Peugeot car–owners in the 1980s came in two varieties.  The first group owned their lovable lemons fewer than six months.  The second group owned their mistakes for ten years or longer.  There were no Peugeot-owners in between, except me. 

In former times, Peugeot motorcars were well designed but their construction horribly executed.  Manufacturing defects were legion, from crossed electrical terminals, where turning on the headlights also activated the electric windows; where adjusting the electric seats popped open the tailgate; where gas tank vents weren’t installed, so as the fuel level dropped, the resulting vacuum would collapse the tank, stalling the engine; where the transmission selector park position was actually reverse; and where the turbocharger oil leaks  sent a plume of blue vapor fogging the windshields of anyone tailgating.

That was the first month.

I owned a Peugeot 504 station wagon for two years before surrendering, giving it away.  But I knew I’d been had within weeks.

All Peugeot-owners soon enough realized they had made a huge blunder, a grievous, costly error.  The smart ones cut their losses within months, readily admitting they had been snookered into buying a rival to the Soviet-built Trabant.

The not so smart privately knew that their Peugeots were pieces of crap but would never admit it to anyone, suffering in obscurity for years, spending a fortune on loaner cars and repairs when the contested warranties expired, hoping no one would notice they had been taken for fools.

Well, we are all Peugeot-owners now.  The nationwide CCP COVID-19 lockdown may have been plausible at the start, but within weeks, maybe days, it was obvious we’d been misled by the tyranny of experts, no better than smooth 90-day wonder new car showroom salesmen.

How soon will president Trump and his inner circle, including the so-called public health experts, admit we’ve been led on a snipe hunt with grievous consequences?  Or will he and the gaggle of  totalitarian governors, ignoring independently sourced data contravening all of their advisories and directives, continue to justify their faulty prescriptions, denying their culpability?

There is no shame in admitting you’ve been deceived.  But there is no excuse for paralysis from your own shame in having been duped into buying the bill of goods, and accepting the phony bill of lading, with nothing delivered but lamentations.