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Imagine this happened to you: you're sitting on an airplane, you're taxiing down the runway on a trip out of the country and all of a sudden the plane stops and is surrounded by military police. Armed men storm the aircraft and drag a man from his seat. So, of course, it's to assume, at first, that terrorism has just been averted. The passenger must have been trying to blow up the plane with a shoe bomb or something. But no, that's not what this is. The man is not a terrorist. He's something worse than that. He violated COVID restrictions. He's a corona criminal. Okay, you think you're trying to be reasonable here? A man with COVID should not be on a commercial aircraft spreading the virus to everyone else. And of course, that's fair. 

But here's the thing - this man doesn't have COVID. He was tested right before he got on the airplane and no trace of the virus was found. So why in the world is he being hauled off the flight by armed men? Well, here's why: because the government has determined that based on his travel history, which they have been tracking, he might someday get COVID. Therefore, in the name of public health, he is being forcibly detained, not for something he has done, but for something that he potentially might do inadvertently. And for that, this man is headed to a COVID camp known euphemistically as a quarantine hotel. But he's not going to be a guest in this hotel. He'll be a prisoner. 

Now, all of this just happened. In North Korea, you ask? No. In the Netherlands. One of the most "liberal countries in the world." Home of The Hague, the International Court of Justice. This just happened at the Amsterdam airport. You may have been there, think twice about going back. Or, for that matter, think twice about going to Canada, another supposedly "liberal country." 

FAUCI: AMERICANS MAY ‘JUST HAVE TO DEAL WITH’ MORE COVID-19 VACCINE BOOSTER SHOTS

Canadian citizens are now banned from traveling by airplane, train or ship unless they can prove they've been injected with the shot that Justin Trudeau demands they take. This is a big change. For centuries, Canadians have had the right to travel within their own country. In fact, they had that right before Canada was even a nation, but they don't have it anymore. If they try it, they'll end up like the guy at the Amsterdam airport in a prison disguised as a public health facility. 

Unfortunately, we're not making any of this up, it's all entirely real, you can look it up. And similar crackdowns are underway around the world. So what we're watching here in real-time is the death of democracy. 

Now, the pretext for all of this is something called omicron, the new variant of the coronavirus. Omicron is incredibly dangerous, we're told, dangerous enough to justify a total suspension of our ancient civil liberties for the first time in hundreds of years. But here's the amazing thing, Omicron appears to be virtually harmless. In the entire world, there is one recorded death from omicron. In the United States, not a single person has died from omicron, not one.

Did you know that? Have they told you that? Probably not. You likely assumed it, because why wouldn't you that omicron killed many, many people. But no, it hasn't. 

So this is the definition of a manufactured threat. Yet on the basis of this manufactured threat, there's one person dead globally. On the basis of that, authoritarians posing as physicians are demanding that certain classes of Americans must be prohibited from traveling within their own country. Watch this tape carefully, because someday we're going to look back on moments like this in horror and disbelief. 

DR JONATHAN REINER, CNN: I think the administration missed a big opportunity this week to tell the American people that we are going to mandate vaccinations for air travel in the United States. We require vaccination for people to fly into the United States, so why aren’t we mandating vaccination for people flying within the United States? 

DR IRWIN REDLENER, MSNBC: I don’t think anyone should be allowed on an airplane – domestic or international or a train – without being able to prove they’ve been vaccinated

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: TOO MANY AMERICANS STILL PARALYZED BY CORONAVIRUS FEARS 

For some perspective, the last man you just saw is called Irwin Redlener. He's not a virologist, he's a pediatrician. And more importantly, he's a political activist. Most recently, he's been working as an advisor to Bill de Blasio, so he knows nothing about COVID. And yet there he is on television demanding Soviet-style internal passports in the United States. 

Politicians are even worse, Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, of course, knows even less about COVID. He can barely write a complete sentence. He's literally a moron. Swalwell specialty is having unusual sex with Chinese spies, yet he too is calling for internal COVID passports within our borders. His fellow Democrats have already introduced legislation to make this federal law. That's a change. But none of it is enough for Tony Fauci. Tony Fauci is demanding proof of injection before people can enter your home. 

DR. FAUCI: People should, if they invite people over their home, essentially ask and maybe require that people show evidence that they are vaccinated

So stand back, but ask yourself, what are we watching here? You've got 79-year-old Joe Biden, 81-year-old Nancy Pelosi and then Tony Fauci turns 81 next week. They're all running our country with the help of 79-year-old Mitch McConnell. This is the oldest government in American history. It's also the most powerful. So you can respect the elderly, we certainly do, as we often say, we mean it. But you can also understand that this is not normal. In fact, this is a sign of civilizational decline. 

These are not leaders who have personal contact with young people regularly. They don't have kids at home. So they're not thinking about raising up and nurturing and protecting, above all, the next generation of Americans. Instead, they're thinking about themselves. COVID is a threat to them because they are old. It's not an attack, it's just true. COVID is not a threat to young people. That's also true. But they don't care. 

Nancy Pelosi feels a chill, so the whole country is required to wear a sweater. Chairman Mao did something similar. As he aged, he crushed the young. Maybe there's a syndrome here. It's strangely recognizable. 

But we know for a fact that in this country there has never been a more selfish and shortsighted leadership class. They destroyed the future for millions of young people. How does a child raised in a mask turn out at the age of 35? Well, Joe Biden doesn't care because he's not going to be here to find out. But so far, the early signs are pretty scary. Very, actually. 

SURGEON GENERAL WARNS OF YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS AMID COVID-19 

According to a study from Brown University, "children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal motor and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic." 

