, we extend that to lockdowns, since the media is doing its best to set us up for another round of restrictions. Don’t let the tyrants win.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
This call must resound throughout the nation. There’s no better way for the people to prove their superiority over the State than simply to ignore and defy it. Those who, “dressed in a little brief authority,” think they can repeat their success of 2020-2021 must have their faces rubbed in total failure.
Amen
Don’t worry. We won’t be bullied again by coviditarians.
betteroff,more
Oh, but, unfortunately, many of us will. Back in 2020, I went along with “15 days to slow the spread”. I even got the jab, because my oldest sone was getting married, and the venue they had chosen required it. After way more than “two weeks”, it became clear to me that they (the CDC, NIH, etc.) had originally had no intention of stopping this nonsense after 15 days, and they kept ‘doubling down on stupid’. Even after credible research began to emerge about (i) the relative ineffectiveness of even N95 masks to materially restrict transmission, (ii) the dramatically underreported incidences of severe vaccine reactions, (iii) the relative rarity of fatal or extremely serious cases of Covid among any groups other than those over 65 and those with serious comorbidities, (iv) reports from parents about psychological and learning damage to children, and (v) the number of small businesses ruined by the lockdowns, the CDC, NIH, and Anthony Fauxi kept doubling down.
And people blindly followed their empirically false proscriptions and prescriptions. When I tried, after a couple of months of “mask mandates” to just go to my local grocery store for food, without a mask, I was cursed at, shouted at, and finally told to leave the store by management. I do not expect a different result, this time.
The slight difference is that I am fed up. I am done following “health mandates” propounded by credentialed-but-unqualified, unelected bureaucrats. Go ahead and kick me out of your store – I will never return. I am, for myself, ready to “resist” further mandates from credentialed-but-incompetent idiots (which will ultimately be proven to be sheerest nonsense, as the last round were).
I wish I believed that at least a significant percentage of my fellow Americans would engage in “peaceful non-compliance”; I remain skeptical. I hope my skepticism is proven wrong, but . . . if I were a betting man, I think the smart money would be on, “yeah, we’re going to let them put us through this all over again”.
It does not take much of an effort to see how Democrats used COVID in the run up to the 2020 election. Understanding that bit of history makes it clear what is underway now. It is not that history repeats itself. “History Never Repeats Itself But People Always Do” Voltaire. This time it’s the same people who successfully used COVID for political outcomes. How they did it foreshadows how they are acting now:
1) March 22, 2020 “Democrat House Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn said that the Coronavirus Relief Bill is “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,”
2) March 24 2020 “Democratic Party House Speaker Pelosi unveiled legislation aimed at exploiting the COVID-19 public health crisis by attempting to force the inclusion of a socialist wish list of policies that have nothing to do with the public health and economic emergency,” [see #1]
3) April 2, 2020 “California Governor Newsom: Yes, We Will Use Coronavirus to ‘Reimagine a Progressive Era’ “There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,” absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”
3a) May 07, 2020 “California Gov. Gavin Newsom told residents in his state not to expect life to go back to normal from the coronavirus pandemic until after a vaccine is rolled out.”
3b) May 8, 2020 “California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order permitting all registered voters in the Golden State to vote by mail in the upcoming presidential election, citing concerns stemming from the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.” [see #3]
4) After the election, Newsweek: “California Judge Rules Gov. Newsom Overstepped on Mail-in Ballot Mandate and went beyond his authority when he issued an executive order for everyone in his state to get mail-in ballots for the U.S. election.”
Now we have a ‘New and Improved COVID’. The election is just months away:
Jan 17, 2023 “… officials from President Biden’s Justice Department were in court, trying to bring back the mask mandate for all passengers on planes.”
Aug 17, 2023 “The Biden administration’s effort to provide free Covid-19 vaccines to the uninsured will not start at retail pharmacies until mid-October …”
August 26, 2023 President Biden: everybody will “get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not.”
So, with an impending election, Democrats are laying the groundwork for ‘Biden-COVID 2024’.
DeSantis won? Was this before he had to look around to see how to vote on whether to support Trump, after he signed a commitment to support which ever Republican won the nomination??
Great leader!
Same goes for weak lying weasel Pence who followed DeSantis’ lead.
Christie is a pathetic joke. He half raised his hand and then started waving it back and forth, remembering; wait! I hate Trump and am only here to bash him.
Of course solid TSD Trump hating Asa ignored his pledge and kept his hand down, like a good establishment Repub.
I went along with the “15 Days” — and thus don’t care what any Never Trump™ knucklehead has to say about him during that period — because the probability that the Chicoms really *had* unleashed something ugly on us — their own surplus population be damned — was nonzero.
It turns out that the fraction of true believers it takes to wreck a society is actually very small. It was clear not long after those 15 days had passed that it wasn’t true, that there was nothing to worry about — yet I still see people driving about *alone* with their underpants on their faces.
Our *real* target is the heads on TV who caused this panic. Without them, nothing the parasite class attempts can get anywhere. The panic they caused was deliberate and knowingly false, and without a way to hold them to account — by which I mean a short walk up a flight of steps to a hole — our odds of successful restoration remain near zero.