Today we play the What If? Game.

It’s one of my favorites, but former Steelers coach Bill Cowher hated it. Back in the day, when I was a sports columnist, it amused me to ask Cowher what if? questions and get his stock reply: “ I don’t play the what if? game.”

Now that I write only for my amusement, it occurs to me that ongoing events dictate it is time for a lively round of what if? I don’t expect any answers. This is just an exercise to prompt any who read this to consider the possibility that the right questions are being asked.

To begin, what if the political left nurtured conditions to increase violence so as to use that as a premise to grab guns and gut the Second Amendment?

Forget Joe Biden’s confused references to the populace not having F-15 jets or nuclear weapons to go toe-to-toe with oppressive government, the impetus for taking away guns from honest, law-abiding citizens will be the increasing rate of violent crime.

The parabolic rate of increase in such crimes owes in large part to the hamstringing of police forces, either through early retirements in which officers seek to get away from the insanity, or de-funding movements to limit personnel and equipment.

Take away both numbers of police and incentive to do the job, endorse lawlessness on the streets as legitimate social protest, decriminalize criminal behavior such as drug use and shoplifting, and you get a spike in crimes, often violent ones.

What if the whole COVID-19 pandemic, whether man-made or otherwise, was bastardized into a real-time experiment by the One World Order types to see just how much the worldwide citizenry would comply with ridiculous restraints in the name of public safety?

Increasingly, it looks like the virus was a lab production, but that doesn’t matter here. Regardless of origin, it has turned into a case of crisis used as opportunity, a playbook mouthed by the likes of control freaks from Machiavelli to Rahm Emanuel.

The sheeple are rebelling, as evidenced by a recent freedom rally in London that seemed to have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of marchers.

We can only hope those in control have overplayed their hand in the selling of fear regarding the virus and the draconian measures implemented as supposed responses to keep all safe.

Along a similar line, what if the overreaction that included shutdowns of the economy was designed to get people addicted to socialism?

Take away the means of self-support for the working percentage of the population and those people eagerly will accept governmental control of their lives via the purse strings. Already a disturbingly large percentage of the United States was addicted to government handouts.

That number has swelled and the lifestyle has been warmly embraced, as evidenced by continuing reports of workers who just want to stay home indefinitely, but still get payments from the government to fund their new, slug-like lifestyle.

Along the line of the government and economy, we have the final question. What if the intentional crippling of the economy and addicting workers to the act of refusing to take open jobs was designed to create an artificial worker shortage and force up wages through bastardizing supply and demand?

It seems we are on a march toward a de facto $15 minimum wage because so many jobs are going begging for workers due to those potential workers sitting at home collecting government handouts.

Simply put, in this economy, some jobs in some areas simply do not merit $15 an hour compensation. But if that becomes the norm – and it seems to be well on that path – be prepared for increases in the price of almost everything you purchase.

It doesn’t stop at the bottom of the wage scale. When minimum wage becomes $15, the workers who already were making $15 an hour are going to want $25, or more going forward.

This is the stuff of wage-price inflation spirals and your government has placed its meaty hand on the scale to make sure that is where we are headed.

It’s time for another installment of news and views, in which we recap a week’s worth of notable, often ridiculous, developments in our rapidly devolving society.

NEWS: Vox reports that preliminary FBI data indicates murders in the United States surged by 25 percent or more in 2020 compared with 2019, but experts interviewed weren’t sure why.

VIEWS: Let me take a stab (unfortunately violent metaphor) at that. Anyone else think that perhaps defund-the-police movements, as well as growing tolerance of mob violence and autonomous zones in Democrat-controlled major cities has anything to do with that jump?

NEWS: Joe Biden noted to supporters of the Second Amendment that they don’t need to keep their guns because they wouldn’t stand a chance against an oppressive government such as his that has F-15s and nuclear weapons.

