It properly should have been, all along...

Then they decide to say:

"ONLY healthcare people need to wear a mask, OMG, STOP BUYING THEM!"

Then changed it to:

"Mandatory: EVERYONE HAS TO wear a mask!"

Also: Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia, citizen!

#ClownShow https://twitter.com/Scott1975Usa/status/1283877150756667392

Neither of those two messages are fully scientifically justifiable, in my opinion.

They are also completely, diametrically opposing statements. They flat-out CONTRADICT each other.

The same people have made both statements. Nothing changed between them.

They won't admit it.

The same official assholes who LIED to your FACE in the beginning about how no one but H/C workers needed ANY masks... have flipped 180 degrees now, and are now lying to your face that absolutely EVERYONE MUST wear a mask in public, BY FORCE OF FUCKING LAW!

That's ridiculous.

And not a single one of them (that I've seen) has publicly come out and accepted responsibility for screwing up this official messaging in the beginning (if we're supposed to believe them now).

Please, prove me wrong on this!

Link to video of 'em w/ "I royally screwed this up!"

Please link to the video showing them saying "We were wrong to impugn the intelligence and foresight of those who were buying masks in the beginning. They were right, and we were completely wrong. We endangered lives with our very bad advice... and I officially resign b/c of it."

Instead, they just blithely go on with their pronouncements and mandates, and act like you should be castigated in public if you dare to point out that they've completely contradicted themselves... and they won't even admit it!

They act like IT NEVER HAPPENED!
I've got RECEIPTS!

Hell, I'd be satisfied with the following PUBLIC, PRIME-TIME admission from them: "We lied to you about masks in the beginning. We thought we had to, because we failed to do our jobs and properly prepare for the kind of pandemic everyone KNEW would come, someday... and because

of that failure to plan, and our stupid choice to rely on fragile, foreign, just-in-time delivery systems for critically needed supplies like N95 masks, we put ourselves in a position where we were caught flatfooted. We had no good way to get the critical masks that we needed...

... to protect our front-line healthcare workers, who desperately needed to be protected. This was a critical oversight in planning throughout our governments, at all levels. We were warned, and we ignored those warnings. Because of that, many more people died than should have."

"We utterly failed at doing the obvious right thing: namely, establishing ready stockpiles of ALL needed PPE, on-hand, in advance, in every healthcare facility in the country, to allow us to respond instantly when the inevitable pandemic we were warned about... actually hit."

"That was the JOB of readiness that needed to be done, throughout the country, in order to ensure that the very real threat to the country of an emerging pandemic was met... with every reasonable effort to mitigate it in advance. We had people DEDICATED to that job. They failed."

"We had cushy sinecures, jobs where we didn't really have to do anything... we were supposed to be making sure that we were ready in advance if a disaster struck, like a pandemic. But instead of doing that, we decided to roll the dice. We decided to kick the can down the road."

"We knew that, yes, EVENTUALLY a pandemic was going to strike... all the experts agreed long ago that it was not a question of 'if', it was instead purely a question of 'when'. But we also knew that the odds of it hitting in the next six months, or year, or even 4 years was low."

"So as long as that was the case, we kept prioritizing the short-term considerations over the critical long-term choices. We let the desire to meet the annual budget override the need to meet these critical goals. We were like people who didn't want to pay for needed insurance."

"I mean, if you were facing critical shortfalls in your household budget, you might be tempted to not bother buying car insurance. You might decide that it's more important to keep that money for use on something else instead, because hey, what are the odds you'll be in a wreck?"

"If your car was already paid off, you might be responsible and choose to get only the minimum liability car insurance your state requires by law, rather than paying more for full-coverage insurance. You'd be taking a gamble, but it's only a gamble on the loss of your property."

"No one else but you is put at risk by that decision, even if it's unwise. But sometimes, people go beyond that. They risk breaking the law, and endanger others in the process. That's what we did, here. We gambled on this for years, and risked the lives of millions of Americans."

