Americans can be rebellious. We had a revolution and a civil war. But we’re also an understanding people when dealt with straight-up. We’ve been emptying our pockets at airports, partially undressing, and allowing strangers to paw through our packed underwear and even touch our bodies for two decades now.

Had that squadron of Washington folks been honest, Americans might still be generally understanding and obedient. That acquiescence, however, is changing drastically now and Gallup has just unearthed more facts as proof.

COVID was blamed for the most deaths during some months this past year, a total exceeding 800,000 since early 2020.

But just as Americans are returning to pre-pandemic lifestyles and traditions (watch TV video this week of clogged travel terminals), they have also returned to their long-held fears of and concern over the top two, too-familiar killer diseases.

They are heart disease, which kills one American every 36 seconds or some 670,000 a year, and cancer, which takes about 600,000 Americans annually, 52 percent of them men. Half of all U.S. men and a third of women will contract some form of cancer in their lives.

The new Gallup survey found women now are more worried than men about a panoply of diseases, including COVID and even AIDS:

Cancer (Women 56, Men 44); Heart Disease (48, 40); Stroke (43, 27); Diabetes (33. 27); Flu (31, 18); COVID (43, 38).

Democrats are more than twice as worried as Republicans about catching COVID (57 percent GOP 27 percent). Also more worried more about cancer and the flu. But both parties’ members show little difference in worry over heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

Remember social distancing? It’s long gone the way of those faded stickers six feet apart on store floors.

Initially, had those fame addicts like Fauci et al. only said, for example:

Folks, This is brand-new to us, too. We don’t know much. Our labs and techs are working around the clock to figure out this virus. In an abundance of caution we’re going to try all kinds of tactics to save lives and suffering. Some will work. Some won’t. Please bear with us.

But they didn’t say that. And they weren’t humble. They knew everything from the get-go. Or acted like it. They still do. Trust us. Perhaps worst, they were serial hypocrites – at baseball games, hair salons, French restaurants.

Remember? “Two weeks to flatten the curve.” That seemed doable. Now, it hurts to laugh at such naivete.

Arrogance piled upon arrogance piled upon arrogance, spoon-fed to a fearful public. And now, here we are a divided country, angry, afflicted with abundant Karens, arguing over chicken-s***, and still getting sick and dying.

An incompetent president, vacuous vice president, and a media essential to a functioning democracy that’s dissipated virtually every splinter of its credibility are not helpful either.

No wonder the world’s evil-doers are plotting as you read this to take advantage of a super-power that’s often acting like a tiny cartoon kingdom ruled by inbred royals who enjoy dancing in a castle most nights. (See Joe Biden’s deadly, backwards Afghan exit, mental wanderings about his fictitious careers and personal encounters, cockamamie decisions (endorse a Russian pipeline after killing an American one, terminate cash bail for violent criminals, open the southern border when it was quiet), and broken promises (all Americans will be evacuated, no vaccine mandate, inflation is a blip.))

Despite the president’s assurance to ABC News last summer, on Thursday the Biden State Department admitted that when the evacuation suddenly ended, more than 60,000 Afghan interpreters, other local assistants, and their families were left behind at the mercy of the Taliban.

This is a stain on America’s national honor that media has let slide, something it would never permit for a president from another party. Will voters remember this betrayal 46 weeks from now?

Without access to his social media accounts, Donald Trump has been largely quiet in political exile. A lot of people, me included, got angry at him at times for silly antics and periodic pettiness. But you know what? He ran the big things like a decisive and effective business executive:

• The murderous ISIS caliphate is evil: Kill it.
• We need millions of new jobs and energy independence: Scrap some regulations, cut taxes.
• A weak military is an invitation to national insecurity: Rebuild it.
• A country without borders is not a nation: Stop the flow of illegals before they cross the border and build a wall.
• A mysterious virus from a communist country threatens imminent global devastation: Unleash free enterprise, end-run the ponderous health bureaucracy by promising to buy millions of doses of all the successful vaccines pharma can develop ASAP. First made, first bought.

The pandemic lock-downs and associated gimmicks like virtual classrooms may have slowed the virus’ spread.

They certainly did not flatten any curve. They devastated an economy, murdered countless small businesses, stunted learning, caused an untold number of suicides, depressions, and broke the work habits and discipline of millions, many of whom have yet to recover.

They savaged savings accounts, launched an ongoing tsunami of supply-chain crises, and created countless opportunities for media to reveal their weaknesses and ingrained biases.

They also created inviting openings for some politicians to reveal their authoritarian tendencies which stoked the country’s divisions, fears, mistrust, and distrust.

They enriched pharmaceutical companies, bolstered streaming services, tattered the reputations of many experts and institutions, and infected most Americans with a crippling cynicism that corrodes the kind of blind trust open democracies require to endure.

Ultimately, at home, the invisible little virus that “escaped” a Chinese laboratory ousted an imperfect, sometimes impetuous president who’d been making life difficult for numerous miscreants abroad and domestic elites whose political control Trump seriously endangered.

And led to the installation of the oldest president in history, one with clearly diminished faculties, with an unidentified cadre of unelected leftist functionaries plotting behind the screen and telling the old guy what to do, say, and who to call upon.

So, except for all that, no real damage to our America because “experts” handled everything so well.