In the whole scheme of things, whether United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, got a hair wash and blow out earlier this week at a San Francisco salon that was off limits to nonprivileged people is small potatoes. Our descendants won't be reading about it in history books 50 years from now.
What is not small potatoes is that this has become a pattern for Democrats in the hyperpolitical, hyperpartisan, hyperracial scene that is 2020 America in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic.
They have become the country's scold, its holier-than-thou school marm, in lecturing the country how it should act medically and morally as its citizens endure a situation none of its citizens have experienced before. Its president, they say, is wrong 100% of the time, its Republican governors are rubes with no idea how to manage a crisis, most of its inhabitants are racist, it's a country falling into ruin, and only they can save it.
But when it suits them, when their pleasure is on the line, when it's not expedient, they don't follow their own rules. That's why what Pelosi did earlier this week, little episode though is was, is important.
Here are just a few examples from recent months:
* California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom decreed that restaurants, wineries and other businesses in 19 Central Valley counties could not open for indoor operations, but he did not include an adjoining county - Madera - where he and his wife own stock in a winery consortium. The winery in which they are involved only closed after Newsom's hypocrisy was called out.
* New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted residents of his city must limit their social activities and public interactions, but the Democrat kept up a regular schedule of visiting a gym.
* Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, and Robert Casey, D-Pennsylvania, have continued to batter Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for supporting school choice programs, but both sent their children to elite private schools. Whitehouse even said it was his prerogative to offer "the best education that I can for them, and I felt that, in their circumstances, the places that I chose to send them were the best schools for them."
* Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has mandated masks for residents of his state, but he has been pictured strolling the Virginia Beach boardwalk without a mask and has taken selfies without his mask with supporters.
* New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, similarly, has threatened state residents with punishment if they don't wear a mask in public, but the Democrat has been photographed on several occasions not wearing one in public.
* Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot isn't too put upon when riots rage through her town night after night, but the Democrat ordered a police detail to patrol her neighborhood to protect her and her family and banned protests outside her home. Her honor, in an episode that had echoes of Pelosi, told Windy City residents that "getting your roots done is not essential" when salons and barbers had to close their doors, according to the Chicago Tribune, but she was able to get a salon cut.
* Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has forbidden indoor restaurant dining in the City of Brotherly Love, but the Democrat didn't think anything about crossing the state line into Maryland to have an indoor restaurant meal.
* Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed 50 members of the political elite to attend the indoor funeral of the late U.S. Rep John Lewis, D-Georgia, and the Democrat exempted the attendees from the city's quarantine travel rules after the event.
We're not unaware that Republicans might be cited for saying one thing and doing another, but their pattern during the pandemic has been more one of "we're all learning together," "we're doing the best we can with the information we have" and "we want to offer you as much freedom in your activities as is safe."
We believe more and more Americans are recognizing the Democrats' actions and are saying we've seen this movie before during the haughty, arrogant Obama years. And we believe they're skeptical about seeing it again.