The parting on the right...Is now parting on the left...

Central to lockdown culture is the towering sellout by some so-called progressive sources. Behind the smiling faces of many once-respected public figures beats the heart of a monster. However, this entry in this series is needed so nobody can blame “leftists” for lockdowns. Yet we can’t reflexively blame conservatives either—at least not those who truly stuck to principles of limited government. However, some self-described conservatives were just as bad as some so-called liberals in failing to live up to stated principles.

Although this series is not exclusively written for a leftist or progressive audience, I was and still am on the political left—more specifically of a populist variety. I believe in science. I have no doubt that COVID-19 is real and has posed a real threat. I also believe governments should be vested with regulatory powers to curb abuses against water, air, soil, wildlife, and people.

In addition, I believe vaccines for most diseases work, though reports that began emerging in late 2021 tested my once favorable view of COVID vaccines. I want vaccines to be safe and effective, and I do not support mandatory vaccine passports. I also want to keep an open mind towards those who might challenge my view on vaccines in a way that seems reasonable. But I think vaccines in general have had a good track record for hundreds of years—since before big drug companies inserted themselves into medicine.

Surprisingly, however, among the biggest culprits peddling the lockdown lie—at least in the U.S.—were smug backstabbers and sellouts who claimed to represent mainstream progressives. On the other hand, there certainly were mainstream liberals who dissented from the lockdown thought police—just not many in high-ranking elected offices or on well-known websites. Of course, there were also moderates and conservatives who dissented. There were Republicans and Democrats alike who resisted the lockdown obscurantists. Yet some statements on so-called progressive websites illustrate mind-blowing betrayal of the values these sites claimed to stand for.

Some have questioned whether the so-called lockdown left existed anywhere except the Internet. It seemed rare to encounter them in real life, as those who tried to violently enforce the “new normal” in person seemed to hold no actual leftist views.

After Donald Trump’s shocking victory in the 2016 presidential election, I shared in the fear expressed on these websites that there would be a crisis during Trump’s term that would result in him placing limits on civil liberties unprecedented in modern times. In other words, one of the main reasons to support Trump’s rivals was to prevent lockdowns. These sites raised money off this fear. But—after raising loads of dough from donors—these organizations went on to support doing exactly the same things they said Trump would do! After this occurred, a young woman reportedly wrote online, “I was so worried for 4 years that Trump was gonna bring in Fascism and Authoritarianism, and I never understood IT WAS MY side that would do it.” But if they were truly on our side, they wouldn’t have done it. Millions of Americans had turned out to vote for Democrats only to have the honor of hearing them say, “Too bad.” In fact, that is a direct quote from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly.

I am not a Trump supporter. In fact, he failed on COVID to a large extent. But it’s unambiguous that other American politicians are at least as guilty. Both major parties shit in their hat.

For 15 years, Daily Kos was one of my favorite sites for news and commentary. Diaries and comments on Daily Kos were at least skeptical of lockdowns until mid-March 2020. Then, however, a diary included a poll asking readers if they supported lockdowns. I noticed lockdowns were losing in a landslide, but when I reloaded the page, I saw that lockdowns had pulled slightly ahead—as if someone had created a flurry of fake accounts to vote in the poll. This was at the same time Daily Kos regulars began hounding off lockdown opponents—and posting outright lies and false news in an attempt to justify lockdowns.

Similar websites and organizations sold out right at the same time—pretty much in unison. These sites shared many of the same major contributors and board members. They were all run by the same small web of privileged drones who were constantly slapping each other on the back.

Critical thinking became a thing of the past. Months later, I found an article on a similar site based in my home state called Forward Kentucky that had all you need to know about the blogosphere’s ballooning, cultlike totalitarianism. Forward Kentucky was a site I frequented before it began spewing venom during its massive sellout, but the article in question left no doubt that these sites are not truly progressive but are authoritarian organs that discourage critical thinking. It was alarming. The author said they talked to a friend in Taiwan about the country’s success at controlling COVID. The friend reportedly said, “We got control of it here because we follow orders here, we do what we’re told.” Assuming that quote is real, it doesn’t work as a defense of lockdowns—because Taiwan did not issue a nationwide stay-at-home order, and other orders there before that was posted were more lax than in most of the world. Most major restrictions in Taiwan did not come until later. Thus, there was no stay-at-home order for the people to follow. The more important point is that the article was a chilling defense of unquestioningly following orders.

