November 18, 2021 at 2:12 p.m.
Resist now, or forever hold your imprisonment
Resist now, or forever hold your imprisonment
But then, of course, there was the sullen fury of the blistering moment, followed by dull darkness, and the lament that none of us saw it coming.
Part of the reason most people living in democratic republics don't see the storm on the horizon, or even notice once tyranny has blown open the doors and is rushing up the staircase, is that we are blinded by the comfortable furniture all around us. The constitutional couch is scuffed and old but restful and reassuring, and everybody is free to use it. It's been that way forever, and thus it will be that way forevermore.
Nothing so egregious as tyranny could ever happen here.
The truth is, we don't see tyranny coming partly because we have become too relaxed. We have for too long taken our freedoms for granted. We have dropped our guard.
Another reason people don't see tyranny coming these days is because it sometimes dresses up as the friendly neighbor next door. As the comedian George Carlin once famously said, "When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts ..."
He was eerily on the mark. The fascist crowd these days may not be wearing Smiley shirts, decked out as they are in Biden's angry scowls, but they sure are wearing Nike's woke sneakers, and they are assuring us they are here for our own good. Uncle Joe and all the government cousins are protecting us from ourselves. We should be so thankful.
Sure, that's what the lockdowns were all about. That's what the school and business closures were all about. That's what the masking was all about, you know, safety, not slavery. And sure, that's what the vaccine mandates are all about, too.
At some point, though, usually just before it's too late, the neighborly costumes come off, and the fascists reveal themselves as the stormtroopers they are. They drop the smileys and the pretense, and let you know in no uncertain terms just who rules your life and what will happen to you if you do not obey.
And that is what is going on right now, as this point in world history, perhaps the darkest days for liberty and democracy since World War II. The inflection point was last week in Austria, when the government ordered the lockdown of all unvaccinated people.
Which is to say, the Austrian government just put all its unvaccinated citizens under house arrest.
Oh sure, it's only temporary and they can still go to work and buy groceries, so what's the big deal? The big deal is, because they are unvaccinated many don't have a job to go to anymore, so it's a lot bigger lockdown that it appears. Plus, a temporary concentration camp is still a concentration camp.
Most troubling, it represents the spread of a disease that is far more deadly than Covid-19: the sickness of a police state mentality and a police state reality that is built around the absolute power of the government to control the population, both politically and physically.
The emergence of police state pandemics in formerly democratic societies was on vivid display first in Australia, then it hopped over to Austria. Germany is said to be considering following along. Where to after that, we can only guess.
Actually, though Austria grabbed all the headlines, there are other governments resorting to desperate authoritarian tactics. In New South Wales, Australia, unvaccinated people over age 16 are prohibited from visiting another person's house. In Singapore, the government will no longer cover medical bills for those who are unvaccinated without a good reason, whatever that means.
Tyranny is on the march.
Oh, but you say, it can't happen here.
Oh, but it can, and it already has. The vaccine mandate for large employers - which is just a prelude to a vaccine mandate for small businesses - is a significant step in tyranny's direction. The finer points of the mandate have been debated, but the most important thing to understand about it is just how authoritarian it is, as authoritarian as the Austrian lockdown, or worse. For if the government is willing to take away your livelihood if you choose to remain unvaccinated, what won't the government do to get its way?
After all, earning a living to provide for yourself and your family is fundamental to human dignity and freedom, not to mention actual survival. Any government so willing to take away people's fundamental ability to eat and to live their lives is no legitimate or humane government but an evil incarnation of the darkest of dictatorships.
At least in Austria, the government will let the unvaccinated go out to buy groceries and to work; in Biden's America, you're not allowed to work, so there will be a lot less money to buy groceries. Biden literally doesn't care if you starve if you do not do what he commands.
Those who say, well, workers can avoid vaccination if they get weekly tests are still not seeing the tyranny hiding behind such an option. It's a false choice because most will have to pay for the weekly tests, wear masks at all times while indoors or in a car, and businesses don't have to offer the option anyway.
Some choice: Jump into the fire or stay right here in the frying pan.
And it makes no matter if the vaccine mandate ultimately fails in court. That the government even tried in the first place to crush its citizens this way, that its mindset is of power at all costs, not people, condemns the Biden administration to a guilty verdict for all time.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Austria's lockdown announcement was how it has been received by the liberal establishment here in America, another sign that authoritarianism can and is happening here.
For example, Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post columnist, responded to the Austrian pronouncement with this tweet, "Is there a point at which the 'unvaccinated' need to be prosecuted?"
In other words, Weingarten was suggesting Austria really didn't go far enough.
And here's how Arne Duncan, Obama's secretary of education, put it on Twitter: "If you are a danger to yourself and others, you must remain at home. If you aren't, you are free to roam around the country. Austria is onto something..."
Duncan later doubled down, tweeting: "I look forward to the day when we Americans value the health, safety and well-being of our neighbors at least as much as we value our personal freedom."
And this was the guy in charge of our children's federal education policy.
At least in Austria, thousands protested the announcement in the streets of the capital city, just as hundreds of thousands have protested vaccine passports and lockdowns in other European countries.
Many Americans have not heard about those mass protests. That's because our corporate media hasn't really reported about it, for obvious reasons.
What's troubling is that we haven't had similar street protests in this country over Biden's mandate diktat. So let's not say it can't happen here. All those chants of Let's Go Brandon are fine, but at some point we all have to resist and head to the barricades. We had better speak up soon.
We'll end with Martin Niemöller's poem from the early days of Nazi Germany: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."
It's time to resist, and resist loudly before there's no one left to speak for any of us.
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