How this began: The virus was here (the US) already for months from 2019 and life went on normally.
Once the consciousness seeped in and the politicians panicked, we moved quickly from travel restrictions to lockdowns to mask mandates to domestic capacity restrictions to vaccine mandates.
Somewhere along the way, we learned to classify people by profession, stigmatize the sick, then finally to demonize the noncompliant. It's been 20 months of intensified controls, driven by political leaders from both parties, with precious little dissent from media organs.
The pace has been furiously fast but
somehow just slow enough that people and media personalities adjust to the new, the cycle proceeds, last week's shock becomes this week's normal, and then politicians scramble to create the next big intervention, covering previous failures with new nostrums, all while ignoring or censoring opposing views.
Even hard-won scientific knowledge of 100 years - for example natural immunity - has been memory holed. We reference Orwell often because
there is a dystopian feel to it all, describable best by reference to stories we only imagined through the help of books and movies.
Hunger Games,
Matrix,
V for Vendetta,
Equilibrium - they all come to mind.
The policies have been bad enough but the political polarization has been the real poison. In history, we've seen where this leads.
New and random mandates from political leaders become loyalty tests. Compliant people are viewed as enlightened and obedient. The noncompliant are regarded as stupid and probably politically threatening. They are purgeable.
Comment: On the other hand, the Empire of Chaos, A/K/A the US - along with its partner Israel - can and may at any time decide to agress Syria (and Iran) and undo the middle eastern country's efforts at rebuilding - despite (or because of) all the efforts at stabilization mentioned in the above article.