Remember the Covid Tyranny? Democratic Socialists Think You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.

By David Bittinger

August 7th, 2026

In the summer of 1958, the New York Yankees were cruising to another triumphant season. A couple hundred miles southwest, the leader of another powerful, bullying organization, Don Vito Genovese, took the Fifth Amendment more than 150 times rather than answer the crime-investigating questions of the Senate’s McClellan Committee.

Ah, shrewd reader, you know why I’m recalling that Fifth Amendment episode now. Another century, another bully — what’re ya gonna do?

Maybe you’re going to feel slightly ill as you look at that face again. Not the song “That Face” serenaded to Uma Thurman in the musical version of The Producers. It’s that face deeply in love with its smarmy self: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s.

That face and his minions demanded Americans wear useless masks everywhere, cancel holiday get-togethers, not visit dying relatives, live under a maze of governmental edicts, and not get urgent medical procedures unless they first took the vaccination (that did not vaccinate).

That face, we recently learned from some embarrassingly narcissistic diaries, grinned over a BS relationship with a celebrity admirer . . . whose initials coincidentally were B.S.

That face took the Fifth Amendment repeatedly rather than discuss whether he had previously lied to Congress and had outsourced a gain-of-function research program to a lab in the People’s Republic of China.

There’s a curious backstory to that last bit of history. Gain-of-function research was made illegal by the Obama administration in 2014. You’d think that would have impressed Dr. Fauci, in the way that one perfect authority impresses another. So even after that ban was relaxed slightly in 2017, gain-of-function research was not resumed — in the United States, anyway. Supposedly.

Nobody in all of U.S. government had a salary as large as the Dr.’s, not even the other perfect authority. Who got the rich side deals? Obama’s were in waiting, but Fauci’s were flowing.

Another largely forgotten backstory: When the Covid vaccine was rushed into development during President Trump’s 2020 “Operation Warp Speed” project, Nancy Pelosi and other impeachment-crazed Democrats said they would never take a vaccine developed under Trump.

The vaccine’s development met regulatory requirements six weeks before Trump’s term ended. Even so, believing Democrats and intimidated Republicans hurried to take the drug developed under Trump’s direction, and Democrats demanded everyone else do the same.

Because they were written on 11 separate government computer servers and finally revealed through the efforts of Sen. Rand Paul and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Fauci’s diaries became public. In the heyday of Covid tyranny, Fauci’s troops could ask any question: Is that skate park open? How many people are coming over for dinner? You illegally walked around outside in Vermont with a neighbor?

Now questions were waiting for Fauci: You said what in your diary?

Recall the suspicious debate about whether Covid-19 came from the Wuhan lab or a “wet market” in that city. During the hysteria, Fauci continued to publicly reflect uncertainty on that question. In his diary, he acknowledged that careless commerce with bats, etc., was “not the source” of the pandemic. And whose fingerprints were removed from the study of the “proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper? Francis Collins (former NIH director) privately requested that he and Fauci not be “mentioned explicitly” in the paper’s credits.

Fingerprints removed, and the Wuhan lab not identified as responsible.

There are so many miserable memories of the pandemic era. My own least favorite: Fauci (also then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo) talking and talking and talking, followed by more talking. He seemed to have an unquenchable thirst for hearing himself talk, especially about the limitless dangers he saw in human society. Schools, restaurants, hairdressers, grocery stores, even hardware stores — every site could be lethal unless you heeded Fauci’s directions.

Years later, congressional hearings were finally called to learn more about Fauci’s decisions. July 29th arrived. Fauci finally shut up.

But we remember schools shut down on the falsified terror that young children could catch and transmit Covid. We remember tens of millions of children suffering irreversible educational harm.

We remember businesses shuttered — except for invaluable liquor and marijuana shops. Drive-in church services — church services! —were restricted in Kentucky and Tennessee. Parishioners in Mississippi worshipping in parked cars with windows rolled up were issued $500 citations.

