Tim Meads has a piece at The Daily Wire about a writer for The Atlantic who is asking for a free pass. On what? All that unnecessary COVID tyranny we had to endure. She’d like a “Pandemic Amnesty.”
We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.” In it, Oster lays out several examples of transgressions during that time, such as school closures that led to “alarming” learning loss, Los Angeles closing beaches, and confusion about the efficacy of various vaccines.
In one excerpt, the professor wrote that “getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.”
That’s an interesting take, like how insisting we all carry vaccine passports or there was no way for the unvaccinated to move anywhere. Who could possibly hold a grudge about any of that except that all the things you now claim were ‘mistakes’ are those we were talking and writing about throughout while “the medical establishment, legacy media, and the Left worked hand-in-hand to demonize anybody who offered different viewpoints about COVID, its origins, or appropriate policies to handle the pandemic.”
Then there’s this unavoidable fact.
The pandemic wasn’t the cause of the Left’s awful governing policies — it was always there. COVID just exposed those flaws.
It’s a point we’ve made on these pages time and again. COVID was a test, and it wasn’t just the Democrats who failed.
Given a taste of power, their first instinct is not just to abuse it but with blatant disregard for the limitations placed on them by State and Federal Constitutions. … You put politics ahead of principle and treated your citizens like a rental car; demonstrated without any doubt that you are incapable of being entrusted with authority.
You arbitrarily closed businesses, fined otherwise law-abiding citizens, constrained movement, killed jobs, and allowed warrantless searches and seizures of property.
So no, you don’t get a pass, not without a complete repudiation of the narratives you embraced and the policies facilitated by them. As Mead reminds us, “true reconciliation requires three things from those requesting it: remorse for one’s actions, the admittance of guilt, and a firm commitment to not repeat those mistakes.”
The Left, and [The Atlantic writer] Oster herself, haven’t done any of that.
They don’t regret their actions because they thought it was all in the best interest of the country. The Left doesn’t admit guilt because they blame evolving science for errors. There is no plan to avoid repeating their mistakes because doing so would mean admitting that their entire political philosophy is a failure.
No amnesty, and God willing, that will make itself evident on the ballot next Tuesday. An election that ought to be a referendum on the COVID snapshot. A look at how life under one-party Democrat rule – regardless of party registration -would look. I’m not convinced that is the case, but only because of inflation and the economy in general.
But on a brighter note, the same people are responsible, so electoral justice may still have its day.