I had published leftist zines since I was in college back in 1993 and later moved on to leftist blogs. Blindly following orders and doing what I’m told was not what I signed up for. The rights of individuals and families mean more to me than the goofy opinions of pundits and bureaucrats. During the COVID crisis, a TV station in Texas interviewed a fretful resident, who said her fellow townsfolk shouldn’t ignore the rules “just because they may not like what the county and the state has issued.” But it’s not about whether you like the rules. It’s about knowing the rules are a farce.

When did accepting rules without questioning them become the default for people of any ideology except fascism? No debate or critical thinking was permitted. It was just “because we say so.” In reality, however, it’s not that if you follow tyrannical rules, you’ll be back to normal. It’s because you follow tyrannical rules that you won’t go back to normal. You can’t comply your way out of tyranny.

I decided it was safe to go on vacation again by September 2020. If you think you can comply your way out of tyranny, ask yourself this: Who was wading on a sunny beach that month, and who was stuck at home wearing a mask for another two years? As late as July 2021, an article proclaimed, “Hopes for a ‘normal’ fall have been dashed by variants and low vaccine uptake.” At the time, I agreed that poor vaccine coverage was a problem, but I forgot the season was “dashed” just two months later when I was on another trip surrounded by countless other beachgoers who were over this panic.

As of April 2021, Taiwan with its lighter approach had reported only 11 COVID deaths throughout the entire pandemic. Belgium had a heavy lockdown and had reported almost 24,000 deaths even with only half the population of Taiwan. However, all of that was before May when Taiwan buckled to pressure—from somewhere or someone—by issuing much stricter orders, even though case counts were still very low and a vaccine had been around for five months. If there were actually enough cases to justify more restrictions, that means Taiwan really didn’t have it under control, which would be more proof Forward Kentucky was full of shit.

Naturally, cases in Taiwan exploded after the country stepped up restrictions. After Taiwan became one of the last countries with major limits, it had one of the highest COVID rates in the world. A Reddit user who had lived in Taiwan said mandates became so extreme that they fled the country. They said they were walking alone in a park without a mask and a police officer threatened to fine them. Other reports say Taiwanese police later didn’t care much about such an infraction, but the main point here is that stricter mandates failed to control COVID.

Websites like those discussed above have left a trail of wreckage that they catatonically blame on others. After being rightly abandoned by supporters, some folks on these sites have acted like a stalker who won’t accept being dumped by their partner. Don’t even ask about MoveOn and some of the vomit-inducing petitions it allowed regarding the pandemic. It’s bad enough that MoveOn sold my e-mail address to right-wing spam mailing lists and has been accused on review websites of charging donors’ credit cards without authorization, but its pandemic response was when I first noticed the group didn’t honor supporters’ values.

This school of authoritarian nonsense that masquerades as progressive or left-of-center politics is less common outside the United States. During the pandemic, Sweden and Nicaragua had some of the fewest limits on movement and assembly—and had left-leaning governments. The Guardian reported in December 2020 that Mexico’s left-leaning President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said lockdowns were “fashionable among authorities” who were “letting their authoritarian instincts show.” He said a priority should instead be “to guarantee liberty.”

A few years earlier, I had been on road trips in rural Texas and saw that a certain grocery chain there only sold a vastly inferior brand of hamburger meat. Someone commented on a website that the patties were “things.” That’s what online totalitarianism is—a weird “thing”, not a coherent set of ideas.

I would have expected lockdown support in the U.S. to be mostly limited to right-wing Republicans like Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a charter member of the lockdown thought police. Indeed, many attacks against lockdown skeptics came not from liberals or mainstream conservatives, but from the far right. A lockdown critic on Reddit reported being called a “liberal faggot” for praising WrestleMania for allowing fans to attend. When I noted on another website that American public officials were aiming for an absurdly unachievable “zero COVID” strategy without admitting it, someone replied in part:

“We haven’t even vaccinated all the elderly and of course the Kentucky fried communist wants to reopen fully without any thought.

