[American Thinker] A prediction: When it becomes incontrovertible that forced vaccinations and lockdowns have done more harm than good, all the people in power who have caused this harm will excuse their totalitarian madness by claiming they "had the best of intentions."Oh, we had the people's best interests at heart, really.
We were only trying to save lives.
Nobody could have predicted all this harm.
Followed, in short order, by a final self-indulgent We're the real victims here for caring too much."
It will be the latest painful example in a long line of human tragedies that arose only because the ruling elite controlling the levers of government responded to a perceived problem in the world by exploiting it for their own enrichment, re-engineering it to become more toxic and painful for ordinary people than it otherwise would have been, and then applauding their own efforts as "heroic" and "wise" examples of good governance, contrary to all evidence suggesting otherwise.
President Johnson's "war on poverty" caused more poverty, deepened the dependence upon government welfare of those most economically vulnerable, and initiated a collapse in marriage rates and two-parent families that continues to this day.
President Nixon's "war on drugs" subsidized the monopoly power of drug cartels south of the border, helped create a schizophrenic national security policy that at times aligned American strategic objectives with those of the same global drug czars designated enemies, and produced a U.S. incarceration rate that still leads the world.
President Bush's "war on terror" in response to the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor not only led to two of the longest wars in U.S. history without producing clear-cut long-term victories but also initiated a mass surveillance state that is now used against Americans by the FBI, NSA, and U.S. military to target constitutionally protected political beliefs.
President Obama's insistence that "health care is a right" that required the government to take over an entire industry (and close to one fifth of the economy) has only exacerbated the costs of medical treatment, increased the cost of insurance, wrecked the financial viability of rural hospitals, politicized the work of medical professionals, and destroyed the doctor-patient relationship by inserting the government's eyes and ears into every treatment room.
And in every one of these examples, the ruling elite who convinced ordinary Americans to go along with their plans "had the best of intentions." Sure, the powers of government agencies increased. Sure, people were left with less control over their own lives. Sure, a tremendous amount of predictable, as well as unexpected, harm fell on the very Americans those plans were ostensibly created to protect. But "nobody could have known," right? The "experts were unanimous" in their conclusions. The government was "just trying to save lives." Anybody who questions the government's "good intentions" is an "extremist."
You'll notice that each and every time the ruling class executes this strategy, a number of themes reappear:
(1) The government gives itself unprecedented powers in order to combat a terrifying emergency that must be stopped.
(2) The emergency never actually goes away, and in fact, the greater the level of institutional failure, the more necessary it becomes for the government not only to maintain its newfound powers, but also to regularly enhance those powers in its endless efforts to be successful.
(3) Anybody who attempts to warn that the government's ill conceived and impetuous actions will only lead to more varied and severe harms is immediately demonized as imbecilic, uncaring, or selfish.
Who could be against wars on poverty, abusive drug use, or terror? Who could possibly argue against health care or against doing anything required "even if it saves only one life"? It's an emergency! If intergenerational poverty and government dependence is rising, it must be because we have not yet spent enough money on the problem. If drugs and violence continue spilling over the border, there must be another law or dedicated police force or stimulus check that will fix America's cultural and spiritual malaise. If we haven't won the war on terror, it's because we will always find someone new to call a "terrorist," even if that person wears a red MAGA cap.