VIEWS: And yet Democrats have been hyperbolic in saying the takeover of the U.S. Capitol in January by unarmed citizens threatened democracy here. As the U.S. found in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. fighter jets and nuclear weapons are pretty much ineffective against armed populaces, which is why the assault on the Second Amendment is so beloved by socialists.

NEWS: IRS statistics for 2018 – yes, years old but the latest we have since the IRS spends so much time harassing conservatives – the hated top 1 percent, those individual returns showing earnings of $540,000 a year or higher, paid a whopping 40.1 percent of this nation’s total individual taxes. Expand that to the top 5 percent ($218,000 or higher) and the total paid is 60.3 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent paid less than 3 percent of total individual taxes.

VIEWS: That lower 50 percent is almost exclusively the Democrat voter base, which is why the liberals are so keen to push their taxes to zero and give them even more freebies to guarantee their future support. Along with looking to grab guns, Biden and his handlers want to grab more taxes from the people who actually work hard for a living and look to be upwardly mobile. If you think the tax increases won’t affect the entire top 50 percent before this is all said and done, you are one gullible individual.

NEWS: My town is hosting its annual motorcycle rally, Thunder in the Valley, after a one-year virus-enforced hiatus.

VIEWS: If you can get past the noise, it’s a fun few days with plenty of free music and interesting people-watching opportunities. One of the drawbacks is that so many of the organizers and event help race around on sidewalks in four-wheeled vehicles, apparently having forgotten how to walk around our fairly compact downtown . One such woman backed over a trash can in a crowded Central Park and found it amusing as judged by her giggling.

NEWS: The Olympic Games, which from 1968 through 1998 tested some alleged female athletes to guarantee they were not males masquerading as the fairer sex, or females using drugs to simulate male strength, now welcome transgender athletes, including a former male weightlifter.

VIEWS: In this case, we’re being asked to ignore THE SCIENCE. And that science, according to The British Journal of Sports Medicine, reaffirms that in general men are stronger, run faster, jump higher, and throw objects farther than women. Even after the suggested one year of testosterone-suppressing drugs, trans women still had a 9 percent higher mean running speed than biological females. Also, as noted by developmental biologist Dr. Emma Hilton, 9,000 males have run faster 100-meter times than the current world-record time by a woman. An under-15 boys soccer team beat the mighty U.S. women’s national team in a scrimmage. The reigning Olympic women’s 100-meter champion is slower than the current 14-year-old boy record for the race. So, to recap, we’re supposed to slavishly accept FLAWED SCIENCE when it comes to viruses, but we must ignore DOCUMENTED SCIENCE when it comes to the Olympics and transgenders.

Once upon a time Father’s Day was pretty much a straightforward holiday. Not any more.

As yet another day to honor dad winds to a close, I find myself thinking of all the confusion there must have been across this land in view of the changing – not necessarily for the better – makeup of the typical family unit.

Our Father’s Day was fairly typical. My wife hosted a cookout, attended by my brother, my son and his wife, their two daughters, and me. Gifts were presented. The little girls played in a small wading pool and ran under a sprinkler that looked like an inflated watermelon.

But think of how Father’s Day might be celebrated in a same-sex household, say with two males and an adopted kid or kids. Even more complicated, how about a case in which one of the dudes donated sperm to be used on a surrogate mother?

Is one guy daddy and he gets the gifts today and the other man gets feted on Mother’s Day?

The questions are similar with same-sex couples of two women and an adopted child or children, or more of our aforementioned sperm donation producing a child, this time perhaps from an anonymous source. Who’s daddy and who’s mommy?

Do we just ignore such traditional holidays in those instances? More to the point, does the woke crowd campaign that such celebrations make the statistical outliers that are same-sex couples feel excluded or stigmatized and so the holidays must be outlawed?

Father’s Day also figures to be particularly difficult in this era of so many-hit-and-run fathers. If the guy was in the picture at one time, and remains in close contact, no problem.

