Most of us who pilloried the noncompliant did it because it seemed like certain victory, like the unvaccinated would never make it through unbroken. Indeed, the promised new normal looked unbeatable, so we sided with it and made punching bags out of the holdouts.
But betting against them has been a scathing embarrassment for many of us who’ve now learned that the mandates only had the power we gave them. It was not through quiet compliance that we avoided endless domination by pharmaceutical companies and medical checkpoints at every doorway. It was thanks to the people we tried to tear down.