{"id":1377222,"date":"2022-03-15T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1377222"},"modified":"2022-03-15T08:07:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T12:07:01","slug":"two-years-after-lockdowns-the-wests-troubles-arent-ending-theyre-just-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/two-years-after-lockdowns-the-wests-troubles-arent-ending-theyre-just-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Years After Lockdowns, The West\u2019s Troubles Aren\u2019t Ending \u2014 They\u2019re Just Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftwo-years-after-lockdowns-the-wests-troubles-arent-ending-theyre-just-beginning%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1377222&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Sunet-over-the-Statue-of-Liberty.-Daniel-Perez-Sutil.-Flickr.-e1647310583490.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Two years ago this week, the United States shut down. Churches, schools and businesses went dark. Weddings, funerals, and birthdays went silent. City streets stood empty, with an eeriness closer resembling occupied Paris than the bustling hubs they\u2019d been just days before.<\/p>\n<p>Two years later, as the last of the mask mandates for school children falter and crack, it\u2019s tempting to believe our nightmare is finally over. Just as the disease is here to stick around a long while, however, so too will the effects of how we tried to fight it.<\/p>\n<p>Americans\u2019 relationships with our politicians, bureaucrats, schools, media, police, and churches are fundamentally altered. Indeed, the entire West\u2019s relationships with these major segments of society are forever remade. As we look out on the wreckage of two years of Covid policies, as well as our spiking fuel prices, rocketing inflation, a contested election, a Chinese Olympics, and a land war in Europe, it\u2019s increasingly clear that, far from standing at the end of a dark era, our civilization teeters unsteadily at the very beginning of one.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to notice at first. The modern West has become so accustomed to a slow, steady decline \u2014 the kind Merle Haggard sang about, and Ronald Reagan ran against \u2014 that complaining about it has become a clich\u00e9; like the angry old man waving his cane.<\/p>\n<p>More than that, it\u2019s very tempting to view the past two years as separate from our other major problems. But just as Black Tuesday began an era marked by the Depression, the Dust Bowl, the New Deal, the Second World War, and a fundamental reshaping of the American life, so too will the lockdowns mark the start of a ride we can\u2019t get off.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-damage-is-done\"><strong>The Damage Is Done<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Even in states that have long since shrugged off the bureaucrats\u2019 Covid demands, trust is broken. The people had believed in March 2020 that if they did their parts, all would soon be well. As President Calvin Coolidge famously said, \u201cThe chief ideal of the American people is idealism\u2026 [and] the chief business of the American people is business.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Neither Americans\u2019 idealism nor our industry were rewarded, however. From March 2020 on, ours was rule not by people, but by bureaucratic diktat.<\/p>\n<p>Our politicians betrayed us: flying abroad, getting haircuts, going maskless, holding parties, and dining out while also closing schools, forbidding gatherings, banning amenities, and demonizing all who resisted \u2014 or even questioned \u2014 their orders.<\/p>\n<p>Our corporate media betrayed us: propping up liars and fools, tearing down all who spoke against their champions, and spreading fear and hatred of dissent as far and wide as their words would carry.<\/p>\n<p>Our teachers betrayed us: using Covid to gain a grab bag of vacation time, control over parents, wage hikes, and other unrelated perks \u2014 all while punishing innocent little children with years of masks, separation, and the educational and developmental retardation those rules entail. <\/p>\n<p>Even our much-vaunted hospital workers betrayed us: keeping dying husbands from their dying wives, grown children from their elderly parents, brothers from their sisters, and babies from their mothers \u2014 all to ensure \u201cCovid safety.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As hard as it seems, much of this might be good. Not that our politicians, media, teachers, and health care are broken \u2014 as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/news\/articles\/everything-is-broken\">the most important essay of 2021<\/a> laid bare \u2014 but that Americans now recognize just how broken they all are.<\/p>\n<p>Other betrayals, however, are fresher. While corruption among our most powerful religious leaders is older than the Bible itself, when our government declared religion a disposable pastime, many of our religious leaders publicly obeyed. When they bowed before the bureaucrats, <a href=\"https:\/\/ifstudies.org\/blog\/the-decline-in-church-attendance-in-covid-america\">a trust was broken<\/a>, and America was left with one more central civil institution weakened when we needed it strengthened.<\/p>\n<p>The family \u2014 the political unit as old as the body politic itself \u2014 also suffered greatly. While American political fights have frayed blood relations since Benjamin Franklin fought his loyalist son, the past two years have seen so marked an increase in familial destruction that few of us are left untouched.<\/p>\n<p>This past Christmas, for example, people across the country told their relatives they would not be welcome if they hadn\u2019t taken the vaccine. You probably know more people this hurt than you realize; many of them, sad and embarrassed, hid it, claiming they simply couldn\u2019t make the trip this year.