While there is a fair amount of doubt concerning its origin, Mark Twain is generally credited with the above quote. Its origin is less important than its accuracy. Over the last 16 months or so, it has proven to be disappointingly accurate.
Reading is a passion of mine. Thus far I have read the equivalent of a small library of quotes made by famous, an not so famous, people. Many of the quotes prove to be prescient, others preposterous. Human nature is an oft quoted theme. During the ongoing COVID pandemic I witnessed a veritable plethora of human nature on display. I watched, and studied, the actions of my fellow Americans throughout the pandemic. To see friends, family members, and complete strangers, waiting anxiously for officials to tell them when they could get their hair cut, or nails done, was disheartening. Sadly, most of the behavior I witnessed was less than flattering, especially if you value freedom and liberty.
American citizens who happen to live in the greatest nation on earth cowered shamefully at the feet of elected representatives, and unelected bureaucrats. We allowed our government to crush constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and liberties. We stood idly by, like the weak sheep we are slowly becoming, while the government bankrupted businesses and erased the life savings of millions of Americans. Perhaps our greatest failure was to stand by while our government, teacher’s unions, and teachers, stole an entire year out of the lives and futures of our children. President John F. Kennedy in his 1962 State of the Union address said: “A child miseducated is a child lost.” This quote pertains to both the year we took away from our kids, and the terribly racist Critical Race Theory doctrine we are allowing bad actors to force down their throats. I doubt if any previous generation of Americans would have allowed our government to ravage our freedom and liberty the way we have.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” This is a well known quote from Benjamin Franklin. Our Founding Fathers, by signing the Declaration of Independence, surrendered the safety they enjoyed for the promise of liberty. They gambled their safety in a war against the most powerful military force on earth. A war that almost nobody believed they could win. They understood that without freedom and liberty people were nothing more than animals, beasts of burden if you will. Fast forward 240+ years and we, their descendants, seem eager to give up essential freedoms in hopes that we won’t catch COVID. In that our freedoms are said to be God given it is especially worrisome that the faith community didn’t rebel. At a time when it seems we needed our faith more than any time in recent memory where were our faith leaders, and their parishioners? I could have understood a short period of acquiescence while we figured out exactly what we were facing with COVID. But after some short period of time every Pastor, Priest, Rabbi, Imam, etc. should have been holding services, and parishioners should have filled the pews. The faith community took a knee and sat out the battle. Pity.
“We will follow the science” was a quote that could be attributed to any number of elected and unelected representatives during the COVID pandemic. If you are an honest nonpartisan you know this was a quote that was almost entirely ignored when the science didn’t fit the agenda of the Progressive left. Early on we were feeling our way around the COVID situation. We understandably didn’t know much about it. That didn’t keep the intelligentsia from making totally ignorant recommendations. Dr. Fauci, the self anointed smartest person in the room, in the space of about 8 weeks told us masks weren’t effective, then they were, then they weren’t. Then he said we should wear two masks?!? This is the top dog! How do you follow that science? Why would you? After a few weeks we confirmed that COVID was especially deadly to senior citizens. That science was confirmed all over the world. Five U.S. Governors were busy arresting the owners of restaurants, bars, barber shops, and gyms for noncompliance to their unconstitutional edicts. All the while they continued to send confirmed COVID patients into nursing homes. For MONTHS. These nursing homes were chock a block full of high risk senior citizens. Governors Cuomo of New York, Whitmer of Michigan, Wolf of Pennsylvania, Newsom of California, and Murphy of New Jersey, are all guilty of gross negligence. They are directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of our senior citizens. Rather than admit they were wrong at least two of them, Whitmer and Cuomo, set out to cover up the number of deaths that occurred in nursing homes. They should be criminally charged for their negligence. If they weren’t such dictatorial egomaniacs all five would have resigned long ago. Their apologists are guilty of the quote at the top of this page. They can’t admit they’ve been fooled.
There is something else the science told us in April or May of 2020. We knew that very few healthy people under the age of 25-30, something less than 1%, were getting the virus. We knew that a small percent of that small percent were being hospitalized. We knew that almost zero of this young demographic were dying from COVID. The CDC, the “science”, said that kids should be in school. They said that kids were safer in school than they were anywhere else. Too bad for the kids, they can’t vote, and they don’t have a well-funded lobby. Democrats, the press, and teachers and their unions, found the one issue that would allow them to defeat Trump. That is all that mattered, as it would give them more power. So the children be damned! They are expendable.
Vladimir Lenin, a former Russian dictator, believed in the importance of children. He was quoted as saying: “Give me 4 years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. Give us 8 years and he will be a Bolshevik forever”. So here we are allowing the far left progressives to introduce Critical Race Theory (CRT) to our children when they enter kindergarten. CRT basically teaches children to hate their country because it is irredeemably racist. (Most of them don’t even know what that means). It teaches children to hate each other based on the color of their skin. White children are taught they are oppressors. Children of color are taught they are oppressed victims, and it is the white kids who are oppressing them. I don’t claim to know anything about child psychology. I am certain of a couple of things. 1) If you start telling a white child in kindergarten he/she is a racist, and repeat it every year, at some point that child is going to believe you. 2) If you start telling children of color in kindergarten they are hopeless victims, and repeat it every year, at some point they are going to believe you. All of these children lose. All over the country children playing little league, or soccer, are not told whether they won or lost their games. Every child receives a participation trophy. All of this, we are told, is to ensure that we don’t hurt their self esteem. Then we send them off to school where their teachers tell them that they are either evil oppressors, or hopelessly oppressed. Gosh, how will that affect their self esteem? The good news is that recently, Americans all over the country are finally awakening to this horribly divisive, racist ideology. Finally we are beginning to say no more! We will not sit idly by and allow you to do irreparable damage to our children. And eventually, by logical extension, ruin the greatest experiment in the history of self governance.
We must set about convincing people that they have been fooled. Even though it is clearly easier to fool them in the first place.