By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD
Driving across our country makes one appreciate this glorious and (dare I say) exceptional country. The diverse landscapes are a feast for the eyes. Food for the soul is the affirmation that most Americans love their families, treasure America, and enjoy their fellow Americans whether they be white, black, or somewhere in between.
Daily, the media dutifully inform us coastal and urban residents about gender fluidity, diversity training, and decarbonizing energy systems to avert the coming environmental Armageddon. When the media could not flog us with a juicy Covid-19 tragedy, they resurrect a tired but effective angst-inducing headline about the imminent big earthquake.
Why would the media-government complex want to demoralize its citizens and have them live in fear and anxiety even when a “crisis” has resolved? To make them rely on the government, rather than themselves for their day to day needs. To steer them from respecting the democratic republic formed by our Constitution to accepting government control of their lives. Fear lays the groundwork for unquestioning compliance.
Federal and state governments have used Covid as a justification to cross the line from public safety measures into tyranny. Despite the decreasing Covid cases, the national Covid emergency declaration was extended beyond March 1, 2022. The national emergency designation gives the President more than 100 special powers that can bypass legal procedures ranging from banking to public health and anything else the government wants to control.
Despite a long tradition of differing opinions regarding medical disease processes and treatments, the government discouraged such discussions regarding Covid. First, the Surgeon General simply asked us to help stop “misinformation” because it “pollutes our information environment.” A few short months later, the feds are demanding that social networks, search engines, crowdsourced platforms, e-commerce platforms and instant messaging systems send data and analysis on the prevalence of Covid-19 misinformation on their sites. Translation: divergent opinions will be censored once the government discovers how to do so. What happened to our respect for the marketplace of ideas?
If tracking our computer use doesn’t work, we have the National Patient ID, a single number issued by the federal government containing all the details of a person’s medical records from cradle to grave. The concept has been around for more than 25 years as part of HIPAA. However, Congress banned itself from funding such an undertaking. In 2019, Congress lifted the funding ban despite the very real possibility that a National Patient ID could allow for large-scale tracking of Americans through their healthcare records. What happened to the confidential patient-physician relationship based on trust and privacy?
Such government overreach and intrusion are becoming commonplace. We are perilously close to losing government of, by, and for the people. Our government is increasingly populated with close-minded lifelong bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci and the influential career politicians who are hardly the working man’s heroes like Nancy “let them eat ice cream” Pelosi. Universities—grooming our future leaders—have become politically imbalanced and intolerant of open discourse.
We hear about how the evil Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs who profited from political unrest are pulling the strings of their government. We are trending toward our own classic oligarchy, the rule by a few. We have our own wealthy idealogues who have transitioned from mere annoying elitists into toxic powerbrokers promoting their own agendas. Notables include Mark Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Washington Post), Bill Gates (Microsoft), George Soros (Open Society Foundation).
Meanwhile, runaway inflation is making it harder for Americans to afford basic necessities. Filling one’s automobile with gas is now an exercise in emotional and financial misery. The reaction of Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg and Vice President Harris are indicative of their disdain for the average American. Can’s afford gas? Buy a $45,000 electric car. This dismissive rhetoric does not comport with reality. In 2020, there were 286.9 million cars in the US with 1 million electric vehicles. Moreover, the electric grid absolutely could not support a sudden influx of electric vehicles, given the brown-outs across the country in winter and summer.
This political and powerful class of people want to change the way we live and think—whether we like it or not. We will never have as much money to buy political influence as do the American oligarchs. But we do have our voices. Parents are speaking up about their schools’ curricula and toxic overtly racist policies that perversely segregate students by skin color and laws that bypass parental input into their children’s medical decisions. Physician office practices are changing to meet the needs of patients, not insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Physicians who have fought for open medical discussion about vaccine safety and efficacy are leaving their mark. CDC Director Walensky finally publicly admitted that the Covid vaccines do not stop transmission of the virus. Many physicians have gone from looking at their unvaccinated patients in horror to “I respect your choice.”
The oligarchs do not represent the real America. It’s up to us to carry on the legacy of American heroes who thought for themselves and bucked the system.
Bio: Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is past President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School. Dr. Singleton completed 2 years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law. She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers. She lives in Oakland, Ca. Website: marilynsingletonmdjd.com; Twitter: @MSingletonMDJD.
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