<\/p>\n<p>Then there are the grandparents across the country who have never seen their grandchildren. In the past month alone, I\u2019ve met two different couples seeing theirs for the first time ever \u2014 provided they quarantined for two weeks first, and then took a test.<\/p>\n<p>The kind of fear and intolerance it takes to bar your mother from your children extends to broader society, too. Cops, hospital workers, and many others have lost their jobs over refusals to take the shot, while corporate media and its viewers loudly cheered for even harsher penalties. Confronting and reporting on businesses and people who break Covid restrictions is actively encouraged by both government and media.<\/p>\n<p>Our inability to dissent from the latest Covid decree penetrates our society so deeply, liberal comedy show \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d is now openly mocking how closely American liberals have had to monitor even their private conversations with friends.<\/p>\n<p>The censorship goes far beyond Covid, too, of course. These days, it\u2019s not surprising to see the hosts of a daytime TV show for women <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ClintEhrlich\/status\/1503465161884987393\">casually call<\/a> for the investigation (and possible imprisonment) of journalists and politicians who express opposition to something they support \u2014 in this case, an American war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>This sort of thing has become monotonous, really: Censorship, investigation, and arrest are offered daily as solutions to problems as mundane as political or medical disagreements. Has the phrase \u201cWe\u2019re all in this together\u201d ever rung so hallow?<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-start-of-our-troubles\"><strong>The Start Of Our Troubles<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As in past eras of marked trouble, struggle, and decline, not all our problems are plainly linked; but they coalesce in their effects.<\/p>\n<p>We find ourselves more divided than we\u2019ve been in 150 years, and so less able to handle what comes our way. Many of our civil institutions \u2014 long sick \u2014 now seem terminally ill. Distrust and enmity run high, and why shouldn\u2019t they?<\/p>\n<p>The result of these divisions: As we plunge into the next series of crises \u2014 rapid inflation, destabilized fuel prices, the real prospect of world war in Europe \u2014 we have fewer tools to handle them, less willingness to try, and more suspicion of our fellow Americans than any time in over a century.<\/p>\n<p>Taking it all in, we know that we\u2019re weaker than when we began 2020. Taking it all in, we know that far from returning to normalcy, we\u2019re entering turmoil, with enemies foreign and domestic intent on taking advantage of our divisions, our distrust, and our dangerously unsteady economic situation.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve been challenged before, even in modern times. The Sept. 11 attacks rocked us like we hadn\u2019t seen since Pearl Harbor, yet we soldiered on. What\u2019s finally missing, however, is that general feeling of confidence.<\/p>\n<p>We no longer share an understanding that no matter the monsters we\u2019d face \u2014 and we face many, here and abroad \u2014 that everything would be OK; that the American Way will go on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOverriding everything else,\u201d Walter Lord <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/a-night-to-remember-walter-lord\/1116839215\">wrote in his 1955 book<\/a> on the sinking of the HMS Titanic, \u201cthe [disaster] also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUntil then men felt they had found the answer to a steady, orderly, civilized life. For 100 years the Western world had been at peace. For 100 years technology had steadily improved. For 100 years the benefits of peace and industry seemed to be filtering satisfactorily through society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn retrospect,\u201d he continued, \u201cthere may seem less grounds for confidence, but at the time most articulate people felt life was all right. The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Within two years from that statement, the First World War began. By its end, its hubris, violence, and indifference to personal suffering destroyed a generation \u2014 and cut our civilization so deeply its damage is still felt today.<\/p>\n<p>The men who, in relative peacetime, placed supreme confidence in their steel ship against the great blue sea might only chuckle at the hubris of their successors, who had supreme confidence they could master a disease they didn\u2019t know. <\/p>\n<p>We in the West, though, can be confident of one thing only: These past two years have cut us deeply, and will haunt us for many more to come.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s not yet written is whether we overcome. That will be up to us, and God. Pray for America.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, a founding partner of RightForge, the host of &#8220;Culture War,&#8221; vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at The Daily Caller News Foundation and National Journalism Center, and the author of &#8220;The Art of the Donald.&#8221; His work has been featured in The American Mind, National Review, the New York Post and the Daily Caller, where he led the Daily Caller News Foundation and spent eight years. A frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business, he was raised in Massachusetts and lives on Capitol Hill. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CBedfordDC\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two years ago this week, the United States shut down. Churches, schools and businesses went dark. Weddings, funerals, and birthdays went silent. City streets stood empty, with an eeriness closer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1377222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}