Give Dr. Anthony Fauci an inch and he’ll take a mile.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director now wants to stick Americans in goggles and shields, in addition to the face masks.

What’s next, Mission Oriented Protective Posture Gear — better known by its military and chemical weapons warfare acronym, MOPP gear?

Why not.

“If you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it,” Fauci told ABC News in an Instagram Live interview.

LOL. OMG. WT — freak. “Comedy of Dunces” ain’t got nothing in the humor department compared to this guy.

“You have mucosa in the nose, mucosa in the mouth, but you also have mucosa in the eye,” Fauci said. “Theoretically, you should protect all the mucosal surfaces. So if you have goggles or an eye shield you should use it.”

Blue ribbon for the best mucosa meme.

But he was serious.

“[I]f you really want to be complete,” Fauci said, “you should probably use it if you can.”

Here’s how the whole coronavirus clampdown on individual rights has gone: First comes the recommendation. Then comes the executive order. Then comes the radically un-American policing force to enforce the radically un-American recommendation-slash-order. Then come the private sector businesses with their dictates: No shirt, no shoes, no face masks, so service.

Then come the sheeple in the pundit seats exploiting the fear factor of the uninformed.

Then come the public shamings and scoldings of those who refuse to comply.

Then come repeat lies about obeying laws — that is, the repeat, repeat, repeat messaging from the fear-driven and political exploiting crowd about the Face Mask Laws (that aren’t laws).

Then come the go along to get along defeatism of even those who see the lies, but desperately want a return to normal.

And now comes the ratcheting of the bureaucratic madness — and takeover of individual rights.

Goggles and eye shields, Fauci said, are “not universally recommended” just yet.

But he started the chain.

He laid the groundwork.

He wound it up.

Now watch as the left seizes on it and goes.

A cynic would wonder if the goal post on face masks was being purposely moved. Why? So when the outrage spread far and wide, the goggles and shields recommendation would die down, and the masses, relieved at the “win,” would more gracefully and quietly go into that good face mask wearing night. It’s a teenage strategy: Ask for a motorcycle and $100 while all along only wanting to borrow the car Saturday night.

Ask for full body gear so that face masking becomes the national compromise.

The serious side is this: A nation driven by fear is a nation ripe for the picking and plucking of individual rights. As the line of logic goes, those who would trade freedoms (and in this case, sanity) for a bit of safety and security, deserve neither.

Those who would trade freedoms and listen to an unelected, unaccountable-to-the-people medical bureaucrat with a long-running record of being wrong, wrong, wrong deserve scorn and dismissal. Fauci, by the time this has ended, would have Americans in full-body protective gear, if fearful Americans let him.

First appeared at The Washington Times.