But consider the multitude of instances in which an all-points-bulletin would be necessary to find dad.

And, if daytime trash television shows such as those of Jerry Springer or Maury Povich are to be believed, there are plenty of indiscriminate women who bear children without the benefit of knowing which guy actually fathered the child.

Cue the DNA results and screaming morons in the studio audience.

We certainly can extrapolate that the loose women who show up on such TV shows are not the only examples of their type. And so, in a nation with our considerable population, a day such as today might cause more than one illegitimate child to ask mommy “Who’s My Daddy?”

Things have been hectic around here today on the first Juneteenth holiday that now is part of the calendar of federal holidays.

Makes me wish I wasn’t retired and still had a job, so I could have taken the day off — with pay.

I guess I should have run around town looking for a statue of a confederate war hero to pull down, but I passed on that. No big deal since it probably would have been hard to find such a target in my home area.

I did read where the usual suspects are using the occasion to demand reparations to all blacks for slavery that ended more than 150 years ago. Even if we’re just talking the one-time promise of 40 acres and a mule, with compounded interest that could represent quite an expenditure by the same Biden-led federal government that proclaimed this an official holiday just two days back.

But cost won’t matter in this era of Modern Monetary Policy, when debt is king and only fools repay their borrowings. Our federal government, as the world’s largest debtor, is encouraging its citizenry to join the payment moratorium.

College students can’t be expected to repay their debts. Tenants can’t be expected to pay their rent, no matter how many stimulus handouts have been made, and can’t be evicted for their nonpayments. Shoplifting is being legalized in enlightened precincts such as San Francisco.

The trend is clear, only suckers honor financial obligations.

And governmental grifting has become something to be celebrated where once it had been condemned.

Against that backdrop, ginning up a few hundred billion, or a trillion dollars, or more out of thin air to compensate people whose great great great grandparents suffered won’t be a big problem.

While we’re at it, let us give Native Americans a better deal. Living on reservations, running lightly regulated gambling operations and getting some other government benefits is scant compensation for them having been pushed off their lands from sea to shining sea by our ancestors.

It would seem those Native Americans have prior claim on any national wealth considering their wronging predates slavery and its end in the United States. Pay them first, then let the blacks press their claims against Native Americans.

Considering the mounting price inflation we are witnessing — and the Federal Reserve actually got around to acknowledging it this week — the cost of making things right with Native Americans and blacks won’t be as costly in terms of actual wealth as one would think.

Think Weimar Germany or, more recently, Zimbabwe. Promise everyone a billion dollars, print up the appropriate unbacked currency in said denomination, distribute the bills, then unleash hyperinflation across the land which will bring us back to a time when virtually worthless money was burned in Germany to enable people to keep warm.

Truly this is a great time to be alive and dispensing monetary favors to all, or receiving same. When the bill comes due for this spending orgy, as it eventually must, rest assured that it then will be a very bad time to be alive.

But don’t allow such reality to intrude on your Juneteenth celebrations.

Word has been leaked that Joe Biden is taking every spare moment to prepare for his mid-week summit meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. It won’t be enough.

If this is a battle of wits, we’re sending in an unarmed man to represent us. Before it’s over, Biden may end up giving back Alaska and making a deal to buy a trillion gallons of vodka for $1 billion a gallon.

Let’s just hope Sleepy Joe doesn’t fall back on one of his pet boasts and challenge Putin to meet him behind the school gym to settle matters with a quick bit of fisticuffs. Make no mistake, that would be quick and I don’t care if DOCTOR JILL BIDEN gets to slip Joe a foreign object to help subdue the foreign guy.

Biden isn’t exactly showing sharp-as-a-tack form of late, including recently continuing to refer to Syria as Libya. If you don’t believe that, just check the official White House web site, which captured Biden’s verbal fumbling in all its glory. Give them credit for not polishing the remarks by eliminating the gaffes and misstatements.

