I JUST WANT MY LIFE BACK

My wife, Ellen, is a lactation consultant. She assists new mothers who want to breastfeed their babies.

For almost two decades, until they imposed vaxx requirements, Ellen worked many twelve-hour days, nearly always standing, in two New York City hospitals and in other healthcare settings. Her first workplace served the Lower East Side and nearby parts of Brooklyn, with their ethnically diverse, lower-income, and younger patients. Ellen would occasionally tell uplifting stories of young families there, many of whom were clearly struggling to make ends meet.

Subsequently, Ellen worked in a more upscale NYC hospital. Many of the parents there were wealthier and older, doing the Mom thing for the first time as late in life as it could be done, and even later than that, via technological gimmickry, with its attendant complications and ethical compromises.

Ellen, who is generally very patient and non-judgmental, described many of the mothers at the second hospital as “entitled.” Many let motherhood wait a couple of decades until they had reached career milestones or pursued other personal or lifestyle goals.

Ellen loves her work. She’s assisted countless women through the first, exhausting, on call 24/7 weeks of motherhood. She’s the only woman I’ve seen in this state, when each of our three kids was born. It’s challenging. Ellen has a clearer picture than I do of what delivery entails from having been in her own body and from seeing many others shortly after they gave birth.

As difficult as the first day or two are—especially after the too-common C-sections—at least a hospitalized mother gets some hospital staff support and a new baby sleeps a lot, at least during the daytime, though the nights can be a wakeful feeding marathon. If all goes well, mother and child soon go home.

Thence begins a multi-year, super time and attention-intensive process of child-rearing. Each new child requires nearly around the clock attention for many months. Thereafter, unless put in day care, kids require something like 14-16 hours/day of attention until they start school. And many more hours/day for years beyond that. It’s a long haul, with few, if any, days off and no pay or comp time.

Even with a heavily-involved father and even if they love watching kids grow, raising kids radically changes a mother’s and father’s life. Most mothers and fathers sacrifice their freedom for their kids in a way that they can’t imagine before a baby is born.

I know that many of you know this from experience.

A newborn typically needs to feed at least 6-8 times in the first 24 hours. Ellen came home from work one night and told me that a harried, sleep-deprived mother of a one-day-old who had begun nursing the baby through the first day exclaimed, exasperatedly and without a hint of irony:

“I just want my life back!”

Ellen and I LOL’d at this newfound awareness that life will never be the same once you become a parent. I guess this new mom must not have been paying attention to the day-to-day lives and stories of friends or relatives who were rearing children.

In the years since then, when either Ellen or I get involved with something mildly disruptive or inconvenient, either of us might say, “I just want my life back!”

We’re joking when we say this.

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Or at least we were before the Scamdemic.

Throughout all of 2020 and much of 2021-23, Americans in most states lived under a top/down reign of viral terror and oppression. Many rights and options were taken from them. Initially, government officials told the public these strictures were only for “two weeks, to flatten the curve” and that we were “all in this together.” The first was an obvious bait-and-switch tactic. The second was a propagandistic, foundational, longer-term lie.

Unsurprisingly, two weeks became four weeks. And then six. Thereafter, the period of obeisance became open-ended. There were either no standards, or disingenuous, unattainable standards about when people could get their lives back. There was an imperious, circular game of “Follow the Science.” State and local officials who confined the public, closed public spaces and mandated masks and tests claimed they were deferring to the CDC’s “expertise.” Instead of taking responsibility for the restrictions, the CDC cynically said they were only providing “guidance.”

Given this closed-loop buckpassing, places: schools, parks, gyms, churches, small stores, etc., remained shuttered and masks were required, to foster fear. Interstate and international travel was barred and then penalized by quarantine laws. Protests were forbidden via edicts banning public gatherings.

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The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights defines an individual's relationship with the government. It outlines the fundamental rights and freedoms that the government must respect. Via many decisions, the Supreme Court has prescribed that freedoms of speech, worship and travel are so essential that any government action infringing upon them must meet the highest standard of judicial review, known as strict scrutiny, i.e., the government must show that a law or regulation is necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest using the least restrictive means.

