YOU GOT PLAYED

Five years ago this week, the most devious, destructive and ambitiously corrupt exercise of public policy in history, i.e., the Coronavirus response, began.

During a November, 2024 anti-Coronamania speech in Philadelphia, I expressed the same theme I’ve expressed nearly every day during these five years: it was obvious when the lockdowns began that the government and media were badly overstating the risk presented by a respiratory virus. Those who believed that humans should hide from each other—even for two weeks—to eradicate some microbe were ignoring history, basic biology and common sense.

Worst virus ever? Why now?

Crush a virus? How?

Lock down a nation? At what human cost?

During the post-speech discussion, one anguished audience member explained, as have many, that he went along “because I trusted my government!”

He seemed to believe his government was intrinsically honest.

Locking down made no sense to me no matter what the government, its “experts” or the media said. I knew government officials and the media were fully capable of lying and that experts and doctors were often wrong. I thought everyone knew that.

I understand that—and why—my abiding “You should have seen the Scam from Day 1” theme bothers people. But I stand by this message. I value the truth more highly than I value popularity. I’ve asked many people if they could recommend a way for me to express my view without hurting the feelings of those who took a few weeks or months to perceive the Scam. No one has come up with a people-pleasing approach.

Once the vast majority of Americans bought the foundational viral lies and agreed to stay home and the CARES Act gave away $1.9 trillion to subsidize lockdowns and school closures, masks, tests and enhanced unemployment, Coronamania was a fait accompli. It took firm, extended hold.

Much of the past five years have been a very bleak period that has sharply lowered my esteem for most of my countrymen and women. I still can’t believe how simple-minded, fearful and conformist others have been. Above all, I’ve been disgusted by the selfishness of the laptop class, with its disregard for younger people who deserved to live the vital, interpersonally-intensive life that people under 30 used to enjoy. Though I guess my disappointment in others reveals my own prior deficits of understanding.

—

I’ve known a few guys who were Marines. They’ve told me how brutal the thirteen weeks of basic training were. Would-be Marines are forced to spring out of barrack bunk beds at ungodly hours, obey and salute drill instructors who scream in their faces all day about how weak and stupid they are, as they repeatedly dig—and then refill—holes in 100 humid degrees, run many miles under a scorching sun while wearing full fatigues and combat boots on blistered feet, do dozens of pull-ups with open-blistered palms and do hundreds of painful push-ups and gut-busting sit-ups each day—sometimes in pits full of sand flies biting their bare backs—and drink water while standing in a circle until everyone in their group projectile vomits. And more.

I like to move my body, but the boot camp regimen doesn’t sound like fun.

Thereafter, some Marines are sent into combat to kill or be killed, often at close range, before their 21st birthday.

And the pay isn’t great.

—

Given the clear downsides of being a Marine, I wondered what motivated these young men to join in the first place. When I asked one, he told me this story:

I was a high school basketball player. I loved the game. I wanted to keep playing competitively but no college recruited me. In the spring of my senior year, a Marine recruiter came to my high school and asked my coach if he had guys on the team who, like me, wanted to continue to play but weren’t recruited by college teams.

My coach told the recruiter about me. The recruiter sat down with me and showed me a binder with pictures of Marines playing basketball in nice uniforms in nice gyms. He told me the Marines had an excellent basketball league whose players got to play in many games and tournaments, often traveling to do so. It seemed like fun. I felt wanted. I enlisted on the spot.

I made it through three months of boot camp. In the weeks that followed, no one said anything about basketball. Another month passed. Still, no mention.

Finally, I asked my officer, “When do we get to get to try out for the basketball league?”

The officer looked at me, laughed derisively, shook his head and said, “You actually believed that binder thing?”

—

Five years after the Covid Scam began, I’m reminded of my friend’s Marine experience.

In both instances, gullible people tolerated serious hardship, ostensibly in return for some prospective reward. The perpetrators of both scams relied on a few, phony, manipulative visuals. The Marine recruiter displayed fit, young men in sneakers and shorts. In Spring 2020, the coronavirus propagandists depicted Chinese street floppers, refrigerator trucks and phony case/death tickers.

These cheesy images were enough to con most people into believing that SARS-CoV-2 was a universally lethal microbe. The majority deferred to government officials who asserted, without proof, that a respiratory virus could be eliminated via lockdowns, masks, tests and later, shots.

In neither setting did government officials field serious questions about the likelihood of the stated outcomes. Nor did the government provide any written promises regarding such outcomes. Shucking and jiving the whole time, officials effectively said to those of whom they demanded major sacrifices, “Take our word for it.”

Most of the Covid gullible not only bought the government’s lies; they also hectored everyone around them to obey the government, ostensibly to save humanity from a virus, even though that virus threatened almost no one. Doing so made the self-deputized Corona Stasi feel sophisticated and virtuous.

Though it turned out to be fake, a Marine Basketball Association was far more plausible than was a virus-eradicating lockdown/mask/test/vaxx crusade. And at least a Marine officer eventually admitted the basketball scam.

While the Scamdemic orchestrators’ story never made sense, they’re unlikely to ever be as candid as the Marine officer. Instead, the Scamdemicians will quietly go about their dishonest government business and act as if the lockdowns, school closures and mask, test and jab mandates never happened. Some will disingenuously and self-servingly continue to gaslight the public by insisting that the lockdowns, masks, tests and shots “saved millions of lives” and that “we must strive to prevent the next pandemic.”

Most of the populace won’t ever question what happened from 2020-23 because doing so would show that they realize they were duped. Most people would rather ignore or deny reality than confront or reveal their gullibility. They prefer to protect their egos.

Five years after March 2020, those few who might belatedly question the viral response and note the permanent damage caused can expect the Scamdemicians to say, without saying, as did the Marine officer, “Ha! What ‘cha gonna do about it?”