Those "Lazy-Hazy-Crazy" Leftist Days of Prison, Covid Style! By James Reed

Here's my over-the-top satirical piece inspired by Covid memories, riffing off the vibe of "Five Years Later, We Remember How Politicians Unleashed Covid Tyranny" by James Bovard, on Infowars.com.

https://www.infowars.com/posts/five-years-later-we-remember-how-politicians-unleashed-covid-tyranny

I've taken the article's outrage at lockdowns, mandates, and government overreach and spun it into a darkly absurd take on the Left's celebration of "the good old days" in solitary confinement.

The Covid years—back when the world made no sense at all, and solitary confinement wasn't just for felons, but all of us! Five years later, as James Bovard reminds us in his Infowars screed, we can't forget how politicians turned the West into one big prison yard, all under the noble banner of "public health." But let's be real: those were the good times for those on the Left, who idolised the lockdowns! Give the Left a mask mandate, a curfew, and a Zoom call with their parole officer any day. Solitary lockdown life was the VIP experience the Left enjoyed, and I am thinking of all the socialist cubs at unis putting up posters saying anti-vaxxers were "racists," about the limit of their thinking, all while they should have been in lockdown, but socialists were apparently given a pass of freedom we did not have.

Jailhouse chic: remember the Covid dress code? Sweatpants, a crusty T-shirt, and that glorious N95 mask strapped so tight it left red welts—pure haute couture! Bovard wails about businesses crumbling and churches padlocked, but he misses the joys the Left had: no one cared if they showered! Solitary meant freedom from judgment—your cellmate (a stale loaf of sourdough you baked in a fugue state) didn't mind the stench. And those "I Believe in Science" lawn signs popping up like gang tags in Melbourne? High art, my friends—Picasso couldn't have captured the zeitgeist better. Prison chic was the vibe, and we were all serving time.

Food in lockdown? A gourmet delight! Bovard gripes about millions under house arrest, but he skips the culinary revolution. Who needs Michelin stars when you've got a rusty can of Spam, a jar of pickles, and a government-issued QR code to prove you're not a plague rat? Solitary dining was a thrill—every meal a survivalist fantasy. Leftoids would ration their Doritos like kings/queens hoarding gold, savouring each crumb while their commo Chairman's voice droned on TV, threatening to lock the unvaxxed in the freshly built Covid concentration camps.

Social Life: Zoom Was the New Yard Time

Sure, Bovard cries about censorship muzzling dissent—the Left wanted jail for vaccine sceptics, and Big Tech obliged—but let's talk perks. Solitary swapped bar fights for Zoom rumbles. No more awkward small talk at parties— no more parties at all, just mute the screen, crack a warm beer, and watch Aunt Karen rage about Fauci like he's the warden. Prison's got yard time; we had "essential worker" walks—five minutes circling the block, dodging Karens with sanitizer squirt guns. Social life peaked when my cat judged me silently from the couch—best crew I ever ran with.

Entertainment: Fear Was the Blockbuster

Bovard's right: politicians went berserk, torching freedom for a virus with a 99 percent survival rate. But the entertainment? Unmatched! Every day was a dystopian thriller—as we were delivered the latest false doomsday news by the health authorities, Big Pharma's little helpers! Solitary confinement gave us front-row seats to the chaos: a million daily cases (mostly vaxxed!), shots that flopped, and elites still chanting "command and control" like it was a spell. Prison movie night wishes it had this plot twist—our guards were the "best and brightest," and the popcorn was panic-bought.

The Glow-Up: Isolation Made Us Legends

Bovard mourns the wrecked economy, but hear me out: solitary forged us into titans! Thoreau said, "A man sits as many risks as he runs"—well, we sat, alright, and emerged grizzled heroes. No friends, no job, no sunlight—just us, our conspiracy podcasts, and a DIY bunker vibe. Prison dreams of that character arc! Lockdown was our Shawshank, and we tunnelled out as legends of the couch.

The Takeaway: Tyranny Was a Party for the Left!

"Covid tyranny"—businesses trashed, schools shuttered, lives upended: it was a golden age for the Left, whose day job is to destroy Western civilisation. Solitary confinement, prison-style, was the ultimate VIP pass: no rules, no neighbours, just you and the void. Politicians turned us into inmates, and we thrived—proof we're tougher than their mandates. We proved that we can survive what the globalists and Left can throw at us! That is the real lesson of the Covid years: we survived!

That test-run showed that we can win this war!

https://www.infowars.com/posts/five-years-later-we-remember-how-politicians-unleashed-covid-tyranny

"Five years ago, politicians and bureaucrats went berserk and pointlessly ravaged Americans' freedom. The Covid-19 pandemic provided the pretext to destroy hundreds of thousands of businesses, padlock churches, close down schools, and effectively place hundreds of millions of Americans under house arrest. Despite all the forced sacrifices, most Americans contracted covid and more than a million were listed as dying from the virus.

"Pandemic Security Theater Is Self-Destructive, And Won't Make Us Safer" was the headline of my first salvo against the pandemic hysteria, published on March 24, 2020 in the Daily Caller. I scoffed at President Trump's proclamations about being a "wartime president at war with an invisible enemy." Wartime presidents too easily pretend they're on a mission from God to scourge all resistance. I warned: "The pandemic threatens to open authoritarian Pandora's Boxes. Permitting governments to seize almost unlimited power based on shaky extrapolations of infection rates will doom our republic."

From the start of the pandemic, the Mises Institute was in the forefront of condemning policies that eradicated prosperity in the name of public health. In a May 19, 2020 Mises piece headlined, "Hacksawing the Economy," I noted, "The political response to COVID-19 is eerily similar to Civil War surgeons' rationales for hacking off arms and legs…. As long as politicians claim that things would be worse if they had not amputated much of the economy, they can pirouette as saviors."

