Fellow Americans, throw off our chains.

Never in my 78 years did I think I’d see laws that would imprison Americans in their homes. Never, not even under the tyrannical British monarch, King George III, were Americans told that they could not leave their homes.

Not in the popular dystopian novels, from 1984 to The Handmaid’s Tale,  was a nation’s entire population ordered to cower at home. I might be wrong, but I don’t recall reading anywhere that in their most totalitarian moments, did communist, socialist and nazi bullies order that everyone, except the vaguely defined “essentials,” be locked downed.

Yet this unprecedented and unthinkable state of misery has been imposed on Americans, people who came here for freedom and those born here in liberty. To my surprise and disappointment, Americans have meekly obeyed. That’s because they have been petrified by the public health and epidemiological aces who warned that going outside would be deadly. That has led many elected officers and their bureaucrats to inflict these dreadful measures because they fear questioning The Science.

Instead of challenging the science, the pols, the media and much of the public have turned this into a partisan blame game: One side says President Donald Trump’s at fault because he didn’t act quickly enough. The other accuses Democrats of being hypocrites because they opposed Trump’s “racist” and “xenophobic” closing of the border to travelers from infected nations. Truth is, no one was prepared.

Included among the blameworthy are the “experts.” These are the public health officers, epidemiologists and a slew of academics who found themselves sprung from their ivory towers into the spotlight. Sadly, they brought with themselves unchallengeable certitude about how the lives of every one of the 328,239,523 people in America should be conducted. Damnable certitude, I dare to add. 

They have flooded the national conversation with botched predictions and overly heated warnings. They and so many others who were given the awesome responsibility of keeping Americans safe from contagions and plagues were demonstrably unprepared.

To get a taste, check out, “Miscalculation at Every Level Left U.S. Unequipped to Fight Coronavirus: A shortfall in masks lays bare the blunders by hospitals, manufacturers and the federal government.”

…each part of the medical-industrial equation acted in its own interest, and didn’t set aside resources that might have better prepared America for the coronavirus crisis. Each ignored warnings of shortages of protective equipment in case of a pandemic—shortages that handicapped the struggle against the virus early on and continue today.

No need here to review the frequent, bloated and unreal predictions of 2 million Americans dying and overwhelmed hospitals. Doom and gloom showered down on us with Papal-like sureness. Among them were mandatory prescriptions that sometimes were at war with themselves: Don’t wear masks; then wear masks. Don’t go outside; then go outside.

If science is to govern us absolutely, the science better be right. And for those who blindly repeat the cliche, “follow the science” without understanding science, here is reminder: The Science can be and sometimes is wrong. Or incomplete and not comprehensive. As is the case of this pandemic.

Physical health is only part of the science that should have received due diligence. What is the true costs of such a crackdown on so many personal freedoms?  The sciences of psychology and economics were brushed aside, with minimal understanding or care about what the extreme  impositions would have on our mental health, learning, quality of life, relationships, security and much more.

When all is said and done, those ignored costs will, I believe, exceed the costs of Covid-19. Suicides and bouts of depression, especially among the young, up. Mental and emotional breakdowns, up. Deaths from deferred operations for heart diseases and more, up. Business failures, up. Unemployment, way up.

How many parents had to leave work to take care of their confined children? Or had to leave their children unattended? How many children feel abandoned because, well, they have been. How many children are falling behind, perhaps permanently, in their education. How many children are starving for friendship? How many children have become slaves of their smart phones in search of companionship? How many children have been denied the real-world experience of learning how to relate to other people face to face? How many children will carry these losses into adulthood? How much damage has been done to younger generations by subjecting them to untried and demonstrably destructive remote learning? And when the hell were teachers unions assigned to replace parents?

Never mind that the lockdowns and straight jackets have damaged minorities and impoverished the most. Do we have to listen to politicians whose expressed compassion for these folks are unmatched, but then launch another set of restrictions that pile on the misery?

What to do? How to escape this never-ending and suffocating suspension of some of our civil rights? Do Americans have to take to the streets like the criminals who are using social justice as a shield to hide their true purposes as they wreck lives and property? Perish the thought.

Because this form of government suppression is so unusual, the solutions are difficult. Peaceful civil disobedience was an effective tool to fight racial injustice. Maybe that.  Challenge the power of the tin-pot despots who run our cities, states and nation to micromanage our lives.  In the courts. In the voting booth. At public hearings. In the media. Confront these autocrats at every turn, whether they are on school boards, in city halls or statehouses.

Americans know what’s good for them. Parents who want to send their children to school shouldn’t be stifled. Parents who want to keep their kids at home should. It’s not in the American character to accept autocracy. Get mad. Don’t take it anymore.