[krapp]

Exactly. For instance, we were all warned that the "temporary" measures taken by governments to enforce quarantines and travel restrictions during COVID were just a pretext for a permanent state of pharmaco-military-industrial fascism precisely because governments never willingly give up power, and to this day I'm not allowed to leave my apartment without government permission or else snipers will shoot me dead in the street, and not having my vaccine passport on me at all times means an instant lifetime vacation in the CDC gulags.

Oh wait, no... that never actually happened because governments actually willingly give up power all the time.

[oceanplexian]

I don't personally remember the government "willingly" giving up anything. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to end the TSA Mask Mandate, and only did so after they were ordered to terminate it by a judge. The same thing happened with the vaccine mandates for private employers, and several other measures.

[krapp]

I don't remember anyone dragging any government officials kicking and screaming anywhere - the courts are a part of the government after all, so the government submitting to the courts' ruling is simply a matter of the checks and balances of government working. After all, if it were truly the case that government never gives up power voluntarily, the courts would never rule against the government.

And outside of the two instances you mentioned, the vast majority of quarantine measures were indeed voluntarily lifted without injunction from the courts.

But I suppose it's simply the nature of modern hyperreality that we must remember the past differently.