2020: The Year Our Most Cherished Myths Went Belly Up

It's the season for reviewing the year, and I found James Bovard's review of 2020 to be particularly trenchant:

The Year in which Comforting American Myths Were Ravaged

What I'll do is provide what I take to be Bovard's major headings and add a few comments. You can follow the link for his thinking in detail. And note that he doesn't even get into the state sponsored violence. At any rate ... here we go:

Thanks in large part to Covid lockdowns, this year has left vast wreckage in its wake, ...

But the casualty list for 2020 must also include many of the political myths that shape Americans’ lives. 

Perhaps the biggest myth to die this year was that Americans’ constitutional rights are safeguarded by the Bill of Rights. ... Politicians and government officials merely had to issue decrees, which were endlessly amended, in order to destroy citizens’ freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of choice in daily life.

Also exposed was the practical futility of seeking remedies through our courts. Yes, there have been victories for our rights as free citizens rather than "subjects of the crown"--as we were pre-1776--but the real lesson of 2020 in this regard is: Justice delayed is justice denied. In exceptional America, if you want justice you'd better be willing to pay through the nose for it.

The Rule of Law is another myth impaled by 2020’s dire developments. ... How many governors and mayors have you seen on the television news being led away in handcuffs after their arrest for violating citizens’ rights this year?

Another myth that 2020 obliterated was the notion that politicians spending more than a hundred billion dollars every year for science and public health would keep Americans safe. 

There's another myth that died with this one: the myth of "scientific objectivity." Scientists have covered themselves in ignominy in going along to get along. And that's when they haven't been consciously conspiring with the Globalist elite. Yeah, I know--we should have been prepared for this by the Climate Hoax, but the scale of devastation wrought by the Covid Hoax goes far beyond such comparisons.

The benevolence and compassion of public school teachers was another myth that 2020 obliterated.

This was part of the collapse of the broader myth that the rulers and ruled have common interests.

No, we're not all in this together. As someone else recently put it, the view of the elite is that the great majority of people were born with saddles on their backs. That's us.

Another myth that perished in 2020 was that social media and the Internet could be a powerful propellant of free information.

From politics to Covid to social commentary to humor--it was all fair game for the censors.

This year’s presidential election put a helluva dent in the credo that politicians rule with the “consent of the governed.”

Perhaps the saddest casualty of 2020 is the myth that average Americans cherish their personal freedom.

Ouch!

States and cities across the country set up snitch lines that were soon deluged with complaints of people outside without a mask, meeting friends, or having more visitors in their homes than could fit in a phone booth. 

As the Harvard International Review warned, “The very methods that liberal democracies are currently using to effectively fight the virus are the same tactics that authoritarian leaders use to dominate their people. The tools that have been temporarily deployed in the fight against a once-in-a-lifetime disease may become permanent.”

Hats off to Bovard--he tries to end on a positive note, which is difficult in these times:

 

It is still possible that the catastrophic and pointless losses imposed by Covid crackdowns will finally awaken enough people to their growing subjugation. But the most dangerous myth is that Americans will finally become safe after they cease making any efforts to leash their rulers.

 

Nevertheless, there are signs of America awakening. Protests of parents at the shutting down of education (a blessing in disguise?). The recall campaign in California. The growing resistance to society wide shutdowns and the enforced vaccination measures.

And yet--how much damage has already been done? Can we recover?