For almost the entirety of 2020, governments quite literally canceled everything from school, to work, to travel, to funerals, to weddings, to holiday family gatherings, and everything in between due to a worldwide pandemic caused by a virus of questionable origin. Now, one year later, Democratic politicians at large are threatening to permanently cancel your participation in regular society if you do not go along with their newest invasive mitigation innovation — vaccine passports.

Throughout his campaign and during his first four months in office as president, Joe Biden has led the Democrat’s dystopian crusade of forcing Americans to comply with government mandates and invasive tracking programs by suggesting that it is your “patriotic duty” to do so.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has followed Biden’s lead by spending taxpayer resources on public campaigns and saying he would support a vaccine passport for Pennsylvanians. But while the state took precautions seriously and millions stayed away from family, friends, and co-workers for months on end, Wolf did not–participating in crowded protests and getting caught on a hot mic with now-former Democratic state Rep. Wendy Ullman joking about being on camera with a mask for “political theater.” 

Moreover, the Wolf administration’s failure to keep vulnerable Pennsylvanians protected from COVID-19, to be transparent about his decision making and policies, to be transparent on wasted vaccine doses, and now to widely distribute vaccines, is compounding widespread distrust of their government among many Pennsylvanians. Such distrust after a record of hypocrisy and non-transparency is quite understandable. It is not limited to Pennsylvanians.

Many Americans still do not plan on getting a COVID-19 vaccine, all of which have yet to receive full authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. The media have taken notice, publishing articles about “White Republicans” who lead in “vaccine hesitancy.” 

There is little discussion of medical privacy and medical choice in the public sphere regarding the vaccines, but there is a great deal of peer pressure, government coercion, and corporate greed pushing for Americans to get vaccinated or be banned from participation in regular society.

This societal divide in regard to the COVID-19 vaccine is political. Democrat politicians like Biden and Wolf and their partners in the media and Silicon Valley have made it this way by silencing all opposition and debate throughout the pandemic. Still, they expect all of society to go along with their attempts at creating a two-tiered society wherein those who are vaccinated can go back to their normal lives and those who are not, a great deal of whom they know are largely conservatives or Republicans, cannot.

Politics has blinded them so much that when pushing for defacto forced vaccination, they do not take into account those who physically cannot get a vaccine– such as those who may be allergic (in which case the FDA advises not to get vaccinated), or those who do not yet have access to vaccination through no fault of their own. As usual, they are leaving the most vulnerable behind.

But suggested restriction policies such as vaccination passports point to a greater issue overtaking American society at large– and that is this tyrannical obsession from the left with canceling those with differing opinions or those who challenge their authority.

If those on the left continue punishing their fellow citizens, and those on the right continue to be unable to trust their government and remain under constant surveillance and threat of cancellation, we have a recipe for a fatally wounded society. How does that encourage patriotism?

State Rep. Russ Diamond represents the 102nd Legislative District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He wrote this for Delaware Valley Journal.