We remember how the “booster” shot recommendations increased, finally set at every three months for the more vulnerable believers. You wondered whether One A Day Vitamins might have offered Fauci a brand name extension.

Especially in California, restaurants and hairdressers faced criminal penalties for indoor operations. But crucial exceptions had to be made. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi somehow managed a private appointment with a San Francisco hairdresser that violated strict mask protocols she had supported.  Mannequin Governor Gavin Newsom needed a posh birthday party for a Democrat lobbyist’s birthday, and somehow managed to book the legendary Michelin three-star restaurant French Laundry, though more than three households — criminal violation! —attended. (Burp!)

Then there were the legacy media — as compliant with all the government intimidation as if their beat were North Korea.

Who dared raise a voice against the Covid tyranny? If you tried to  take issue with Fauci and allied enforcers on Twitter or Facebook, you quickly found yourself banned. If you questioned the validity of opinions pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, all media would harass you as a foe of “the” science.

You know the science. It’s monolithic and must be obeyed.

Anyone who weighed the uncertainties of the novel mRNA vaccination as greater than the benefit risked losing a job. Over 8,000 active-duty and reserve military service members were separated or discharged for refusing to take the vaccine.

Statistics on private-sector workers who were fired for refusing are deliberately hard to come by, but estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Aon Global Risk Management Survey are 5% and 7% respectively. With a 2021 private sector workforce of 122,700,000, that would amount to over 7,000,000 American workers fired for refusing the needle.

My circle of family and close friends is small. Even so, I know two people forced to take the shot or lose a job. Both contracted Covid soon after being “immunized.” As it happens, both of these admirable people were and remain on the political left. Credo quai absurdum.

One instance of media cheerleading for a problematic vaccination strikes me as especially sinister, and an example of humor that’s about as funny as a carjacking. Leftist dogmatist and talk show moralizer Stephen Colbert staged a performance merging public health and entertainment, with him prancing around happily in front of a group of dancers outfitted as hypothermic needles.

Hilarious, Colbert. Hilarious as your sermonizing stand-up.

If you want to see how, even in 2026, the media still furiously defends the Fauci tyranny and tries to shout down anyone who questions it, watch this August 2 interview of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by CNN apparatchik Dana Bash. Watch as much as you can stand. You’ll see the media belligerence, the outrage at an informed guest trying to present facts unacceptable to a tanking cable network’s hostile interviewer.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” So goes the haunting line in William Faulkner’s novel Requiem for a Nun. The Covid tyranny is not dead. It was only a dry run. It set a stage that, only a few years later, is in previews for a total lockdown of American freedom. Surging Democratic Socialists hope to make this a permanent show.

In case you haven’t figured this out, that “Democratic Socialist” designation is a pseudonym. A generation ago, Democrats were still calling themselves liberals although they largely supported the Venezuela-style socialism demanded by Bernie Sanders (before their socialist-communists rapidly destroyed Venezuela). Democratic Socialism is the 2026 pseudonym used by Democrats, who are closet communists.

Take seriously their calls to abolish police and prisons, to abolish borders and globalize America’s remaining wealth, to turn America’s three branches of government into one all-powerful politburo. Yes, its advocates are largely youngish half-wits who know nothing of history, nothing of real civic responsibility, and have no functional ideas. But they are the Democrat party majority of recent generations reared by union-controlled government schools and lecturing leftists on pretty campuses.

The murderous revolutions in 1789 France and 1917 Russia are tragedies these closet communists know nothing about because they know nothing of the past. But they are preparing to replicate them because that twisted ideology is not even past.

Vote against them while you can still vote.

-30-

Bittinger lives in Wisconsin as a long-time White Sox refugee and glad grandfather/babysitter. Recalling the Chicago and Glen Ellyn of the previous century with affection, he admires fellow JKN readers brave enough to still try surviving in Chicago, also music fans of high character who risk the thug takeovers to go hear the world’s greatest orchestra play Mahler.