"We thought the risks were low. We thought we could get away with it. We thought we could make our bosses happier if we just ignored what we were supposed to be doing, and instead made the bottom line look better. We were irresponsible... perhaps even criminally so. And that's.."

...why I'm coming before you, the American people today. I'm coming to admit in public what's been an open secret for far too long in Washington D.C.: that we've been gambling with your very lives, and getting away with it... and it's time for that to end. Accordingly, I have..."

"...tendered to the President of the United States my immediate resignation, along with a series of recommendations that might hopefully help some good come out of this scandalous affair that I participated in myself. The American people deserve better than what they've been..."

"...given by their government officials, and I hope that can change, starting today. I've recommended full civil and criminal investigations of everyone who participated in the fiasco that has been our federal response to, and lack of preparation for, this pandemic."

"I've instructed everyone in my department to cooperate fully in every way with these investigations, and to tell the truth about what really happened, no matter the personal cost. We need radical transparency on this, and we need to clean house, top to bottom, as well."

"I've made personal recommendations to the President of individuals with sterling personal character, to step in as an interim replacement for me, as well as individuals who would be good fits for the investigative team. I understand if the President doesn't trust me on this."

"I've betrayed the trust that he and the American people placed in me... but I come before you today with these recommendations, in an open, honest, transparent way, in the sincere hope of making this better. Please verify for yourself that these individuals are trustworthy."

"We've gotten away with this rotten business for far too long in Washington D.C., and I've been right in the thick of it the whole time. I need to be held accountable for everything I did wrong in my time holding this position of public trust, and I will accept it all, openly."

"I realize that heads need to metaphorically 'roll' over this, and mine is one of them... but I think we have to embrace this horrific scandal as an opportunity to finally correct long-standing problems that are endemic in our country, and embrace full, radical transparency."

"If we don't, right now, I fear that the heads which roll won't be metaphorical... they'll be very real. The American people should be righteously angry at what their government has done to them, for far too long. I'd rather not die at the hands of a mob wielding pitchforks..."

"...and torches. I'd hope that the American people would still be better than that, though I honestly can't say I wouldn't deserve it, if it did happen. Everyone involved in this needs to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It's time to come clean, fully."

"The American people can forgive a lot... but only if we're sincere about admitting what we've done wrong, disclose it all, and accept all the punishments we so richly deserve. If we do that, I believe we can make this right, and make Washington D.C. a place to be proud of."

"So I stand before you to start that process... to start what I hope will be a revolution in the federal government, a sea change that no one has seen since the founding of this nation: a new breed of public servant, one that you can trust to be radically honest with you always."

"I do this because I believe this is the best way forward, to improve our entire country: by fully embracing radical transparency and radical honesty in ALL of our dealings with the public, always. We have to be open about everything we've done wrong and tell the truth about it."

"So I'm going to be radically transparent about what I did, and radically honest about why I did it, and hope that the American people can forgive me after I pay the full penalties for what I've done. I lied to you about masks at the start of the COVID-19 crisis. I was in a jam."

"I'd been irresponsible, and hadn't done my job. I prioritized the short-term over the right thing, and I gambled with American lives by doing it. I should have heeded the warnings, and done my job to establish stockpiles before they were needed, no matter the budget impact."

"I kicked the can down the road, I decided it was OK to be lazy. I figured the chances of something like this hitting on my watch were low... so I didn't do what the American people needed me to do. I didn't do the job I was paid to do. So when COVID-19 hit, I knew it was bad."

"I knew it was probably the worst possible thing that could have happened for me, because I had spun the roulette wheel with American lives... and it landed on zero. The masks that our healthcare workers desperately needed to keep themselves alive while they were fighting the..."

"... initial surge in American cases simply weren't there. Smart Americans had noticed what was happening in China, and knew what they needed to do to protect themselves: they needed personal protective equipment like N95 masks, and they needed to get them before they all..."

