In January of 1920 the United States embarked upon the most radical social experiment in the nation’s history: Prohibition. Despite the assurances of progressives that the outlawing of alcohol would resolve a great many of society’s problems, just the opposite occurred. Formerly law abiding citizens undertook to engage in now criminal activities. Gangland power and influence corrupted local and even state governments. Bloody turf wars erupted in American cities as organized crime grew and prospered, fed by the millions made from the illicit liquor profits that steadily poured into their coffers. By 1933 Americans had enough and repealed the anti-saloon amendment which had not reformed society but instead led it deeper into social chaos.

A century later, in March of 2020, history doubled down on its previous mistakes, embarking on a new social experiment more radical and far reaching than Prohibition. But this time around the experiment was implemented on a global scale: the lock-down not of one single activity but of the greater part of the world’s economic life. The pretext for such draconian measures was said to be public health – a far broader and more vague rationale than the curbing of public drinking had been back in 1920. Like Prohibition of old, this new Prohibition of any and all social interaction, enforced by de facto “house arrest” superimposed on entire populations, has produced destructive secondary effects entirely out of proportion to the supposed health threat. While the intensity and severity of those lock-downs has varied from country to country and even state to state, their cumulative effect has been appalling.

Suicides, depression, drug abuse, divorce, unemployment have all soared to record levels. The UN recently estimated that an additional 130 million people will die of starvation this year alone because of the vast economic disruptions caused by global reactions to the Covid-19 virus! That represents a 100:1 ratio of deaths related to lock-downs compared to deaths related to Covid. Is this what we now consider to be a rational response to a viral infection whose case fatality rate of approximately 0.15% is similar to that of the common flu?

The new Prohibition experiment has had other injurious effects as well, such as the social disruption stemming from millions of students and young people locked out of classrooms and denied normal social interactions. All that pent up energy and frustration is bound to be released somehow. Do not be surprised when it leads to social media induced street rioting, smashing and burning public and private property over some incident of alleged police misconduct. No longer must these young cynical vigilantes, impatient with any form of legal due process, wait for investigators to sort out the facts. A three second clip on facebook is all the encouragement they need to go on an anarchist rampage, even if that video originated four states away from where they happen to reside.

Take away their classrooms, their sports programs, and their routine activities; confine them to their basements where their only contact with reality is a digital screen; pump them full of media hype to fan inordinate mortal fear over a virus which barely registers in their age group and you have created a volatile emotional cocktail for these young and inexperienced people. Such unrelieved angst combined with already raging hormones and youthful exuberance may well produce a powerful sense of social alienation, despondency, and explosive anger. Some will turn to drugs or alcohol, others will contemplate suicide or pour out into the streets like raging animals: a mob aimed in no particular direction but that of authority in general. I witnessed this very phenomena close up in my own city recently and it is a frightening specter.

The old truism that civilization is but a thin veneer separating us from the jungle is proving itself before our very eyes. Sometimes it takes very little provocation to strip away that veneer. Is this radical social experiment now being carried out by public health and governmental authorities meant to test the breaking point of their people or to protect them from a supposedly “dangerous” virus? As such I am becoming increasingly skeptical of the true motives driving our leadership class’ handling of the crisis.

Just as the first Prohibition experiment failed miserably to accomplish its stated goals, the moral improvement of society, so this new Prohibition 2020 is looking more like an unmitigated disaster than a public health initiative. The reality is that more and more people are dying of untreated cancers, diabetes, heart disease, etc., not to mention widespread abuse and self-inflicted harms resulting from severe emotional stress and economic dislocation. Millions of our elderly are being locked up in prison-like conditions, denied access even to their own families. I ask you, is their emotional well being somehow less important than their physical condition? Or is the money generated for those care facilities the real motive behind detaining these unfortunate inmates under lock and key?

As health policy this new Prohibition 2020 strategy is failing badly, but as social engineering it seems to be exceeding all expectations, certainly if one’s intent is to undermine the democratic process. Remember Prohibition #1 was enacted by the popular will of the people. Prohibition #2 was imposed at the behest of unelected “experts” and Big Tech media oligarchs from the top down, without the least semblance of legislative authority.

This leads us to the final, and perhaps originally intended, consequence of Prohibition 2020. After disseminating a fraudulent pandemic on an unsuspecting public, is it surprising that the same “deep state” political and media elites are now foisting a massive electoral fraud on the same unsuspecting public? After all, we passively accepted the scripted media narrative about the manifest dangers of Covid, even after widespread medical evidence has emerged (though barely publicized) to deflate that narrative. Still, people religiously don their face masks, even when driving alone in their own cars!

If that first deception could so easily be pawned off as “science” why not characterize middle of the night ballot dumps or secretive and irregular vote tabulations during a key presidential election as “open, free, and fair” democracy? It seems that Big Tech companies and their allied media pals have colluded to set themselves up as the real kingmakers. Who needs voters when you have “experts?” Elections become a mere formality. It’s all part of the Prohibition 2020 experiment. But as I remember history, one of the more deleterious results of the 1920 Prohibition experiment was the corrupting of the electoral process and public officials by gangland bosses grown rich on illicit profits. The new bosses are now tech bosses grown rich at the expense of small mom and pop businesses which they have ruthlessly driven into near extinction, even more so since the lock-downs, rioting, and general induced fear takes more and more of their former customers off the streets.

Prohibition 2020 has proved to be a very successful venture both in social engineering as well as a money and power grabbing operation by ruling oligarchs and the unsavory, self-serving politicians in their pockets. And now, if they get away with blatant electoral larceny, beware what cometh this January 20, because you ain’t seen nothing yet! We human guinea pigs may end up envying the common lab rats. And so, as you cover up your face to leave the house just think of all those folks on the left also busy covering up… the truth. As Mark Twain once quipped, “History may not repeat itself, but it sure bears a strong (and in this case putrid) resemblance.”

Francis J. Pierson a.m.d.g.