Comments 45

    1. What in the world has happened to our media???
      The vast majority of reporters, and their bosses should hang their heads in shame.
      Dana Bash’s behavior was so appalling that after watching that interview, I had to shut off the TV,
      walk outside and get some fresh air.
      It’s breathtaking at how arrogant and condecending the media has become.
      They actually refuse to admit to being wrong about ANYTHING.
      Covid, Trump and Russia, Hillary. They walk the Party Line and look you right in the eye and LIE.

  2. The silver lining. All the Crazy Uncles, and Dad’s like me are going to be vindicated. All the kids born between about 1995 and 2010, will remember who wouldn’t let them play on the playground or go on college spring break. They will remember a young guy named Charlie who had his neck blown off on a debate stage. Ah yes, this will be the future adults that keep this Republic going. Not yet, but it’s starting and those of us who refused to bend a knee to unelected idiots will be remembered by this cohort in the future with fond memories.”Alright everybody pack up the coolers and grab the Bose speaker we’re going glamping” “They shut down the wedding venue, so let’s have it my backyard. Someone get ordained online, someone bring a guitar, who’s got a camera, someone needs to get the grandmas out of the nursing home for a day, we got this.”
    “Ya know Uncle Phil wasn’t that crazy after all.”
    “I couldn’t vote for Trump, but JD seems better than AOC”.
    The future Reagan Democrats are in our midst.
    John, David, and commenters have a Great weekend !!!

  3. This my team is better than your team shit is really getting old. Fauci is a crooked as a three dollar bill. Bush gave Fauci a medal. Trump honored him before he left. Trump has pardoned scores of dirtbags who have committed fraud in the billions. Rick Scott, likely one of your favorite Senators, perpetrated one of the largest Medicare frauds in history and got to keep hundreds of millions.

    Covid was Bipartisan. The endless wars are bipartisan. Most of the 40 trillion has been run up by Republicans.

    The open borders and legalizing crime are where the Democrats lose me.

    The surveillance state and endless wars are where they both lose me.

    Epstein? Joe had the files, he did nothing. Clinton too, and Bush.

    My team is better than your team. My oligarch is better than yours.
    Take your shot and shut up!
    Now, it’s take your data center, the noise and we’re talking your kids’ jobs away and ain’t shit you can do about it.

    They are propagandizing us and mind effing us to the hilt and we are falling for it.
    Divide and conquer. And they’re succeeding.

      2. Maitanos a plant if he even exists. Pure psyops. Always starts out with a rant at how bad ” the status quo” is. Railing against Democrats before eventually slamming Trump, conservatives, ” all of our fault”, blah, blah, blah. A nonsensical plant writing nonsense. Wonder who his sponsor is?

  5. Tertulian was credited with “Certum est, quia impossibile est” – It is certain, because it is impossible. He speaking of faith in the risen Christ. That was metaphysics and closer to wisdom than a lab coated Stalinist was to knowledge.

    Fauci, said that he was science and that settled everything. America, briefly, became the former Soviet Union.

    Aristotle knew that metaphysics could lead to better science, but the progressives since Hegel and Dewey erased metaphysics,

    The Old Stagyrite knew what idiots are when he said, “A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything,”

    1. My apologies, David, as I hit the go key.

      Mr. Bittinger, you have presented a dire warning to us all. To quote Yeats, ” The worst/ are full of passionate intensity.” Make no mistake, America is at a crossroads. The best of us, people like David Bittinger, are putting the dukes up! Great work, my friend!

      1. Pat’s fearless references always inspire. To see the first empiricist and “The Second Coming” noted in a review of my scribbling is an honor. I’ll keep those markers in mind through my current project cataloging notable achievements of socialism / communism.

        A “lab-coated Stalinist” indeed. Fauci, we hardly knew ye.

  7. There is never a “The Science is Settled” argument to be made. There is a clear and easy way to determine whether a scientific claim (COVID, climate, etc) is valid or not and it is this: when one side of the argument resorts to slandering, destroying jobs, suing or trying to criminally persecute those that do not agree with them, it’s bogus. And it is a signal that it is time to follow the money. I say this as a scientist.