Putin could send that horse he often is pictured astride to this summit and Biden would be over-matched intellectually.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Biden actually gets to meet Putin. I imagine it will go something like this.

BIDEN: Nikita, so good to meet you. (nervous coaching whispers from Biden’s handlers) Joseph? Leonid? Gorby? (more whispers/coaching) I mean Vlad.

PUTIN: No problem, same to you Mr. Trump.

BIDEN: By the way, Vlad, my son Hunter currently is between jobs, so do you have any high paying posts in state-run enterprises that he might be able to fill? Don’t worry about qualifications, he is more than willing to take on something for which he has absolutely no training or experience.

PUTIN: (unintelligible mumble).

BIDEN: No? Well, no problem. Hey, did I mention to you I’m running for Senate?

PUTIN: But I thought president was a higher post in your corrupt form of government?

BIDEN: It is, but Kamala’s got that one nailed down once they decide to pull the plug on me.

PUTIN: I’d heard something like that was said by that punk dilettante from Canada who only got elected because he traded on his father’s name.

BIDEN: Hey, Vlad some of my best sons are dilettantes. Like Barack once said, If he had a son he’d probably be a lot like Trayvon, I mean Trudeau.

PUTIN: Let us get down to business. I become weary of being the bogeyman for you and your socialist party members. Hacking, botched elections, illegal interference in campaigns, your out-of-control social media, always it is the Russians who are blamed for these capitalist failings. Why don’t you bother to mention that about eight of the top goalies in your National Hockey League are all Russians?

BIDEN: What’s hockey? But enough about selling things. By the way, do you have any female aides whose hair I can sniff?

PUTIN: Mr. President, I am shocked that you would reduce me to the role of pimp. However, if you want me to drum up a false dossier about women urinating on you in bed, well, that can be done.,

BIDEN: No, thanks, Vlad. (Looking at his Mickey Mouse watch) Gee, where did all the time go? Mickey’s big hand is on . . . it’s almost 5 o’clock. If I’m going to get the early bird special at the buffet, and be in bed by 6, I have to be going.

PUTIN: But, but, but . . .

BIDEN: Come on, man, I mean Lenin. I’ll send Kamala next time and make sure she brings some of those cookies that look just like her. But, whatever else you might do, don’t mention that she’s fibbed a lot about visiting the U.S.-Mexico border. Makes her get all hostile. Remember that and it will all go well. Now, can someone please tell me where I am again? And can any of you spare a Depends?

The U.S. Labor Department released inflation numbers Thursday indicating “transitory” inflation is arriving as the Feds long have professed to desire.

I’m not going to quibble with the numbers, but the reported overall annual headline rate is 5 percent and the core rate (stripping out food and energy, which no one uses, right?) is 3.8 percent, both of which are multi-year highs.

Yes, the accuracy of those numbers is open to debate. What is not debatable is that the trend is up and one wonders how high the inflation rate eventually will rise, and for how long?

Janet Yellen, former chairwoman of the Federal Reserve and current Treasury Secretary, provided some insight into how the people pulling the strings think when she said higher inflation and likely higher interest rates would be a good thing for both society and the Federal Reserve,

Why would Yellen say that, other than to pay homage to Martha “That’s a good thing” Stewart? One stated reason is to encourage economic activity – stimulating spending by people fearing the goods and services they want and desire will only cost more tomorrow, or next week or next month.

Yellen specifically alluded to Joe Biden’s $ 4 trillion in planned spending, which critics liken to pouring gasoline onto the smoldering inflation tinder already put in place by massive Federal Reserve money creation.

Even if that proposed Biden spending causes higher inflation and interest rates, no problem.

Thus far, investment markets seem to be buying the transitory inflation narrative. If that sentiment changes, reaction will be swift as evidenced by sharp declines in stocks and bonds and increases in traditional inflation hedges such as precious metals and commodities, and non-traditional items such as Bitcoin.

