It is not quite, however, the Black Plague as it's been advertised. Like the Flu, it kills those vulnerable to it. It was worse than any cold I ever had, but it was not as bad as the worst flu. It was sure as hell an insufficient reason to destroy the healthiest economy world history has ever seen, to crumple up and throw away the Bill of Rights and to impose the most corrupt, incompetent and illegitimate regime on us we've ever experienced. I miss Donald Trump every day.

Speaking of illegitimate regimes, don't say "liberal". Nat Hentoff was a liberal. Hubert Humphrey was a liberal. They were both Democratysc when it might have meant something. They're a long-extinct breed, now. Don't even say "socialist". That's nothing but a euphemism for communist, the ideology that thousands of Americans fought and died to keep out of America.

Me, I've spent altogether too much time in hospitals over the past quarter century, what with a quadruple bypass and a stroke and what-not. It always feels like prison to me. I miss my family, I miss my cat. I miss my collection of guns and knives. (They're terribly narrow-minded about that.) I was also in "isolation" and subject to mask fascism whenever I left the room.

I also missed being out of touch with you, my friends and readers, and with L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise. I came home to several thousand e-mails that I'll never be able to catch up to. Happily, as I watched TV coverage of our collapsing republic, I made notes, and I have dozens of articles to write. I'll eventually get to those. I was also on the cusp of publishing a new book that I'll let you all know about in the near future.

The great riddle remains how an institution filled with extremely nice folks, doing their damnedest to keep you alive, can still be such a horrible place. I guess the easiest way to lose your freedom is to need help. Sounds like something Leroy Jethro Gibbs might say.