    1. Well put, Mr. Best. I know a scientist who saw this pattern of leftist authoritarianism in the health/government sector develop rapidly in 2021. She and most associates quickly revised their political assumptions — at UCLA!

  9. OREMUS (“Let us pray”— for non Latin speakers.. ) God help us all. “We have met the enemy and he is us!” These prophetic words from a comic strip character, Pogo who ceased to exist 50 years ago.
    The insidious infiltration of modern liberal “thought” into our schools by leftist “teachers” and “Professors” who failed miserably at teaching not only basic skills of math and English but the basics of HISTORY is our downfall. If you cannot read you cannot comprehend what has gone before. Shall we revisit Fahrenheit 451 ?
    Lacking math skills? No matter, the cash register or calculator on your phone will tell you. Heck I was going thru my wallet the other day and folded inside was my government card certifying I had gotten poked.
    Nikita said it well and we all dismissed it: You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.

  10. Covid introduced something new to the duality corruption of America’s permanent governing class. In addition to parallel justice systems, the two-faced “science” also entered its appearance for public BLM and antifa displays the rest of us could enjoy locked inside with our TVs.

  11. Excellent analysis, Mr. Bittinger. My parents, both science majors in college, taught my brother and I to “always follow the science – until better science comes along. And if it IS science, better WILL come along.”

    Funny/sad story from the Illinois lockdown: Gov. Pritzker, in violation of his own orders, crossed the border into Wisconsin and went to Gordy’s Restaurant in Fontana. While there, he attempted to glad-hand the customers, living in an open state. Friends who were in the restaurant at the time said that suddenly everyone took their orders to go, and left him alone in the place. Friends in the equestrian world related similar stories from his family’s attendance at shows.

    Finally, in March 2020, my physician asked me about Covid and my response to it. I told him then that, from all accounts, it was a fast mutating virus, and just like influenza, vaccinations would only lessen severity and would be needed annually. Sadly, I appear to have been prescient.

    1. Rebecca I agree wholeheartedly. Also as a scientist, when the first genetic make up of Covid came out (April/May 2020 by Chinese scientists later quieted and quickly taken down), I said no way this combination of genes occur in nature. This was made in a lab. I was told by several left leaning friends and family members, I was being a conspiracy theorist. Well guess what??? I wasn’t wrong.

      Also the definition of a vaccine was changed three times since 2019. Twice in quick order to reflect what the Covid “vaccine” was demonstrating in 2021-22.

  12. “Vote against them while you can still vote.” Now your talking. Commander Gregory Stenstrom and Leigh Hoopes would argue our vote is already routinely stolen.

    Excellent piece here – a prefect parallel as to why the South seceded, and from a past that is never dead.

    I just wish those north of the Mason Dixon line could cut the cord with Harvard and pay attention, and not have to live what we lived.

    The time to fight this is NOW, but secession is always a viable alternative and your welcome.

    This time we’ll call it “The United States of America”

  14. The DSA candidates may get elected, but their policies will not get implemented in my lifetime and probably not in grandchildren’s lifetime on a national basis.

    Our Founding Fathers were extremely smart. Rightfully so, changes can be made to our Constitution. I suggest everyone read Article V. In short, 2/3 of BOTH houses, OR 2/3 of the States Legislatures are required to PROPOSE Amendments AND must be ratified by 3/4 of the states.

    Their whole purpose of proposing the elimination of the Senate and Presidency is to rally their supporters to vote and hope the other side doesn’t.

    Any town, city, county or state that the DSA controls, AND their policies are implemented, will eventually see a mass exodus. They will become increasingly isolated and shunned into the dust heap of history.

    If I’m wrong, then we are heading towards another civil war.

  15. Our new “Socialists” are really Muslims.

    Wakeup time for the country….the democrats in particular who missed the writing on the wall. While their party is down-and-out and trying to recruit new voters by inviting illegal aliens into America, the muslims saw a chance to take over a party in turmoil and they have been reasonably successful.