“Anyways the US has never adopted a ‘zero Covid’ approach, but I doubt you have learned the concept of zero yet (it’s the average amount of teeth your commune has fwiw) anyways so I’m not going to bother.”

This is not the only time somebody incorrectly denied that the U.S. had tried this failed approach. An American blogger reportedly wrote in 2021, “I’m so very disappointed in my nation—we should have adopted the ‘Covid Zero’ strategy a year ago, but no. ‘Personal freedom’ and ‘the economy’ always win out. Ugh.”

There are even some who try to rewrite history by saying the U.S. never had lockdowns at all—a statement that is even more clearly untrue than the above denials. In October 2022, a professor complained on Twitter:

“How quickly we lost the memory battle over 2020. For over a year now, when my students write about covid it’s about how no one was allowed to leave their homes due to government mandates infringing on our individual liberties.

“That never happened, and they’re so certain it did.”

It did happen—for months on end.

COVID catastrophists also denied that draconian mask mandates had ever been enforced. A Twitter comment read:

“No one was forced to wear masks, no one was tackled down and force [sic] to wear masks.

“There was no strict mandates that was to [sic] extreme.”

That statement is factually wrong. Just ask the man at a transit station in Spain who was slammed down a staircase by guards for not wearing a mask.

Even photographic proof wasn’t enough for the negationists. When a photo appeared online showing that children playing basketball outdoors were forced to wear masks, somebody replied that it didn’t actually happen. Then where did the photo come from?

One writer noted that by 2022, the official story became something like this: Lockdowns didn’t actually happen, but if they did, they saved lives. This narrative is wrong on both counts.

Opposition to lockdowns united people from across the political spectrum and generated mutual respect among them that hadn’t been seen in a long time. There’s nothing truly liberal or conservative about lockdowns. How is it liberal to place entire states and countries on house arrest? How does it square with conservatives’ limited government mantra? The “LockdownSkepticism” forum on Reddit illustrates this political diversity. As of May 24, 2020, a poll of its members showed that the forum leaned left, but the breakdown included a kaleidoscopic variety of ideologies:

“Mostly left”: 37.9%
“Mostly libertarian”: 23.9%
“Mostly moderate”: 19.4%
“Mostly right”: 18.9%

I have more respect for conservatives who I usually disagree with but who saw the light on lockdowns than I do for historically liberal sites that betrayed their own values and stabbed supporters in the back.

So who did support lockdowns? Many public officials did—or must have, because they issued these orders. In America, it was a bipartisan problem. It’s pretty clear that some governors and mayors were vicious tyrants who set out to be malevolent. Simply put, they were bad people who enjoyed harming others. Others were simpering wimps who buckled under pressure. Some had announced opposition to such orders—only to cave almost immediately. This backtracking was very, very suspicious. Some came across as comforting and positive in their speeches and articles, but that doesn’t excuse them caving to astroturfed ideas. None were leftist. The Democratic “leadership” certainly was not, as convention delegates had just spent months working for the Michael Bloomberg campaign. There has been strong speculation that most Democrats opposed ruinous COVID measures behind closed doors but were afraid to say so in public for fear of retaliation by party “leaders” or other forces. That’s no excuse. If they didn’t speak up, that’s their own damn fault.

It seemed as if you could think of any obscure politician from years earlier known for their smug support of terrible ideas and you could bet your bottom dollar they went on to endorse crap like this with peerless gusto.

Another deep well of lockdown support was of course major corporations. Many had the means to institute working from home, and lockdowns killed many small companies and in-person businesses that competed with big corporations. In April 2020, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanded continuing lockdowns.

Among people you meet each day, the biggest supporters of lockdown culture were those who enjoyed ordering people around. There’s plenty of people like that running various institutions that many of us deal with daily.

One of the most surprising and disappointing players in lockdown culture was the American Civil Liberties Union. However, the ACLU had already jumped the shark by supporting the U.S. Supreme Court’s far-right ruling in Citizens United v. FEC—as if limitless political donations by corporations were a civil liberty. The ACLU fought tooth and nail against a constitutional amendment to remedy this ruling. As officials doubled down on fascist COVID rules, the ACLU—despite having “civil liberties” in its name—came down squarely against civil liberties.