"...disappeared off of the shelves. There were far too few of them carried in stock to even meet the demand we would have for our healthcare workers even if no one was out there, trying to buy them up themselves. The stores that carried them kept only enough to meet the..."

"...everyday demand levels that their customers place on them plus a bit more, to allow for restocking the shelves periodically. This is 'just in time' manufacturing and stocking practice in action, and it takes place all the time, in all sorts of markets. It's usually smart."

"Where it's NOT smart is in any product where there might be a critically important spike in demand, due to a crisis. That's a systemic vulnerability in infrastructure... it's a weak point that our enemies could choose to exploit. And I've seen evidence that I'll share with..."

"...the investigators on this matter, that foreign governments actually did deliberately exploit this infrastructure weakness, by having agents acting on their behalf systematically buying up entire stocks of N95 masks, and shipping them back to their home country. It happened."

"It happened on American soil, in plain sight. There were even videos posted to social media by some of these agents, gleefully bragging about exactly what they were doing, and why. All of these things, taken together, created critical shortages in N95 mask supplies in the..."

"...very moment when we needed them the most. It was a perfect storm, made much worse by the deliberate actions of foreign agents, to our detriment and the foreign nations small benefit. The sickest thing about the whole affair is that there might not have been anything..."

"...technically illegal about what these agents were doing. We have a free and open system in America, where anyone can purchase basically anything that's legal, in any volume they like, at any time, for any reason they like. That works well... except when there's a crisis."

"There are laws on the books about price gouging, and actions that the government can take to seize certain property in the event of national emergencies... but what about people who know that something is GOING to become a crisis, before it's officially declared to be one?"

"Someone might run afoul of our laws if they seek to resell critical items that they purchased at normal prices for obscene markups, but what about those who have no intention of reselling them at all? What if the whole purpose is just to... make things worse in America?"

"It's generally not feasible to seize shipments of thousands of N95 masks that were legally purchased at the full asking price in American stores, and then bulk shipped to a foreign country... if it happens before your government admits that they're actually needed."

"And that's where we were: N95 masks had disappeared off of the shelves, we didn't have nearly enough to meet the critical demand of healthcare workers, and it was going to take time for manufacturers to ramp up production to meet even that level of demand, to catch us up to..."

"the stockpile levels that we should have been at all along, if I'd actually been doing my job. So we had some very tough choices to make. We should have come out and admitted what we'd done wrong, right then and there. We should have begged the American public to help us..."

"...meet that critical need, to set aside their own safety and choose to forgo getting the PPE they would need, and to help us get it instead. We should have asked for donations from those who had been smart enough to recognize what was happening in Wuhan, China and to take..."

"...the smart steps they needed to take to protect themselves and their family from a pandemic that was basically guaranteed to make it to American shores before long, and start spreading through the population. We should have asked. We didn't. Instead, we chose to start a..."

"...systematic campaign of deliberate disinformation, spread to the American people to meet a couple of simple goals: to convince America that there was no need to worry about COVID-19, no need to panic, that there was no need to buy any masks unless they were a healthcare..."

"...and that anyone who said anything different was a nutjob who should be disregarded and systematically shunned from polite society as a fearmonger. We knew it was wrong to do that, but we did it anyway... I did it anyway. I did it because I got caught with my pants down."

"I created the conditions for this perfect storm to happen, by failing utterly at doing my job. And because of that, healthcare workers weren't getting the PPE they needed (for several reasons), and if I told the truth to the American public at that moment there would be a..."

"...likely panic that would make things much, much worse. I only had bad choices left. So I tried to make the least bad one I could: I decided we all needed to lie to the American people, and to demonize the smart ones, in the hope of buying enough time to let our..."