    Traditional American democrats have been overwhelmed, then in the confusion and embarrassment over the collapse of their party, remained in speechless awe of what to do. They don’t have much time for action remaining.

    What they should do: separate themselves as democrats from the socialists…allow them to become a third-party failure. It will cost democrats at least the next election but they will have a party democrats will cling to while spitting on the socialists now using their party to try to take over America.

    The present DNC leadership probably is not wired to admit the reality of this situation and may just sit there cursing Trump while they drown in their own pride. They need to exit any situation or person connected to allah and reconstitute their party before it is too late.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/08/05/massachusetts-democrats-pushing-commission-prioritize-hiring-muslims-state-jobs/

  16. I would gladly double my subscription fee if the two blowhard brothers Bobby M and Tommy R would be kicked off this website.
    Together both of their IQ’s are hovering somewhere around 50.
    I have no problem with people expressing their views but stop all the whining for heavens sake.

    1. I dunno. El Rushbo used to say that we should always keep a liberal or two around. It took a while, but I found the actual quote: “Leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

  17. “L’etat, c’est moi” – Louis XIV, circa 1655 – allegedly.
    “La science, c’est moi” – Fauci I, circa 2021 – allegedly.
    “I plead the Fifth” – Fauci I, circa 2026 – not allegedly…

  18. The cartoon of Fauci looks like something he may have commissioned himself. It’s the favored pose for the Lib-media darlings : Arms crossed, staring into the camera looking “powerful”. I’d be kinda surprised if a 4k super slo-mo video of Fauci in a lab coat walking away from Hollywood style gasoline explosions doesn’t exist

  19. The false Covid info was the biggest psyop ever perpetrated on our world. The powers that be wanted to see how far they could push us. Truly frightening!

  20. It’s a uniparty. You’ve all been had, hornswaggled, bamboozled. You seen pic of Clinton’s at Trump Wedding. You seen GWB affectionate with Michelle, you’ve seen Obama and Trump yucking it up at Carter funeral.

    The Pharma money spigot goes “left” and “right” like AIPAC does. Trump will not be allowed to make the necessary concessions to call off Irans ass whipping of the Middle East.

    Never let a crisis go to waste. This is their chance to grab Gaza and ethnically cleanse Judea and Samaria. That is their chance goal and they will not stop until the achieve it. If Amalek and Goyim have yo die, so be it.

    Bibi will do the dirty work for him. He will drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

    Marco will be next POTUS, Cuba, Greenland will fall. We need the minerals to make more missles.

  21. US name will be mud. China, India and Russia will sanction us, Trump will trigger huge recession. The wealth will love it as they will scoop up bargains and get even richer. Like Potter. They’re trying to turn YSA into Pottersville.

    US life expectancy will continue to drop and there will be a big GOP push for a constitutional amendment to limit free speech. Meanwhile, the “left” will be occupied “fighting Trump” and pushing for an end to the war they funded too! He’s the best thing that ever happened to them.

    No need to defend the lousy record. I’m “fighting” Trump!

    Keep rooting for the uniparty. Ignore the death and destruction, even our own relinquishing of our own sovereignty, while we argue blue and red.

  22. Your right on again Bob!
    Let me add my two bits since it is insinuated Obama and Fauci got “side deals”.
    OF COURSE THEY DID, THEY ARE POLS.
    Lets look at Grab em by the pussy Orange Man
    1. DJT made $2.2 BILLION in first year back in office. That’s 3 1/2 time what his businesses made in 2024. Most from cryptocurrency that Trumps family started.
    2. Add $1.6 BILLION the amount of FEDERAL FINANCING the administration approved for a company hired to develop minerals in Kazakhstan, negotiated PERSONALY by DJT and Lutnick. By co inky dinky DJT sons are investors.
    3. $1.776 BILIION antiweaponization fund got by Todd Blanche to settle a law suit over leaked IRS tax returns.
    4. $400 Qatari jet he got that’s now sitting for ‘security reasons.’
    And on and on I could go. SURPRISE: THEY ARE ALL CROOKS. AND YOU DEAR READERS ARE CHUMBOLONES,