A 2008 document put out by the ACLU blasted “punitive, police-state tactics” and “criminal sanctions for those who did not follow the rules” during disease outbreaks. It said quarantine even of the ill was “extreme.” But the ACLU of the 2020s bears no resemblance to the ACLU we once knew.

The ACLU was among a host of organizations—especially law advocacy groups—that worked to ensure extreme COVID policies despite having once taken actions to accomplish the opposite goal. Selling out like this was not part of the deal when I began supporting these groups. But it was big business.

The American media stood alone as the biggest cheerleaders for lockdowns. Never before had they been so shameless at supporting a discredited idea, gaslighting dissenters, fearmongering, manipulating public opinion, profiting from fear, and outright lying. Not even the media’s Iraq War support rivals this.

I had long been critical of media corporations because of their support of discredited economic and military theories, but there were journalists and commentators I had deep respect for. My respect for many of them has now flapped out the window. I majored in radio/TV in college, and I believe the news media should leave official narratives open to debate—not amplify them. Amplifying them is propaganda.

Some media outlets were worse than others. CNN was once a respected channel. During the 1991 Gulf War, its reporters risked their lives reporting from the scene. But in 2018, CNN was purchased by the all-powerful AT&T in a move that was rubber-stamped by a judge, and it became one of the most arrogant defenders of lockdown culture. (Not too surprising, after AT&T charged me for phone services I didn’t order and allowed users of its Internet provider to send me harassing messages.) AT&T went on to spin off CNN in 2022, after the channel’s audience declined by 90 percent. The slimy Los Angeles Times was also one of the very worst sources, even running editorials that would have been previously considered beyond unprintable. But this newspaper was often lousy even before all this. The Atlantic had some of the most frenzied articles about the pandemic. This magazine was once the home of legendary writers like Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, but it ran pandemic articles that were disgraceful. When the Atlantic finally ran an accurate and sensible piece on the pandemic, paid trolls tried to get its author’s Twitter account yanked for being “misleading.” But don’t think that outlets with more identifiably conservative owners are any better than their competitors. For example, TV stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group have been among the biggest cheerleaders for lockdown culture.

I counted at least five articles in the Los Angeles Times in only one two-day period in December 2022—two years after vaccines came out—fearmongering over COVID. At the time, the paper also had a few pieces that actually reported more objectively on whatever punishment was in store from public officials if cases didn’t drop more, but that’s not what is being referred to here. The paper screwing up and getting the facts right for a change isn’t enough to outweigh those five propaganda pieces.

In 2021, the Atlantic hired Nicholas Thompson as CEO, who went on to speak at the hated World Economic Forum in 2023.

Fortune magazine emerged as one of the worst offenders. Among other things, after Thanksgiving in the U.S. in 2022, Fortune blamed family gatherings for a supposed surge in cases with absolutely no supporting evidence, even though most of this supposed spike was a backlog, and much of the rest was from a website that enabled people to submit fake positive results with no verification. Even with these factors, the increase was tiny. One Reddit user pointed to a graph on Worldometer, saying, “Hang on, let me get my magnifying glass so I can see this surge in cases.” This commenter correctly pointed out that cases in the U.S. were only one-third of what they were in July. Another commenter said of Fortune, “We will never have an enjoyable holiday season again if they have anything to say about it. Ruining the last two was not enough!” What was this about “just two weeks” again?

So-called “alternative” media sources aren’t always much better. For example, consider the media in Cincinnati, the nearest major city to me. Cincinnati CityBeat is considered an “alternative” weekly, but its COVID coverage left me wondering what it’s an “alternative” to, for it just parroted the same misleading and condescending nonsense found elsewhere. This shouldn’t be too surprising though, after its reader poll showed support for greedy developers that practiced gentrification. CityBeat is almost indistinguishable from the city’s entrenched daily paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer—long known locally as the establishment’s establishment. The only major difference is that CityBeat pretends to be edgy by occasionally using the word shit or X-rated analogies in its headlines.

