Letter: Government policy is all about control

It's true President Biden makes excuses for the failures of his administration. Blaming Putin's invasion of Ukraine for the tripling of the price of eggs seems a stretch, and to claim that shutting down the Keystone pipeline had no effect on the price of gasoline was just silly.

In truth, government policy runs on excuses no matter who is in charge. National security was George W. Bush's excuse for creating the Department of Homeland Security and signing the U. S. A Patriot Act, the effect of which was to deter a few terrorists, along with compromising the privacy of the American people.

Runaway medical costs were Obama's excuse for enacting his plan to make health insurance affordable for the poor and elderly. In fact, Obamacare increased the cost of health care and made insurance plans convoluted, riddled with carve-outs and subsidies and bizarre mandates. No matter - it represented another step toward socialized medicine.

And of course, what was COVID 19 but a chance for the government to impose its will upon millions of healthy, skeptical Americans? Public health was the excuse then. Trump's "15 days to slow the spread" became, through mask mandates and lockdowns and emergency authorizations and social media shaming, a good three years of isolation and economic dislocation. Was it worth $10 trillion to check the virus's spread? Hardly. But the newfound medical control it has given the government - that's priceless.

In fact, it is control our government desires above all else: control over how Americans interact with their doctors - how we travel and save for retirement, what we put or not put over our faces or in our bloodstream, how we express ourselves online, how we think about marriage and sexuality and race - the whole gamut of human behavior.

In the end, when we have all become peons and disciples of Big Government, it will say to us, finally: "Now worship me."

Patricia Gbur

Wood Dale