  23. Your right on again Bob!
    Let me add my two bits since it is insinuated Obama and Fauci got “side deals”.
    OF COURSE THEY DID, THEY ARE POLS.
    Lets look at Grab em by the pussy Orange Man
    1. DJT made $2.2 BILLION in first year back in office. That’s 3 1/2 time what his businesses made in 2024. Most from cryptocurrency that Trumps family started.
    2. Add $1.6 BILLION the amount of FEDERAL FINANCING the administration approved for a company hired to develop minerals in Kazakhstan, negotiated PERSONALY by DJT and Lutnick. By co inky dinky DJT sons are investors.
    3. $1.776 BILIION antiweaponization fund got by Todd Blanche to settle a law suit over leaked IRS tax returns.
    4. $400 million Qatari jet he got that’s now sitting for ‘security reasons.’
    And on and on I could go. SURPRISE: THEY ARE ALL CROOKS. AND YOU DEAR READERS ARE CHUMBOLONES,

  24. David: Regarding Dr. Fauci. The larger issue to my mind is how does an unaccountable (to the electorate) “nonpartisan expert” within the ginormous federal bureaucracy capture public policy of enormous consequence? How does this happen in the world’s greatest representative republic? This is precisely what former President Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 Farewell Address to the nation:

    “Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

  26. Our scientific elite after WWll were directly linked to criminal Nazi physicians and scientists. In fact virtually all our weaponry was a result of these criminal Nazis.
    1. Walter Screiber, MD, surgeon general of 3rd Reich. One of his cruelest crimes was his use of intravenous injections of phenol into death camp victims. Didn’t bother us. We hired him to work at USAF aviation school.
    2. Kurt Blome, MD, deputy surgeon general of 3rd Reich. Weaponized cholera, plaque, malaria and much more after we hired him to work for Army and CIA.
    3. Kurt Debus, V weapons engineer. Our first director of NASA space center.
    4. Fritz Hoffman, chemist. Here in USA synthesize nerve gas while working for CIA in the assassination by poison program.
    5. Arthur Rudolph, specialized in V weapons assembly. Worked for us and known as Father of Saturn rocket.
    And on and on. Too bad Ike didn’t act on what he said we should do.

    1. You forgot the other Nazi: Wernher Von Braun, the father of the ginormous boosters that took us to the moon. Yeah. It would have been so much better if Wernher and his fellow Nazis wound up in the Soviet Union. Right? You sir, are an idiot … along with your fellow bloviating gasbagging moron Maitino. Dumb and dumber.

  28. Another good one Dave.

    Many in the media are collaborators.

    An unintended consequence for the dark side of the political aisle is that any trust we had for much of our government is gone. The next forced edict issue will require a door to door confiscation in the heartland. It won’t go well.

    There are many more of us that just want the government to leave us be then there are sheep that want to be led (ruled).

  29. I am regularly amazed by the ignorance, intolerance, and stupidity of today’s young people (yes, Z, I’m referring to you).

    Get some freaking knowledge and data, man!

  31. It’s interesting that I lost Democrat friends over my NOT getting the shot. I lived my life in covid times as I always did except in places I was banned. Still do. Those same believers who still talk to me tell stories of after they got poked, they still got different degrees of covid. They never made the connection between the shot and the disease. All they talk about is all those who died. They refuse to listen when I try to explain the difference between dying FROM covid as opposed to dying WITH covid. They believe the test is accurate with no statistics on the number of false positives and false negatives. Not one of my doctors argue with me when my med record shows no flu vaccines in the last 40 years.
    Sure, I’ve had minor colds and couple of minor flu episodes but nothing debilitating. I was only TESTED once for covid and antibodies prior to a minor heart surgery (TAVR) or not get surgery. I still believe in vaccinations.
    Stop being afraid to tell your Doctor NO! That includes surgeries.
    As an aside, my wife got all the shots and had some minor flu symptoms.

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