After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?
Should there be consequences for the architects of the lockdowns?
This morning, a journalist named Emily Oster published a piece in the Atlantic titled Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty. Oster’s subtitle says, “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”
The answer from all right-thinking people should be an immediate and vehement “No!”
Remember what they did. In the name of public health they unleashed their most vile totalitarian fantasies. Our leaders - left and right - looked at the draconian lockdowns in China and said “that’s a great idea!”
They shut down small businesses while big corporations were allowed to remain open.
They shut down churches, and arrested parishioners when they prayed outside without masks.
They arrested moms for taking their children to the park.
Schoolchildren were forced to sit in front of a screen for hours each day, isolated from their friends.
They told you to stay home, but cheered when rioters burned cities in the name of George Floyd.
You were not allowed to say goodbye to your dying grandparents, and you were banned from giving them a funeral, but the criminal Floyd had a gold-plated casket that traveled the country for political photo ops.
Mayors and governors enforced travel bans, but gave exceptions to politicians and celebrities.
They mandated an untested injection and if you refused, they called you a murderer.
They outright banned alternative treatments such as Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine that showed promise, because they were outside the control of Big Pharma.
In some supposedly free countries like Canada and Australia, people were detained against their will if the government even suspected them of having Covid-19.
They did all this for a virus that has a greater than 99% survival rate.
Make no mistake, the people at the top were not worried about Covid, rather, they saw an excuse to make their totalitarian dreams a reality. If they are not held accountable for what they did, they will do it again, whether in the name of public health, or climate change, or stopping racism and gun violence.
The same people who ridiculed us, who hoped for our deaths because we protested their lockdowns and mandates, suddenly want to call it water under the bridge.
No.
There must be accountability. Imagine someone in any other position making such awful decisions - a football coach benching his star player in the Super Bowl, a policeman shooting an obviously unarmed person, a CEO going on TV to say his product sucks. All of them would be fired for their mistakes, but government officials - people with the power to destroy our lives on a whim - should be let off the hook?
No.
Oster and her ilk have not learned anything from the last two and a half years, and they continue to think they deserve to rule our society. “In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons,” Oster wrote in her piece. No mea culpas. No humility. No apologies. Just eternal hubris. They want to simply sweep their evil actions under the rug and pretend they never happened.
No.
President Trump was right about the lab leak and the social media censors were wrong.
Governor DeSantis was right about keeping the state open and the self-appointed dictators at the CDC were wrong.
Parents were right about keeping schools open and the teacher union bosses were wrong.
Vaccine skeptics were right to trust in natural immunity and Bill Gates and Joe Biden were wrong - we did not face a winter of disease and death.
Dr. Ryan Cole was right and his anklebiters at the Idaho Capital Sun were wrong.
We were right and they were wrong, yet they think they deserve to stay in power, with the authority to do it all over again should they choose.
No. Never.
Many folks I follow on Twitter had similar reactions.
Michael Malice called Oster out in no uncertain terms:
Artist George Alexopoulos had harsh words for the lockdown Nazis:
One of my favorite new Twitter follows κρυπτός explained why we cannot simply forgive and forget:
The Scottish internet troll Count Dankula mocked the request for detente:
In the Roman Republic, the Senate had the power to appoint a dictator during times of crisis, one who could cut through the red tape and do what needed to be done to save his people. Our leaders took on that authority in the spring of 2020, claiming that the pandemic necessitated it, but time has proven that their tyranny was unwarranted. What do you think the Roman people would do to a dictator who abused his power? What should we do to ours? Should they be removed from their positions of power? Should they be fined? Should they be jailed?
One way or another they must be held to account for what they did to this country. If not, then they will surely do this again, and again, and again, and we will wake up one day to discover that America is no different than Communist China.
Beautifully stated, Brian. We did not forgive the Nazis. We held trials in Nuremberg. We said “Never again.” And yet, here we are -- AGAIN! People must be held accountable for their actions, for persecuting and ostracizing those who disagreed, for forcing dangerous measures on a trusting population, for suppressing the truth that would have allowed individuals to make their own decisions. The United States and the world have descended into tyranny, using COVID as the excuse. We must not let this stand.
Here’s another take on this topic by A Midwestern Doctor, another excellent Substack author: https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/dissecting-the-deceptive-plea-for
And, just to clarify differences between Ammon Bundy and. Brad Little, note that Governor Brad Little locked down Idaho (though he now denies it) and imposed most of the inhumane measures you mentioned. Ammon Bundy spoke out against all the draconian measures early on and continues to do so. See these links: https://www.votebundy.com/issue/covid
HEAR, HEAR! The only "science" followed was "political science". Vote them out with a vengeance. Press for prosecution!