Some just want to return to work. It’s hard to blame them for that. And if it were just folks gathering in desperation because they can’t pay rent or buy food, well, let the revolution begin.

Yet Wednesday’s Operation Gridlock protest at the Michigan State Capitol building wasn’t simply about the fear of hunger or homelessness. It was about the misplaced fear of tyranny.

“Don’t Tread On Me,” a flag read, its yellow fabric blowing next to the red, white and blue.

“Live free or die,” read a sign made of cardboard, held proudly by a protester apparently unaware that he was, at that moment, protesting on the grounds of the Capitol … quite freely.

“This is prison.”

“Free Michigan.”

And, in case you weren’t clear as to what the protest was about, here’s a face mask, a bottle of hand sanitizer and a roll of toilet paper.

I wasn’t there to ask the woman who held those three items as she stood for a picture, smiling. When the photo was snapped, she wasn’t using the mask. Thank goodness she wasn’t using the toilet paper.

Was this a nod to the vagaries of supply and demand? Symbols of our most precious commodities? A darkly comic set piece about the COVID-19 pandemic?

Look, the folks who braved the April snow to honk their horns in miles-long processions around the state Capitol were frustrated. We’re all frustrated. I’m frustrated. I wanted to paint my living room lime-green, just as it says in the Constitution.

The protesters had every right to be there and, apparently, the right to stand shoulder-to-shoulder — except for those carrying semi-automatics, who stood gun-to-gun. For the most part, protesters stayed in their vehicles, content to jam the streets and honk.

Yet watching a couple hundred gather on the Capitol grounds — largely unmasked, including state police — should remind us why Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order got stricter last week:

We. Don’t. Listen.

Not to politicians. Not to doctors. Not to scientists. Not to each other.

If that doesn’t change, at least a little, we’re gonna be living like this a lot longer.

Maybe we will anyway. Maybe we are just that selfish. Maybe we always have been.

Maybe it’s too hard to think beyond our desires and figure out the difference between why it’s acceptable to buy a screwdriver but not a can of paint. One is used to fix the essential workings of your home. One is used to decorate it.

Lengthening the list of non-essential movements and transactions is an attempt to further slow physical human interaction. That’s it.

Banning the sale of plants and seeds and paint — at least in certain stores — isn't a conspiracy, or the beginning of a dictatorship. It’s the best guess of our public health officials as to how to keep flattening the curve. Public health officials who are helping guide the governor’s policy.

Yes, I used the word “guess.” Because none of this is exact. And while outlawing golf may seem arbitrary, it’s a guess based on the lifelong studies of the doctors and scientists who are charged with keeping us safe.

Why not trust them? Why not consider their motivation? Why not give them the same benefit of the doubt you would to your internist when you walk into his or her office with an unsettling pain in your stomach?

For those who drove to Lansing out of fear of losing home and pantry, and stayed in their vehicles, that’s understandable. Let it out. Say your piece.

But for those who caravanned to the state capital to play militia? To wave a Confederate flag? To argue that social distancing is the gateway to the end of the Second Amendment?

Stop. Please. For your sake. For everyone else’s.

No one is coming after our guns. Or our right to protest. Or our right to affix a sign to our car comparing watching Netflix to prison.

We just can’t go pontooning. Or barbecuing with our neighbors. Or visit the pro shop at the local golf course.

You want to protest that?

Fine.

Next time stay in your vehicle. And wear a mask if you step out of it.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.