"...manufacturing base ramp up to meet the demand, and then some. I chose to lie right to your faces, and I even convinced myself that it was 'the right thing to do' at the moment I was doing it. It wasn't. It was a cowardly attempt to escape accountability for what I'd done."

"And I'm telling you now that I'm ashamed of what I did then, and everything else I did that set the stage for this disaster. A big portion of this lands right square in my lap, because I did it. I confess fully that I did so, and I will willingly pay the full penalty for..."

"...what I've done wrong here. I deserve it all. My only hope is that God and the American people will show mercy on me, and recognize what I'm trying to do right now as what it genuinely is: repentance for the wrong I've done, and an act of good contrition to try to fix it."

"I sincerely hope everyone else involved in this does the same, and I encourage all of them to do so. Thank you for listening. I'll be available to answer any questions in the adjoining conference room in thirty minutes... nothing is off limits to ask me, then or ever after."

"That's the only way I believe I can earn back your trust: by being radically truthful and radically honest with you, from this moment forward. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America."

That, or something like it, is the speech that we need.

We need it broadcast live, in prime time, on as many channels as possible. I think the first high-level government official involved in this whole mess who comes forward, delivers a speech like that, and actually DELIVERS on it... stands a decent chance of sparking a revolution.

If that happened... I think we'd see the United States change radically, for the better, into something that no one thought could happen in their lifetimes, for at least the last 200 years: a country with a government we can trust to always be transparent and honest.

I think the American people are craving a change like that... perhaps desperately so. That could be a moment that people talk about for the NEXT 200 years: the moment when it all changed into something... better.

That might be the moment that The Fourth Turning gets started.

I predict right now that the first major politician to come out and truly embrace this idea, that they must always be both radically transparent and radically honest with the American people, always, no matter the cost... that politician is going to attract fanatical support.

If it happens, the more prominent they are going into it, the larger I'd expect the impact to be. I don't know if Donald Trump has it in him to remake himself that fundamentally... he strikes me as not having a personality that could tolerate that kind of public debasement.

He strikes me as much more of a street fighter than a soul-barer. I think he won because people wanted someone to challenge the status quo, and I think he's succeeded in large part in meeting that requirement.

I could be wrong. He could really surprise me. It'd be epic, too.

He could transform himself in a matter of weeks, from one of the most divisive Presidents in recent memory... into one that would rightly deserve a place in the history books as one of the most transformative.

If he was actually able to do it sincerely, and that's the real key.

This can only work for the people who really do walk the walk on this, no matter the personal cost.

The first person who tries to finesse this, who tries to lie and weasel their way into this position... they're gonna get literally destroyed, like nothing we've ever seen.

The American people can forgive a staggeringly large amount of bad behavior... but they will never tolerate being lied to under the banner of "radical transparency and radical honesty".

Trying to sleaze your way through that is gonna get you ripped limb from limb, friend.

I'm not even remotely kidding about that.

I could see that happening literally, live, on TV... and there might not be a jury in the land that would convict the people who did it, either.

So if you want to be the first major politician to pick up that #RTRH banner... be sure.

Be 100% sure that you CAN live your life that way, no matter the consequence.

I don't know that there are many politicians, or even many Americans who could do that, and really live it.

But there should be.

#RTRH needs to be a thing.

Radical Transparency, Radical Honesty.

I'm officially co-opting that #RTRH hashtag for this purpose... I saw only 22 tweets of it in the history of Twitter, so my apologies to anyone offended.

You're welcome to use anything I've written in this thread in your own speeches, gratis, if you want in on this action, pols.

Change your life.

Change the country.

Change the world.

Be the hero America needs, AND the one it DESERVES.

Embrace the concepts of Radical Transparency and Radical Honesty, and live it every day of your public life.

#RTRH

If you like the ideas I've discussed in this thread... you can do something about it.

You can help make it real. Use the #RTRH hashtag. Talk about it with others. Put it in your profile. Signal-boost it.

Make it viral. Make it real. Make it HAPPEN.