Here’s an example of how “alternative” weeklies often simply stenograph discredited information by more established sources. Since 2018, CityBeat has been owned by Euclid Media Group, which is like the Sinclair or Gannett of “alternative” weeklies. In 2021, Euclid also took over the Louisville Eccentric Observer. After this takeover, LEO absurdly blamed the easing of COVID mandates for an increase in the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and cited the Courier-Journal’s misleading hospitalization database. The article did not mention that less than four percent of Louisville hospital beds were occupied by COVID patients at the time.

College newspapers could be pretty bad at times as well. College papers like to call themselves “independent”, but I’ve known for a long time that’s not always true.

The Nation—an American magazine once known for its progressive insight—became largely a blubbering mess, which drove off many readers. The Nation had a few good pieces about COVID, but many articles stenographed the corporate media’s catatonic opus. One of the nobodies who wrote for the magazine encouraged new stay-at-home orders as late as September 2021—which reamed a cavern through the notion that lockdowns would end once a vaccine was approved. Even before COVID, the Nation had abandoned its pledge not to endorse Iraq War supporters for elected office, but it hit rock bottom when it ran a COVID fear piece coauthored by a healthcare CEO.

National Public Radio rates a mention here too, and it still receives some federal funding via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and agencies like the Department of Education and Department of Commerce. If NPR broadcasts or publishes anything that the writer knows is false, that’s taxpayer funded propaganda. Guess what? It did.

Other offenders include individuals who were once little-known bloggers or held minor positions at larger websites. Their pandemic maximalism elevated them to prominent “mainstream” media posts where they pulled the same tricks as before.

The 2020s have seen a decline in the quality of coverage of all sorts of issues—not just COVID, and not just the type of stories the media got wrong the most before. At the start of 2023, the New York Times hilariously predicted that New York City’s rat infestation—caused by the city’s incompetent leadership—would be solved within the year by people adopting rats as pets. Meanwhile, the media dug in on economic issues, as the Wall Street Journal ran a whiny editorial titled “How America soaks the affluent”, complaining about how rough it was to be rich. Plus, the Associated Press accused those who exposed the environmental damage caused by the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, of being paid off by the Kremlin. The Cincinnati Enquirer stenographed this AP propaganda.

But why did self-described liberal sites cheer lockdowns almost as much as the broader media did? Some on “LockdownSkepticism” said the only reason why they would abandon their principles is money. It didn’t help that these sites were run by a small, elite cadre of individuals. If there ever was a time to stick to your principles, it would have been then—but these sites ditched everything they claimed to stand for. Principles aren’t principles if they can just be tossed aside as they were. At best, they’re hobbies. Civil liberties count. The “new normal” violates the bedrock values of liberal democracy. Our favorite websites let down millions of fans just to make a buck.

It is folly to characterize lockdowns as progressive or leftist. It’s like the time an article was described as “left-wing” even though it kept bashing foes as “known homosexuals.” It’s also like the time a news site posted a ranking of top “liberal” media figures, but in half the entries, these figures’ Iraq War support was mentioned. A June 2021 piece by Matt Taibbi titled “Congratulations, Elitists: Liberals and Conservatives Do Have Common Interests Now” warned, “The traditional liberal approach to the search for truth, which stresses skepticism and free-flowing debate, is giving way to a reactionary movement that Plato himself would have loved, one that believes knowledge is too dangerous for the rabble and must be tightly regulated by a priesthood of ‘experts.’ ” This summarizes the elitism of lockdown thought policing.

Also that month, award-winning journalist and Grayzone founder Max Blumenthal appeared on progressive comedian and commentator Jimmy Dore’s webcast and discussed the collapse of “liberal” media. Blumenthal’s remarks were not about COVID specifically but rather a broader issue. He said Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks was among the “progressive” deserters. He noted that Uygur actually said progressives should start trusting the CIA. Blumenthal also said these phonies were losing support: “One of the most frequent comments I see is, ‘I can’t believe that I used to subscribe to these morons.’ ”

Lockdowns are also not a noble middle ground. Some have charged that opponents of the “new normal” are extremists on the right and left who are united under the horseshoe theory. It was like how Wikipedia said the Grayzone was “a far-right and far-left news website and blog.” How can it be both far-right and far-left? However, lockdown is itself an extreme policy. I don’t understand how saying that children should have access to in-person school is considered a radical position, while carpet-bombing other countries is deemed a moderate stance.

