In “Zero,” Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1994 self-deprecating ode to rock stardom and rapid mood swings, he intoned, “And God is empty just like me.” Odd talk for someone who a few years later would write, “So perish every fond ambition / God and trouble are all I’ve known / Yet how rich is my condition / God and heaven are all my own.” Even rock stars can change their mind on things. But I digress.

While Corgan’s lyrics are a fair topic for debate, no one can deny that words have power. Interpretation of the meaning behind words often leads overthinkers down rabbit holes of their own making. Sometimes — in fact, most times — words mean their exact individual definition no matter how they are strung together. Or how the left try to redefine them to a level even fellow liberals can’t abide (video contains profanity).

Example? Sure. The COVID panicdemic. Spelling intentional.

What if, when the blameless bats were first hitting the fan, the powers that be would have used wise words instead of having a combination freak out and overeager embracing of overlord LARPing over COVID? Yes, at the beginning, there was limited information on which to determine how much of a health threat was posed by the virus. In such a scenario, it is best to err on the side of caution. However, it rapidly became apparent to everyone who was actually paying attention that the measures state and local governments were imposing had a slightly lower success rate than cat herding.

What if instead of trying to, on one hand, ban life as we know it while on the other refuse to treat humanity as if more than 3.7% of same had three or more brain cells working in coordinated fashion, the governments around the world would have spoken with calm reason? Hey, there’s a virus out there, it’s a bad one, take useful and workable precautions. (Brief aside: if you’re of the unshakable opinion that COVID isn’t real, please immediately change the channel to InfoWars or variation thereof.) Even the low-info dunderheads would have caught on somewhere along the line.

Everyone else sooner or later caught on to the truth. The government wasn’t trying to stop the spread. It was trying to catch fireflies with a trout fishing net. The threat was real, but exaggerated. The same people who love to tack “common sense” in front of laws they want to pass showed they have no common sense. They preached the evangel of The Gospel According to St. Fauci, hoping against hope the congregation wouldn’t realize they never heard the same message twice.

How different would things be if it had been called the COVID shot instead of a vaccine? Let’s be real. If the COVID vaccines are actually vaccines, they’re the worst vaccines imaginable. So let’s stop calling them what they’re not and start calling them COVID shots, to be placed in the same category as flu shots.

Not to downplay COVID’s severity, but let’s compare it to the aforementioned flu. There are tremendous similarities in terms of risk factor, etc., although it warrants mention the flu poses a greater danger to kids. For many, the flu means being miserable for a few days. For others it’s life-threatening. This is why every year there’s a new flu shot that hopefully will inoculate its recipients against this year’s variants. You don’t have to get a flu shot. It’s a topic to be discussed between you and your doctor. Some people should, while for others it’s a matter of choice. It’s a shot. It’s not a full-throttle vaccine such as the ones for polio.

Normal people understand and accept vaccination against polio and such. They understand and accept common sense measures, like not going to work when you’re sick even when you’d love to do so for the sole purpose of breathing on the boss. Normal people also know vaccines are supposed to work pretty much every single time, whereas shots are better than nothing but not as near universally effective as vaccines. The pharmaceutical companies worked quickly to develop COVID shots. Just don’t call them what they’re not, namely vaccines. They’re shots. They don’t last forever. They require constant updating and improvements to counteract new strains. Period.

People will listen and understand when told the truth. People also understand what is going on when not being told the truth. We understand what it means when you scream blue murder about Aaron Rodgers missing a game because of COVID but embrace radio silence when a vaccinated Ben Roethlisberger misses a game because of COVID. We know full well what is going on when you yell until you’re hoarse about Kyle Rittenhouse but can’t be bothered to so much as whisper Peng Shuai‘s name. It is The Narrative that matters, and any deviance from same must immediately be decried as the psychotic ramblings of a deviant.

Unfortunately for proponents of The Narrative, even as you cannot change history you cannot readily change established word definitions. You can call an apple an orange all day, but it will remain an apple. You can tell a lie all day, but it will remain a lie. Even as the lies about COVID have been hammered into everyone’s head, they remain lies. Perhaps if all parties involved would have told the truth, we would be done with it by now. But no, government couldn’t pass up on, and still can’t let go of, its power grab in the name of protecting the public it pretends to serve any more than it can give up slandering American citizens. Why should it? As long as the lapdog media does its bidding, and as long as enough fools believe the lies and keep the liars in power, it is more than happy to leave the rest of us knowing, to paraphrase Billy Corgan, that despite all our rage, individually we are still just a rat in a cage.