No Forgiveness for What You Did to Us During COVID

The midterm elections are upon us, and progressives are running scared. Not only are Republicans almost certainly going to take the House of Representatives, but they may also take the Senate. If even one of those things happens, we all know what’s going to occur next: accountability.

Accountability for things like suppressing the Hunter Biden story, for the border crisis, for the energy crisis, for the economic crisis. Accountability for the Afghanistan debacle, the BLM riots, and the ongoing financial black hole of the war in Ukraine.

And most importantly, accountability for the COVID crisis.

Predictably, some on the political left are now trying to weasel their way out of accountability for what they did to us during the COVID crisis. An op-ed in the far-left magazine The Atlantic was typical.

“We didn’t know,” the author said.

Yes, we did.

We knew that young people in general, and otherwise-healthy young children in particular, were and are at the lowest possible risk from serious complications of COVID. We knew that COVID mostly killed the elderly and people with co-morbidities and that forcing elderly, sick people to mass up in nursing homes was a recipe for disaster. We knew that the makeshift masks we were forced to wear were too porous to prevent the COVID virus from getting in or getting out. We knew the “six feet of social distance” was completely arbitrary. We knew that closing businesses were going to wreck the economy and make people even more dependent on the government. We knew that the COVID vaccine was experimental and that experimental vaccines often have unintended side effects.

We all knew all of those things. Yet, you persisted. And now here we are.

It is far too late to try to work some kind of national COVID reconciliation. Where were the calls for kindness, for healing, for understanding, during the height of the crisis when the country was tearing itself apart? When we were on physical lockdown, when we were out of work, our children were out of school, and our old and sick were out of time? When our businesses were shut down, and our livelihoods destroyed? They were nowhere to be found.

Instead, you harassed, mocked, and marginalized those of us who were skeptical, or at least concerned, about what was happening to us and around us. You de-platformed social media voices large and small for daring to disagree with you. You called us “racist” for calling a virus that originated in Wuhan, China as the “Wuhan Virus.” You accused us of “killing Grandma” if we didn’t want to mask up, get the vax, and engage in social distancing. You refused to accept even the possibility that a lab leak was to blame. The possibility that drugs like ivermectin might work, or that the vaccine the government was forcing us all to take might not. The possibility that the “science” you were following was actually “political science” and done to establish and maintain power and control. The possibility that Fauci was wrong and that you, and we, were being lied to.

I’m going to say this as plainly as I can: f*** you and your pleas for “COVID amnesty.” By “you” I don’t mean The Atlantic author. I mean all of those who inflicted ruinous policies on the rest of us, which they themselves chose not to follow. Those who shrouded themselves in smug self-righteousness and shrieked epithets and anyone who dared disagree with them. Those who said: “follow the science” but instead pursued a policy of national power and created policies that ignored actual science–and common sense–and were instead designed to decrease freedom and increase dependency and governmental control.

You wrecked our economy. You destroyed our education system. You kept loved ones from each other. You forced my children to get an experimental vaccine that they didn’t need, and that didn’t even work, that could cause God-knows-what health effects down the road. You mocked us, attacked us, and wanted to literally round us up and put us in camps if we refused your vaccine. You established ridiculous and ruinous policies and let them go on far too long because you were afraid to say “I was wrong.”

YOU did that.

What did I do that I need your forgiveness or your “amnesty?” I followed your stupid rules. I endured your personal attacks when I dared to question the effectiveness of the latest feckless policy. I worked through the “fact checks” and social media sanctions. I steered my business through the rules you inflicted on us. I got the useless vaccine you forced me to get… and then I got COVID anyway.

It turns out that it was all a lie. The masks didn’t work. The vaccine didn’t work. The social distancing didn’t work. The government-imposed shutdowns didn’t work. None of it worked. In fact, it just made everything worse. And you were right there, cheering it all on and attacking anyone who didn’t immediately fall into step.

The majority of COVID protocols were pure theater, meant to reassure the unthinking masses. You imposed these things on us, but you were never serious about them. I knew you were not serious about COVID because while you told me not to go outside, illegal immigrants continued to flow over the border at will during the COVID crisis, by the millions. I knew you were never serious about protecting us by requiring us to “social distance” because your elites, like Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsome, violated their own policies at will. I knew masking was ineffective because 1) I can read, 2) you allowed professional athletes to play, performers to perform, and celebrities to go about their daily lives maskless, as if their status as political, social, or business elites gave them immunity from the disease, and the inability to spread it to the rest of us.

We don’t need a “COVID amnesty.” As we’ve seen time and again, amnesty without accountability only encourages more of the same bad behavior in the future. No, we need a COVID reckoning. And that can only come from accountability, which can only come when the current political power structure is overturned in a free and fair election. Fortunately, that could happen as soon as next week.

Accountability first, then we can talk about forgiveness.

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Scott Faith is a veteran of a half-dozen combat deployments and has served in several different Special Operations units over the course of his Army career. Scott’s writing focuses largely on veterans’ issues, but he is also a big proponent of Constitutional rights and has a deep interest in politics. He often allows other veterans who request anonymity to publish their work under his byline. Scott welcomes story ideas and feedback on his articles and can be reached at havokjournal@havokmedia.com.