This reckless willingness to gamble with inflation is because there is no other way out of our fiscal mess. Those in charge are praying that inflation will run just hot enough to stimulate the economy, but not so hot as to melt it down.

This country enjoyed strong growth in much of the 1950s and 1960s, both periods of relatively low inflation. The ongoing suggestion that we “need” inflation to have economic success is specious.

It is the people who have manipulated interest rates to artificially low levels while simultaneously spiking money creation to historic levels who “need” inflation to bail them out and, by extension salvage the overall economy.

Eventually, as consumers find themselves paying higher and higher prices for necessities of life, they will demand a definition for “transitory.”

As their investment accounts shrink, they will demand these same bureaucrats do something to salvage the mess.

All will do well to remember the thoughts of Ronald Reagan on inflation:

“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”

Any of those can be harmful to your well-being, even on a transitory basis.

In a man-bites-dog moment for the political ages, no less a Democratic icon than Barack Hussein Obama has called out the radical leftists for going “overboard” with cancel culture.

Sure, the Harris-Biden odd couple figuratively heads the Democratic party, and Congressional geriatrics Pelosi and Schumer are, in theory, party leaders. But it is Obama who is the patron saint of the party.

And so, it was noteworthy in the extreme to have Obama come out on CNN, a house organ of the left, and point out that the woke puritans are being ridiculous in their latter-day witch hunt for the politically incorrect, a frenzy that goes under the shorthand of cancel culture.

These zealots act as judge, jury and executioner on matters ranging from taking down statues of past heroes, to boycotting businesses of those who don’t kiss the hem of their purity robes, to generally tossing out enough holier-than-though judgmental horsecrap to fill the stables of Louisville Downs for the next century.

Reality, Obama noted, means that no one is perfect, including those conducting the witch hunts, and so a modicum of restraint is more than called for going forward.

Back in the days when Obama slept in the White House, a top level aide of his supposedly characterized the Obama political style as leading from behind.

But, in this case, I’m thinking that Obama sees his party imploding with its ridiculous leftward crusades and he is trying to get in front of it, if only to be able to issue some “I told you so” boasts should the radical pursuits end up backfiring on all those smug socialists currently running wild in the real and digital streets with their actual or metaphorical torches and pitchforks.

It is perhaps noteworthy that this Obama critique of cancel culture comes in close proximity with some Democratic Senators, most notably West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, standing up to their party and professing unwillingness to go along with them ramming through initiatives designed to make this, in practice, a nation of one-party rule.

Manchin already is being subjected to vitriolic attacks from the usual Democratic mouthpieces both in media and other positions of prominence.

Will these same people be willing to take on Obama for criticizing cancel culture and its equally ridiculous co-conspirator, the woke movement?

Probably not. More likely, Obama’s little indiscretion will be allowed to pass unless he continues to preach a message of restraint in the culture wars.

Their problem is Obama is inoculated against the typical weapons the cancel culture and woke crowds use to beat down the opposition – branding them as racists, or misogynists, or, gasp, heartless conservatives.

The product of a black father and white mother, Obama has the race card Trumped (political pun intended). We have no reports of him mistreating women and no rational person would brand him as being on right end of the political spectrum.

Obama’s honesty on this cancel culture subject presents a true problem to the radical leftists.

Even worse, his public utterances on the topic might prompt some of the jelly-spined to grow a pair figuratively and stop grovelling to these political correct cancel culture movements.

Bullies have a problem when their victims decide it’s time to stand up and fight back. Dare I dream such a time is near for the cancel culture/woke mobs?

I’m retired, yet never have been busier, which explains the shortage of blog posts of late.

Already today I’ve been performing ongoing dog-sitting duties at my son’s house; collected one of my Mustangs that was having work done on it; picked up my brother for a visit to our mother and took him home; stopped at my house to attend to various duties, including a failed attempt to start the power washer for my wife; got in a quick walk amidst the humid, 80-degree conditions; cleaned the interior of my son’s car which I’m driving because he has my Kia SUV on his current family trip; and tended to some other chores.