The various restrictions weren’t narrowly tailored. From Day 1, data showed that only the old and unhealthy were at viral risk. Thus, basically healthy people under 70 should have been allowed to go to school and work, travel, and assemble to protest or worship. Moreover, public health officials often—albeit falsely—asserted that masks prevented viral infection and spread. After thusly touting masks, logic should have barred officials from banning public assembly or travel, because assemblers or travelers could have protected themselves simply by wearing masks.

Throughout, the masses were ordered to give up things we loved—and were constitutionally entitled—to do. Presidents, governors, mayors and bureaucrats who had sworn, when taking office, to uphold the Constitution forsook their oaths.

In addition to barring activities, public officials required people, by edict, not legislation to tolerate such invasive processes as nasal swabs and spit tests and later, injection of experimental substances. Paternalistic public employees told us that as soon as we crushed this virus by obeying them, we could have our lives back.

But not until then. So shut up and obey.

With their lockdowns, mask and test mandates, the government and the experts treated adults like children or prisoners. Under such duress, most people meekly or eagerly forfeited their rights. Some lashed out at those who didn’t comply.

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The infective and destructive power of even one non-complier was greatly overstated. Anyone who feared a virus had ways to protect themselves. They didn’t need everyone to buy in. In stores, some asked me where my mask was. I either acted as if I didn’t hear them or said, “You have your mask on. You’re protected, right?”

No one had a good answer for that question.

The same question applied to the shots. No one had a good answer for that one, either. Still, the experts and pols extorted compliance by saying, “Two shots and you can go back to normal.” By mid-2021, governments and businesses ordered people to inject or lose their jobs. Others caved to the shot demanders so they could attend college, travel, go to concerts, restaurants and bars, etc. Various bureaucrats and celebrities argued/bellowed that “we,” i.e., an imagined mob, should/would make peoples’ lives miserable until they gave in and jabbed. This was indecent and abusive.

I vowed never to take the shots, no matter what was withheld or what penalty was threatened or imposed.

Despite the unequivocal promise that these would stop infection and spread, the shots predictably failed, as unequivocally promised, to do so. The jabs also failed to stop old people from dying of other causes. Instead, the injections disabled and killed old and young people. Moreover, many more vaxxed, than unvaxxed people are said to have “died of Covid” itself. These were the same shots you had to have before the “experts” would give you your life back.

In 2024, Cuomo and other pols have revisionistically said that they had no lockdown, mask, test or vaxx or shot enforcement authority and that compliance was voluntary. That’s clearly not what scowling, hectoring, chart-displaying Democrats and CDC officials said in 2020-22. They spouted such non-stop threats and lies as “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated” and “Winter of Death” for over two years. While the threats have stopped, the lies continue.

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Though government officials and many of their subjects forgot this in 2020, individual freedom is a core element of Western Civilization. John Locke, the English philosopher who influenced our Founders, believed that individuals possess natural rights, such as the right to liberty, which are inherent and not granted by government or society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau opined that individual freedom is essential for a just society and that true freedom is achieved only when individuals participate in writing the laws that govern them. It seems likely that those two, plus Franklin, Jefferson, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Emerson, Mill, Solzhenitsyn, et al. would have opposed lockdown, mask, test and shot decrees. None of these sources suggests that viral outbreaks nullify individual sovereignty; especially when the Infection Fatality Rate is .02% and so much was lost via isolation and mass injection with experimental substances.

Beyond law and social or political theory, American popular culture: music, movies, TV and literature, is also firmly rooted in individualism. Storylines feature heroes who live in accordance with their own consciences. There are countless songs with the same message or subtext as “My Way” and “I Gotta Be Me.” This focus on the individual has roots at least as deep and old as Shakespeare, whom Harold Bloom credited for inventing the human, especially in Hamlet.

Instead of waiting for the government to give them their lives back, more people should have exercised their rights to assess their own low risk, live normally and to reject assaults on their bodily integrity. People should have taken their own lives back by disregarding the public health operatives,’ governors’ and mayors’ demands. There were, and always will be, far too many of us to track down and boss around. The Constitution, natural law, “The Science,” “The Data,” basic logic and the Western Canon all favored the Covid dissidents. Defiance of fearmongering tyrants should be more contagious than any virus.