It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia began disallowing the Grayzone as a source in March 2020—the same month so many websites sold out.

COVID town criers in the U.S. have also displayed an increasing amount of race-baiting. They claim to be advocates for Black, Hispanic, or Native American people, while falsely claiming that lifting COVID restrictions is a white racist practice. Their reasoning is incomprehensible. I very strongly resent this bogus accusation, because I have spent many years supporting projects to fight racism. People of all colors have publicly fought against totalitarian COVID policies. Equity took a beating under America’s “zero COVID” mania. For example, Black and Hispanic children in the U.S. were far less likely to have access to in-person schools than white children were. In addition, COVID disastrists made quite a few racist online posts.

COVID maximalists in the U.S. also claim to be advocates for the disabled, and accuse dissenters of being ableist. They claim a lack of COVID rules is discriminatory—even though these rules did not even exist until 2020. Yet it was actually the rules themselves that oppressed the disabled. People with disabilities including mobility limitations, autism, and hearing impairments were discriminated against by various COVID restrictions. Disabled children were deprived of school services by extended school closures.

Lockdownists know it’s not true that we harbored the bigotry that they claimed we did. So what they say is a lie. Talk is cheap, and it costs them nothing to say someone is guilty of something they’re not guilty of. If they cared so much about social justice, where’s the action? I attended Black Lives Matter rallies before and during the pandemic. What have the COVID catastrophists ever done?

Now you know of the ugliness that lurks in the psyches of those you once trusted.

After the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi in an apparent home invasion, SFGATE ran an article by Katie Dowd about suspect David DePape’s metamorphosis from the left to the right. The main theme of this piece was that such a shift might be more common than one might expect. Perhaps this is what happened to Daily Kos, MoveOn, and their ilk. However, there has to be something else at play other than a genuine shift in views. Again, follow the money.

Julia Doubleday wrote an article in December 2022 attacking “the left” for allegedly minimizing COVID. She absurdly compared the virus to HIV and contrasted left reportage with business publications like Fortune that she said took the virus seriously. Doubleday wrote that “leftists are supposed to be critical of establishment politics and politicians” and “challenge the narratives sold to us by the Joe Bidens and Donald Trumps, the Fox Newses and CNNs of the world.” Uh, we did. But it was usually because these outlets backed rules that were too strict, not too lax.

You can also break down the Democratic Party based on whether supporters backed “new normal” orthodoxy, but the party burnished lockdownism into its agenda more and more over time until it formed almost its entire identity. Democratic support for COVID maximalism and punishment was found among the party’s “leadership” and the highly paid professionals who formed a growing proportion of the party’s support. This faction had higher incomes and education levels—but wasn’t nearly as smart as they thought they were. In 1991, when I first voted, they were the sort of Democrats we called Republicans. During the pandemic, COVID alarmism grew to fill their whole program until they added other issues such as their catatonic warmongering and corporate apologia. By contrast, Democratic opponents of COVID tyranny consisted of much of the party’s rank and file but only a handful of public officials. This faction was made up of the party’s longtime working-class base that was more interested in kitchen table issues like healthcare, schools, working conditions, and Social Security. It’s like how somebody once told me that many people in the Tea Party surprisingly shared some policy stances with Occupy Wall Street supporters, even while those who ran the patronage-laden Tea Party did not.

The greater point here for political observers is that the Democrats’ leadership became outright fascist. There is simply no other word for the extreme policies that party “leaders” united behind. The average Democratic voter might not have been behind it, but it was the hill that party bosses wanted to die on. No dissent was tolerated. That party “leaders” began supporting it religiously after having nothing to do with it before speaks to their lack of principles.

Party “leadership” not only lacks good principles but also bad principles. They have no principles at all. If they had bad principles, they would have supported lockdowns and mask mandates before COVID. At least if they had bad principles, we would have known what we were getting.