But still I pay attention to the strange happenings that pass for everyday life in these United States circa 2021 and I’m struck by the urge to produce a news-and-views post to cover the many items that captured my attention.

THE NEWS: West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is standing pat on his refusal to vote for the Democrats’ cynically mis-named “For the People Act” which in the interest of furthering Democratic far-left ideals seeks to turn this into a one-party nation by eliminating the Senate filibuster rule.

THE VIEWS: Democrats are apoplectic that Manchin won’t toe the party line, regardless of how far left that line is. He’s been called a traitor or worse, often by the very same people who lionized Republican turncoat Senator Mitt Romney when he would not back his party’s agenda. More hypocrisy from the Democrats. I’m stunned.

THE NEWS: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s wishy-washy flip-flopping continues to be outed, this time by his emails made public due to a freedom of information request, yet Fauci continues in his role as the highest paid federal employee. Yes, he makes more than the president. Note that I did not write “earns” more than the president.

THE VIEWS: Fauci is the quintessential lifelong bureaucrat, feathering his nest at taxpayers’ expense and refusing to leave gracefully even though he is well past normal retirement age and exhibiting Biden-like cognitive difficulties.

THE NEWS: Speaking of Joe Biden, he and/or his handlers forgot to acknowledge the 77^th anniversary of D-Day June 6.

THE VIEWS: Biden was too busy noting the “Tulsa Massacre,” which fits better into the Democrats’ agenda of promoting racial divide in this country, the better to keep the populace fighting among itself and not paying attention to plans to turn this once great land into Venezuela north.

THE NEWS: De facto president Kamala Harris made a point of passing out cookies bearing her likeness to the media accompanying her on a trip to Guatemala.

THE VIEWS: In the-great-minds-think-alike category, I immediately thought of Marie Antoinette, before she lost her head, uttering the infamous “Let them eat cake” line. Now, I read that Republican chairwoman Ronna McDaniel beat me to the punch with a Marie Antoinette analogy.

THE NEWS: It wasn’t exactly a PR coup for Harris on the Guatemala trip, during which she urged Guatemalans to stay home and not charge through Mexico to our southern border, lest they be stopped there.

THE VIEWS: Imagine the surprise of Guatemalans who thought that by voting via mail-in ballots for Biden and Harris they were assuring themselves a warm welcome as they moved north to the land of milk and honey and no election integrity.

Word comes to me of the ultimate bastardization of the phrase “living the American Dream.”

It was uttered by a man with no visible means of support – as in no job. But said man has a mate, a couple of kids and a dog.

He resides in a house in the suburbs, has multiple takeout food deliveries daily, and generally lives what used to be considered a middle class existence, but without the need to put in that pesky 40-hour work week.

It used to be the American Dream meant opportunity to move up the socioeconomic ladder by virtue of hard work and development of one’s skills. The key word was opportunity, not a guarantee of outcome enabled by handouts designed to make the dream come true on the tab of taxpayers.

An individual’s eventual success, or failure, rested squarely on the shoulders of that individual.

Hard work customarily was rewarded with improvement in standard of living. Now, such improvements are provided through all manner of governmental largess.

Statistical and anecdotal evidence continues to pour in that life on the dole never has been more popular.

News items and postings on social media tell the stories of job vacancies going unfilled due to a lack of interested workers.

Just today it was announced that more than 15 million Americans continue to be on some sort of government dole, ostensibly to help them financially with the economic decline fostered by the government but blamed on COVID-19.

This occurs against a backdrop of record job openings. But those jobs are not interesting to people getting traditional unemployment along with supplemental benefits.

At least 20 states are planning to cut off the flow of those excess pandemic relief handouts, meaning that in a month or so, some of these idlers are going to have a come-to-Jesus moment regarding the need to work.

