With the Covid-19 pandemic four years in the rearview, political pundits have started to act as though Americans are ready to move on and declare a “pandemic amnesty” for the petty tyrants who participated in the largest curtailment of American liberty in decades.

While it’s true that there are plenty of issues in Biden’s America that demand our attention — our wide open southern border, rapid inflation and a sinking economy, and the left’s war on our children — the medical tyranny we experienced remains emblematic of our government’s disdain for average Americans.

You might not know this from watching national political news. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being funneled overseas, secret commercial flights ferrying illegal immigrants to swanky hotels across the country, and gender medicine and critical race theory assaulting our kids, it’s understandable that Congress has its attention elsewhere. But Republicans’ long memory for totalitarianism is much more visible on the local level, and it was on full display in a recent local election in my neck of the woods, Texas Senate District 30.

Our district is a rural North Texas stronghold, comprising cities such as Wichita Falls and Denton, and dominated by an energetic Republican grassroots. Well over a million dollars went into the primary, which featured four candidates. The two winners, Jace Yarbrough and Brent Hagenbuch, are headed to a runoff election that will take place May 28.

But the two winners of the primary were not the most interesting takeaway. Much more notable is the main contender, Dr. Carrie de Moor, who lost, coming in over 16 points behind both winners despite ample funding and a whole slew of big-name endorsements. In her own words, she ran on behalf of the “House of Medicine” — her terminology for Big Health Care and Big Pharma — and spent the primary attacking the others for their stance on Covid. All the while not once denying any role she had in perpetuating the pandemic.

According to de Moor's own social media posts, if you didn’t follow the narrative you were too stupid to be fixed but you could be sedated. Masks were promoted as a fashion statement, and vaccines were pushed for adults and children alike. The end of government payments for the vaccines was also a disappointment since they couldn’t mandate them if they didn’t pay for them. And when confronted on her stances, she expected her “fellow patriots” to have a little thicker skin.

Like many conservatives, this did not sit right with me. For me, Covid meant leaving behind everything I had ever known by moving halfway across the country. Leaving my job to never again wait in line to enter a grocery store. Leaving my hometown to never again hear about my children being bullied for pulling down their masks in school. Leaving my parents to never again hear my child scream, “Mommy, no!” as she was forcibly swabbed to be able to receive a necessary medical treatment.

But distance didn’t equal safety. Three months after settling in my new home in Senate District 30 the vaccine mandates were issued, and I lived in fear of losing my job until my religious exemption was finally approved. The vivid memories of this time are haunting and can never be erased.

So let us not pretend our trials during Covid are suddenly a non-issue. The petty tyrants in our government, our hospitals, our schools, our corporations — they are still occupying positions of power, biding their time for the next “emergency” that will help them manipulate Americans into giving up our rights. This concern gets straight to the heart of what government is for and how much power we allow elected or appointed officials and unelected bureaucrats to have over our lives, our families, and our communities. Let us always reject tyrants.

We’re not fighting a faceless entity like the “House of Medicine” or even a single scapegoat like Anthony Fauci or Deborah Birx. Those of us who faced denigration and ultimatums from small-time medical despots remember their names and faces. Do they really think they can just creep back into power? Much less by running as conservatives in a Republican primary?

If Covid collaborators can simply blend back in with society, they will bide their time until the next opportunity for tyranny. The “House of Medicine” candidate in this hard-fought election pushed and profited from every aspect of the pandemic fraud: shutdowns, masks, arbitrary containment measures, vaccines. She tried to hush up her record and hide it away in this primary, but the evidence of every public statement and social media post never went away. Once Republican voters saw her record, we started having 2020 flashbacks and voted accordingly.

This can be a conservative battle plan. If someone — whether a politician, pastor, board chair, or any decision-making position — wants to be in leadership and touts their qualifications or their principles, we must hold them to the same standard: “What did you do in our time of crisis?” If a would-be leader spent 2020 and beyond pushing CDC and CCP propaganda, hypochondriac alarmism, and Pfizer money-making schemes, they don’t deserve to be followed.

It’s heartening to see that though four years have passed, Americans haven’t forgotten. Let’s keep that memory alive and remain vigilant against tyrants, both powerful and petty.