At a time of national pandemic angst, it was supposed to sound so nice.

"We are in this together."

But as some of us came to realize, that was not the case.

In retrospect, had President Trump known what was to become of the United States as we knew it, he may had referred to the first tenet of the 1994 Contract with America before obliging the suggestions of bureaucrats.

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government: 

First: Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress.
--- U-S-History.com

The COVID-19 shutdown resulted in thousands of businesses and corporations around the nation being ordered to shut down for an undetermined amount of time, thus resulting in millions of Americans losing their jobs. It became ironic that those who were in the position of locally determining who could reopen and how long were those whose personal paychecks were never in jeopardy: politicians, their staffs, federal and state employees, and unelected officials.

MARCH 30
More states issued stay-at-home directives.

Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., issued orders requiring their residents to stay home. Similar orders went into effect for Kansas and North Carolina. Other states had previously put strict measures in place. The new orders meant that least 265 million Americans were being urged to stay home.
--- New York Times, Coronavirus Timeline

Had an Executive Order or Memo been issued by the president that required the suspension of all taxpayer-funded salaries on the federal and state level as long as private citizens were forced to stay home and not earn theirs, just how serious would the "advice" of  so-called health officials been taken given how all-over-the-map the models have been since the coronavirus made landfall?

Would there have even been talk of a prolonged shutdown had the generous salaries of governors and mayors (some between $3,000-$4,000 weekly!) been in the slightest way been threatened. How many on Capitol Hill would have told Dr. Anthony Fauci to go pound sand if their paychecks and those of their staff would have been cut off until some curve was flattened? How many of our federal and state employees would feel so free to demand Americans on social media to shut up and stay home if they weren't receiving steady paychecks? We already know how quickly they squawk when there's any kind of government shutdown that always results in their getting paid on the back end.

And given their specific First Amendment status, maybe the media could have been also included in a paycheck halt. The freedom of the press would not be halted; they just wouldn't get paid for what they did and the professional media has enough rainy day cash lying around to last for a short duration.

How do you think their coverage of the "pandemic" would be if they weren't receiving compensation for their time? Instead of telling us all to stay home and keep everyone else safe, do you think they might have introduced the term "herd immunity" into their daily action lines? Do you think this whole shutdown thing would be considered a policy that should be very, very temporary?

This has again turned out to be just another example of the "Do as I say, not as I do" two-tiered system of American government which calls into doubt the known seriousness of the pandemic when we've also seen the many examples of politicians and elites finding convenient
justifications to go for a walk in the park, visit beauty salons, the gym, parties, fundraisers, and of course, #BlackLivesMatter protests... masks optional.

ObamaCare was good enough of us while federal politicians and their staffs wrote themselves a way around it, saving themselves thousands of dollars that we were mandated to pay. Now, the COVID-19 crisis has given us state and local politicians who play their constituents like an accordion, setting phased reopening dates, just to yank them back in a manner that would make any garden-variety sadist smile.

The economy was the issue that would have President Trump sail into a second term. Keeping it in the tank is a political no-brainer.

And until we're really "in this together", the political class will continue to inflict their political pain on all of us because it doesn't hurt them.

Follow Bob Parks on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BlackAndRight

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Public Domain Pictures image, styled with Photoshop.