Every time I read about some arbitrary,  heavy-handed rule from one of America’s Democrat governors, I think, “This is it, this is the time that Americans are going to rise up en masse, hollering, ‘We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.” And then they don’t. Instead, there are individual heroes, such as a gym owner in New York, a hairstylist in Texas, or a restaurant owner in Maine. Maybe Americans need a little financial insurance for fighting back.

While we are having a second wave of the Wuhan virus across America, we’re not having a second wave of mass die-offs. This is due to several things: More people are being diagnosed, we have better treatments, and we’re doing a better job of protecting the people who are vulnerable. In other words, we’re heading into a bad flu season, as opposed to the panic that gripped us in the spring when an unknown disease was killing the old and the sick.

We also know a few things we didn’t know before. Lockdowns do not correlate with lower rates of infection. Masks probably don’t correlate either, although vulnerable people might want their slight added protection. To be honest, masks might help if everyone wore an N95 mask. Instead, most don’t and many people wear masks slung under their noises.

We also know that the lockdowns have been a disaster at every level. While they’ve enriched the Democrats’ friends at Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, etc., they’ve financially destroyed ordinary working- and middle-class Americans. Our children are being emotionally damaged and denied critical learning windows. You know the other statistics: Suicide up, drug abuse up, alcoholism up, child abuse up, spousal abuse up, crime up, obesity up.

And yet Democrat governors, drunk with power, keep squeezing the people in their states:

Pennsylvania’s Governor Wolf is telling people to wear masks in their own homes.

Michigan’s Governor Whitmer is shutting down colleges,  high schools, dining in restaurants and bars, and more.

California’s Governor Newsom banned indoor Thanksgiving dinners, limited the number of guests allowed in the garden, and says people should wear masks between bites. He then violated every one of those rules.

New York’s Governor Cuomo closed restaurants, gyms, and bars as often, and limited to 10 the number of people allowed at private residences. He then announced his family was coming for Thanksgiving, only to back off when shamed.

Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown shut everything down for two weeks and banned gatherings in private homes. She also told people to report on their neighbors who might be sneaking in an extra guest. In other words, Oregon welcomes the Stasi.

A few people are pushing back. We told you about the business owners in Buffalo who refused to allow sheriff’s deputies and a health inspector to shut them down. New York promptly imposed a $15,000 fine on Robby Dinero, who owns the gym at which the gathering took place. Dinero shredded it.

Early in the lockdown, Shelley Luther fought back against the lockdown. She was willing to go to jail to make the point that she should be allowed to keep open the business that kept her family and her employees’ families fed.

Tucker Carlson interviewed a restaurant owner from Maine who has been the subject of the governor’s unrelenting vendetta for refusing to shut down:

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So, to recap: a less virulent virus, useless lockdowns, mostly useless masks, utterly power-mad governors . . . and just a few people pushing back.

As long as the majority of Americans meekly go along with these meaningless totalitarian diktats, they’ll keep getting more of the same. Imagine, instead, what would happen if every business in California or Oregon or Maine opened for business as usual on the Monday after Thanksgiving. That would be civil disobedience on a scale the government cannot defeat.

I know what stops people. These lockdown rules operate against law-abiding citizens who have responsibilities. They cannot afford huge fines. It’s bad enough that their businesses are hanging on by a string.

So perhaps what we should do is exactly what the left did for the rioters, and looters, and sex offenders who ran riot during the Black Lives Matter uprisings: Set up bail and legal defense funds. If people don’t feel so economically vulnerable to the police state, maybe they’ll finally do what they need to do to stop the madness:

Image: Closed sign by Alan Levine