Living in the Washington area, I had a front row seat for many of Covid-19's biggest absurdities. After federal officials whipped up panic, "I Believe in Science" lawn signs popped up like mushrooms, soon accompanied by "Thank You, Dr. Fauci" placards. Those signs looked to me like frightful decorations of a Halloween that never ended.

Thoreau provided my lodestar for the pandemic: "A man sits as many risks as he runs." I knew that isolation would make me too ornery for my own good. I had survived the flu plenty of times in prior decades and I didn't reckon covid would deliver my coffin nails. I was a co-leader of a Meetup hiking group which continued hiking almost every weekend throughout the pandemic.

But politicians made such jaunts more difficult. In February 2021, President Biden decreed that face masks must be worn in national parks. Probably 95 percent of the National Park Service's 800+ million acres is uncrowded 95 percent of the time. The only "evidence" to justify the mandate was that many Biden supporters were frightened or enraged whenever they saw anyone not wearing a mask. The new mandate quickly became an entitlement program for junior Stasi members.

I told attendees on my hikes that masks were optional but kvetching about other hikers wearing or not wearing masks was prohibited. Biden's edict helped turn the C & O Canal Towpath—one of my favorite hiking venues—into a hotbed of self-righteousness. That Towpath was ten feet wide in most places, but it was the principle of the matter. I had numerous people furiously screaming at me because I wasn't wearing a facemask as I strolled outside. If mask hecklers were especially persistent, I would shrug and ask them: "How is your therapy going?"

Washingtonians pride themselves on being smarter and better educated than most other Americans (okay, maybe excepting San Francisco and Boston). They instinctively knew that total servility was the only hope for surviving the pandemic, and maximizing hatred was the key to compliance. After Biden ordered 100 million adults to get injected with the covid vaccine, Biden derided the unvaxxed as aspiring mass murderers who only wanted "the freedom to kill you" with covid. (The Supreme Court struck down most of that illegal vax mandate.)

Thanks to Biden's fear mongering, almost half of Democratic voters favored locking the unvaxxed into government detention facilities, according to an early 2022 Rasmussen poll. The same survey showed that almost half of Democrats favored empowering government to "fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy" of Covid-19 vaccines on social media. The Biden administration unleashed a massive censorship campaign on social media and beyond that effectively muzzled millions of Americans who doubted the feds.

At that point, most American adults were vaxxed, but the injections were catastrophically failing against the latest covid variant. There were a million new covid cases per day—mainly among the vaxxed—and most covid fatalities were occurring among the fully vaxxed.

But "best and brightest" Washingtonians retained their absolute faith in a command-and-control response to the pandemic. District of Columbia Mayor, Muriel Bowser, decreed that anyone who was not vaccinated and carrying proof of the jab was banned from entering any restaurant, bar, gym, or meeting space in her domain. Affluent Washingtonians happily rushed to get free software apps so the government could track them and their health status. That new app had a spiffy logo that quickly became the ultimate status symbol.

I stopped hosting hikes within DC city limits: I would be damned if I would condone Bowser's biomedical caste system. But I did venture into DC in early 2022 to pay respects to an editor who was fleeing southward. Exiting at the Dupont Circle metro station, I briefly stepped out of a torrential downpour into an upscale coffee shop. Every table hosted a hefty warning sign: "Masks on & Vaccine Cards out!" Patrons were hectored: "All cafes and restaurants… are REQUIRED by the Mayor's Office to check vaccine cards of dine-in customers. Thank you for helping us comply with local regulations to remain open!" Why didn't that establishment just advertise the slogan: "Come Sip with the Gestapo!" I skedaddled before anybody asked to see a vax passport.

I was mystified why people would pay $6.50 for a coffee to be treated worse than parolees. Dupont Circle was home to many of DC's best educated residents. The more graduate degrees they amassed, the more submissive they became. Flourishing your vax card proved your moral and intellectual superiority over anyone who balked at bending over again.

But it was a different story in Anacostia, the poorest part of the city, where one of the unsung heroes of the pandemic emerged. Blacks had a much lower vaccination rate and the mayor's edict effectively made many of them second-class citizens. Bowser, Fauci, and a PBS film crew pounded on front doors in Anacostia and hectored residents to get injected. A guy in his 30s came to the front door of his row house, saw Fauci and the TV cameras, and condemned the entire covid carnival: "Y'all campaign is about fear. You all attack people with fear. That's what this pandemic is." He scorned the speedy vax approval: "Nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with." Actually, the Biden White House had browbeat the Food and Drug Administration to unjustifiably grant final approval to the Pfizer vax. With the video cameras rolling, he angrily told Fauci and Bowser: "The people in America are not settled with the information that's been given to us right now." Watch the PBS Fauci "Vaccine Outreach" Anacostia brawl here.

Fauci and the PBS film crew probably thought that exchange exemplified the type of fools who refused to submit and be saved. Fauci justified covid mandates because average citizens "don't have the ability" to determine what is best for them. But despite getting any and all boosters, Fauci was personally ravaged by covid at least three times. Fauci's frauds began to be exposed, including his role in covertly bankrolling the reckless gain-of-function research that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and killed seven million people worldwide. Instead of receiving a Nobel prize, Fauci was grateful that—on President Biden's final day in office—he received a full presidential pardon for any and all of his crimes committed for the prior decade.

But what sort of savior scientist needs a presidential pardon, anyway?

A virus with a 99+ percent survival rate spawned a 100 percent presumption in favor of despotism. The government has no liability for the injections it mandates or the freedoms it destroys. The Covid-19 pandemic should teach Americans to never defer to "experts" who promise that granting them boundless power will keep everyone else safe. In the long run, people have more to fear from politicians than from viruses.