The Democrats wove COVID disastrism so deeply into their identity that it drove off longtime supporters. In January 2022, Cleveland-based writer Angie Schmitt wrote a piece for the Atlantic that said she “was a loyal, left-leaning Democrat” but was now “adrift from my tribe” because of Democrats’ role in keeping schools closed. She also said Cleveland kept playgrounds closed for a whole year. Oakland-based journalist Rebecca Bodenheimer echoed Schmitt’s disappointment that month in a piece she wrote for Politico. In an earlier article, Bodenheimer had criticized teachers’ unions for keeping schools closed. She also noted she had gone to the picket line for Oakland teachers two years earlier—only to be later stabbed in the back by their union.

In an October 2021 article, Texas-based sculptor David Smith said, “I have always been a liberal, left-leaning in my politics,” but that so-called “liberals” were relying too much on corrupt media—which fueled their COVID maximalism. The main point here though is that gutting basic liberties for years on end over a virus is as unliberal as it gets.

To be clear, I have no patience for right-wing bravado. In March 2020, I raised genuine concern about right-wing members of an exclusive Georgia country club who crammed into a golf cart just to defy basic virus precautions. Also that month, I lamented Washington, D.C., restaurants that violated capacity limits. (Capacity limits may seem pretty spartan by any raw measure, but it’s nothing compared to the house arrest regimen we were subjected to.) Few others criticized these acts, but people were still being attacked over two years later just for venturing outside their home. Why were questionable acts overlooked while normal behavior was condemned? On the other hand, I wouldn’t have cared about the country club incident or the restaurants’ violations even one year later, because the time for pandemic restrictions should have long since passed by then. It’s tempting to cheer these acts now because lockdownists were such ghouls.

Our overlords didn’t have any credibility about contagious diseases to begin with—thanks to their hypocrisy. I went to high school with some real slobs. For decades, I beat my head against the wall about the dirt and germs filling our schools, and zero was done about it. Our rulers thought spreading germs was a form of art. As a result, I practically invented social distancing. But in 2020, many of these same people suddenly became the loudest voices of COVID alarmism and panic—leaping from one ridiculous extreme to the other. Why should I listen to them after they acted in bad faith for years prior? Panicking about COVID after nothing was done about viruses for 30 years was exactly like worrying about traveling through a supposedly crime-ridden neighborhood after pretending my high school was completely free of violence.

For the 2023-24 school year, Los Angeles schools openly encouraged students to attend class if they were ill. That means school officials learned nothing. That district had some of the most restrictive COVID policies of any large school system, yet it later hypocritically expected children to go to school while sick. Schools were charging back to their previous extreme as soon it was expedient. Another reason schools had no credibility regarding COVID was that they had previously supported an Orwellian program to require schoolchildren to scan their fingerprint to receive lunch. Folks correctly pointed out that the scanners would be covered with germs from constant use, yet schools brushed these worries aside.

That said, you usually cannot assign ethical responsibility for the virus’s spread. There are exceptions, such as if public officials or institutions maliciously spread it or intentionally did not carry out their duties. However, normal behavior usually does not carry ethical blame. Life is full of risks, many of which we accept. America has tens of thousands of flu deaths per year. The flu pandemic of 1968-69 may have caused four million deaths worldwide, and tuberculosis kills 1.5 million every year. Should we take blame if we unknowingly spread the flu by visiting a grocery store or even a festival? It’s hard to think of any activities that are completely without risk. On Memorial Day 2021, a disgusting blurb appeared on Twitter bashing people who engaged in normal conduct, accusing them of killing war veterans by unwittingly spreading COVID. While this post tried assigning ethical or moral blame for an occurrence that could not be easily controlled, it ignored the fact that our fighting men and women had faced greater risks from war, a condition our officials can control.

Just months ago, two of the three Democratic candidates in the 2023 primary election for Kentucky governor—one of whom was a self-described democratic socialist—seemed to be firmly opposed to COVID restrictions. Thus, you might think that even today, the Democrats aren’t a total loss. But we also shouldn’t have to depend on right-wing Republicans to save us from lockdowns all because other Democrats lied to us about being champions of our social institutions, schools, and civil liberties. By not coming out early against lockdowns, Democrats almost gave Trump and the Republicans a big win in the 2020 election, as this politicized science just as much as they did. Furthermore, in 2023, Kentucky Democrats chose to nominate the sole candidate who had enacted COVID restrictions.

If you run as a more progressive candidate but won’t uphold progressive values, then kindly take your campaign and shove it up your ass.