That's our future, and we should be very concerned about it. Meanwhile, suicide attempts by young girls have risen by more than 50%. And yet, even as horrifying as it is, it's just a small indicator of what is actually happening. For every teen who tries to kill herself, one hundred others are living in agony. A new report from the surgeon general finds attempted suicides, anxiety, depression all increase markedly in young people in this country. 

But it's the addiction numbers that are the worst. This year for the first time ever, the number of overdose deaths in the United States passed 100,000. That's up 30% from just last year. It's up more than 100% since 2015. At this point, more Americans are dying from drug overdoses than are dying from car crashes and gun deaths combined. And as with suicide, an overdose is just the endpoint of a very long saga. An overdose is the final chapter in the world's saddest story. Many years of suffering and torment, and our lunatic COVID policies have caused so much more of this. 

What people like Tony Fauci will never acknowledge is that addiction is far worse than the coronavirus. Addiction doesn't just kill you, although of course it does. Addiction degrades you and destroys the people around you, the very people you love the most. Addiction is the worst thing. Addiction is a fate worse than death. It steals your soul. Any sane person would rather die of COVID tonight than spend the next decade addicted to drugs and alcohol. Ask anyone who has been. But Pelosi and Biden and Fauci and McConnell don't care. They're completely uninterested in what happens to the young, and addiction is a problem of the young. 

Speaking of the young, last month, the New York Post published photographs of masked schoolchildren, little kids forced to eat on the ground outside in freezing temperatures. What do you make of that? Well, here's what Joe Biden spokesman made of it, she was fine with it, she approved. 

JEN PSAKI: These are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe. And I think the vast majority of parents appreciate that. Obviously, we want to get to a point where we're turning to a version of normalcy for everybody, right? Where you're not sending your kids backpack with seven extra masks. Right. Where you're not adding two hats so that they're warm outside for a snack. There's no question that's the case. But we also think the most important thing should be safety, the safety of kids keeping kids in school, which the president is very focused on. And some of these steps, creative steps that schools have taken have enabled that to be possible.

The safety of kids? These people are the danger to children, not COVID. But no one's asking the obvious question, what kinds of adults, what kinds of citizens are we creating with masks and social isolation? Ever heard a politician wonder about that? No. Instead, it's full speed ahead in the other direction, damn the destruction it causes. 

The state of Oregon is now working to make indoor mask mandates permanent for everyone, including kids. "Oregon working to put indoor mask rule in place indefinitely," reads a recent headline from ABC in Oregon. 

Dr. Paul Cieslak is the medical director at the Oregon Health Authority. He explained the new plan this way, which is to say he didn't explain it at all, "Permanent means indefinite. It doesn't necessarily mean permanent." Paging Dr. Orwell, this is lunacy, it's destructive, it's vicious. And it's not just happening in Oregon. In New York, politicians are saying the very same thing. 

NY GOV Kathy HOCHUL: I don’t want to go back ever again to that place where people couldn’t go to their jobs safely, people couldn’t congregate, kids couldn’t go to school. That isolation had a devastating effect on the human condition and we’re still dealing with the fallout today. So to avoid that situation, I today am announcing that we are enacting a statewide indoor mask mandate unless a business has a vaccination mandate.

So an unelected, low IQ, governor of a failing state explains to you that in order to reduce social isolation, citizens are required to cover their faces. And no one laughs at her or even says a word. You've got to wonder what America's going to look like in 20 years. 

Consider the economy the COVID restrictions have created. There are a lot more 70-year-old billionaires than there have ever been, but there are far fewer 25-year-olds who have any hope of ever owning anything in America. 

Why do you think young people love Bitcoin? Ever wondered? Well, it's because they know they're excluded from the country's traditional systems of wealth creation. America's economy is closed to them. The ladder has been pulled up, and they know it. Our elderly political class should care about this, but they don't care at all. 

Here, 68-year-old Paul Krugman is explaining on Twitter that growing inflation is not a big deal, "Is there any good reason to believe that inflation hits low-income households especially hard?" Well, yes, Paul, there are, in fact, quite a few good reasons to think that. Look around, Dumbo. But he hasn't, and he won't. Keep in mind, this man once won the Nobel Prize for Economics. 

So we're mocking Paul Krugman, but imagine what he sounds like to young people, imagine how this sounds to a 30-year-old, someone still living with roommates, someone who's too poor to get married, too poor to have kids, too poor to start an adult life. There are many young Americans in that position. 

If you wanted to set the stage for a revolution, this is exactly the kind of way you would talk, and it's exactly the kind of society you would create. It is deeply unwise. It is also increasingly very cruel. 

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Our reaction to COVID has brought out the worst in most – the best in some – but the worst in many, and that is sad to see. Here's 61-year-old David Frum of The Atlantic magazine, a Canadian who helped plan the Iraq War, calling for killing unvaccinated Americans. "Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last." Quietly triage, what does that mean? It means let them die. Murder them. This is evil. David Frum is an evil man. He has long encouraged violence against the weak. That's the sum of his career. 

But in this case, suddenly he is hardly alone. Many in Washington, New York or Los Angeles are talking like this now. Now these are educated people. They're perfectly aware of the science. The science is publicly available. It's on the internet. At this point, it is firmly established scientifically that these so-called unvaccinated pose no threat whatsoever to the vaccinated or anyone else, for that matter. Period. In fact, the millions who have recovered from COVID have greater protection against the virus – getting it, spreading it – than those who rely on chemically induced antibodies alone. That's the science. But the science no longer matters. We've moved past the science to a new stage of this war. And it's not about coronavirus. It's about our country. It's about our democracy. And above all, it's about our future.

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the December 13, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."