I’m not sure my example of the man living the American Dream (perhaps a welfare lifer) will fall into that category. But many others will.

And you wonder what the reaction will be? The socialists among the Democratic party likely are praying to their Marx/Lenin/Mao gods that the layabouts take to the streets to demand the government nanny state put them back on the dole.

This will be leveraged by the lamestream media into a steady drumbeat of “poor me” stories from individuals and heads of families who opted for the non-working lifestyle and now are lamenting their dire financial straits.

We will be asked how can a person be expected to exist in 2021 without the latest smart phone and an unlimited data plan; food, housing and medical care; tattoos; state-of-the-art gaming systems; and a smart television the size of the average drive-in movie screen, all provided at no cost to them?

Joe Biden’s handlers will tell the feeble one that dramatic action is needed, and another trillion or so will be added to the national debt with one labored scrawl on some sort of “emergency” bailout legislation.

That’s the American Dream these days. It will become the American Nightmare if and when producers decide to stop going to work and paying taxes, thereby cutting the legs out from under the government and its ability to fund all its giveaway programs.

What a contradiction it was to watch pre-race coverage of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday – actual Memorial Day, not the Monday observance designed by the government to provide three-day weekends – and witness ongoing attempts to manipulate the masses and squelch freedom.

How refreshing it was a few hours later to watch the pre-race scenes from NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600, where individual freedom was celebrated and those whose military service made it all possible were remembered. There was no heavy-handed infringement on individual rights to be seen.

The maskholes were at their virtue-signaling best at Indy. Driver introductions before the race had drivers parading across a stage, three at a time, all neatly masked. When some drivers had progeny accompany them to the intros, the kids were masked, too.

Yet moments later, in unstaged scenes from pit lane, some of those same kids had dispensed with the masks, as had many drivers, team members and assorted others.

Among those others was Mario Andretti, arguably America’s greatest racing driver, who is one of three drivers in the history of motorsports to have won races in IndyCar, Formula One, NASCAR and World Sports Car Championship.

Andretti is the only driver ever to have won the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500 and the Formula One World Championship.

Andretti also is 81 years old, amid the demographic that should be terrified of catching COVID-19, but he boldly moved around pit lane mask-less, at least when he was shown by the television cameras.

The most absurd image from Indy was when some trumpet players from the Purdue University marching band were shown, ostensibly playing their instruments through masks.

I confess that even after several internet searches I was unable to explain this incongruous image. Was the music pre-recorded? Were other band members elsewhere playing while these few stood as a human Potemkin village?

That web search did turn up an article from earlier in the week about how Indy “scofflaws” were going mask-less, and congregating, in direct violation of dictates, and while they wouldn’t be prosecuted, they would be urged to toe the line by “mask ambassadors.”

This would be ridiculous against any backdrop. But at a time when more and more states are opening up fully, without any of the predicted disastrous effects, the powers-that-be trying to keep the citizenry under their thumb by citing the so-called COVID emergency is pathetic.

That so many in an American populace that holds liberty so dear would allow themselves to be dictated to in such an extreme way, for such a long time, is a sad state of affairs.

That a NASCAR race in North Carolina showed that not all the populace is similarly cowed helped salvage the day.

Drivers, announcers, bystanders that included world heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury, moved about maskless taking in pre-race NASCAR pageantry. Fans in the stands apparently had left the masks at home, too.

In nations around the world, citizens are rising up in protests against draconian governmental over-reaction in the name of fighting a virus. Yes, people die from this virus. But cogent arguments and statistical evidence have been provided that our lockdown/shutdown cures have had worse cumulative effects than the virus itself.

Hopefully, by this time next year, this country will have shaken off the yoke of governmental oppression in the name of virus control and the holiday once again will be observed across-the-board with liberty on display, not being forced to hide behind a mask.