If you had any hopes that the mainstream media was slowly beginning to realize that people don’t like pandemic mandates that impinge on their personal freedoms and might back off from such authoritarian notions, you may safely put those hopes aside. Or at least that’s the case with the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper in Utah. While others have been gradually looking at ways to return life to normal now that there are vaccines and other treatments available to keep the worst of the COVID threat under control, the editorial board at the Tribune recently veered off in the opposite direction. They bemoaned the fact that the state’s Republican Governor and other GOP officials have simply “encouraged” everyone to get vaccinated and stated their desire to see more aggressive enforcement action put in place. How aggressive? They suggested that Governor Spencer Cox should call out the National Guard and deploy them to prevent the unvaccinated from leaving their homes. (Townhall)

An alarming amount of Democrats, as Scott highlighted, support strict government action against the unvaccinated, according to a recent poll from the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports. That desire for such force against unvaccinated citizens has been extended to the mainstream media with a January 15 editorial from The Salt Lake Tribune calling on Gov. Spencer Cox (R) to activate the National Guard to prevent unvaccinated Utahans from participating in society.

That’s actually what it says:

Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.

You have to scroll down to near the end of the editorial to find the key demands. The editorial board actually makes at least a vague effort at sounding rational in the earlier paragraphs, pointing out that the Governor and other GOP officials have repeatedly encouraged people to get the vaccines and take other safety measures. They just didn’t want to handle the situation via authoritarian mandates. The Lieutenant Governor pointed this out on social media in response to the editorial.

To be clear: Gov. Cox and I have always pushed for ppl to get vaccinated as the best way to keep from getting sick, stay out of the hospital, and not die from COVID. If you’re not, please get vaccinated. Omicron is infecting vaccinated ppl but vaccines are still the best defense.

— Deidre Henderson (@DeidreHenderson) January 15, 2022

This is really difficult to wrap your head around. Certainly, we have long since grown used to liberal journalists berating the vaccine-hesitant and blaming them for all of the world’s ills. That’s simply Democratic Party policy these days and most of the press happily plays along with it. Casting aspersions and cheerleading for more mandates is just part of the playbook.

But what’s being discussed here, even if they were attempting to engage in some sort of hyperbole, is something very different and far more sinister. Sending out the military to force people back into their homes at gunpoint because they chose not to undergo a particular medical procedure is something straight out of the Chinese Communist Party playbook. And yet here we are in 21st century America and the idea is being bandied about in a serious fashion by liberals and progressives.

Back in 2020, before the first vaccines ever received emergency approval for general distributions, I wrote about the possibility of America becoming a two-tier society composed of those with and without some form of magical immunity passport issued by the government. Those who complied with governmental mandates and carried proof of their obedience would be allowed to return to life as it had been before the pandemic. Those who refused would be treated as the great unwashed masses and have their freedoms curtailed. Sometimes I really hate it when I turn out to be right, but even I didn’t imagine that we would reach a point where our own media would suggest trampling the Posse Comitatus Act and unleashing our armed forces on the citizenry to enforce an authoritarian mandate issued by one person without the consent of Congress. It’s certainly a brave new world, isn’t it?