What Will You Do Without Freedom?
The corporate media continues to spew its fear propaganda about Covid-19 non-stop. Even after it is becoming clearer by the day that this strain of flu is no more potentially fatal than most others, there is no recognition of that fact, no attempt to put the number of deaths into any kind of perspective, namely that it appears this flu will kill about the same number of Americans as most flues on average and that the number who die from it is only a quite small fraction of the number of Americans who die from all causes each year.
Instead, everyone is supposed to obediently submit to dramatic, likely permanent, changes in behavior along with having most of the economy shut down.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s there were untold violent domestic acts of insurrection as black militants raged, airplanes were frequently hijacked to Cuba, and opposition to the Vietnam War spawned underground cells of murderers and anarchists. In 1970 alone there were 475 incidents defined as “terrorist attacks” and yet American society, while understandably alarmed, retained normalcy.
Also in 1968, a notably strong strain of flu killed over 100,000 Americans. And again, society went on normally. Could you imagine Americans from 1968 – the fateful year that saw so many events wreak havoc on the country – watching today’s freak show response of zombies wearing facemasks, shuffling along six feet apart from each other?
Americans are informed that there will be a “new normal” after the current “pandemic” mostly subsides. As a guide they are routinely referred to the aftermath of 9/11/2001 and the creation of the TSA and the taking off of shoes and otherwise going through heightened security at airports.
But that’s not the real legacy of 9/11, not even close. The real legacy of 9/11, done in the name of “protecting freedom,” is the Patriot Act and the totalitarian surveillance powers it granted to the central government, along with surveillance cameras everywhere, U.S. military engagements in literally dozens of countries around the world in the name of an endless “war on terror,” many of the interventions conducted completely in secret, and a greatly heightened sense of anxiety and suspicion in the country, suspicion not only of Arab-looking people but of strangers and even neighbors. “See something, say something” has become the byword of the day. Any relationship between that phrase, which was the ruling principle in East Germany, and “freedom” is purely coincidental.
There is a long-standing concept known as assumption of risk. In legal terminology it means someone suing someone else can’t recover if the defendant can demonstrate that the plaintiff voluntarily and knowingly assumed the risks inherent to the activity in which the plaintiff was participating at the time of his or her injury. In broader terms, it means most people regularly engage in activities that they know contain an element of risk, whether it is skiing, boating, playing sports, or even driving a car or flying on a plane.
Knowingly assuming risk is an inherent element of living in a free nation. But in the relentless, non-stop march to totalitarianism, assumption of risk is becoming as archaic a concept as freedom of association, another fundamental characteristic of genuine freedom that is now little more than a historical footnote.
Americans are now considered children by a nanny state that demands to control and micro-manage what everyone does, in the name of “safety,” including ordering the shutdown of most economic activities. And so the aftermath of the ongoing “pandemic” is likely to create large changes in day to day life, even more than did the response to 9/11 in the name of “protecting freedom.”
Few things are creepier and more anti-human than “social distancing.” The United States (and all Western societies to varying degrees for that matter) were already marked by tremendous amounts of loneliness, isolation, alienation and depression. And now we are supposed to act as though all of our fellow men and women are harboring an unseen enemy that will kill us if we so much as touch them. Even touch, so basic and important and vitally needed to feel and be human, is now viewed with suspicion.
What’s changed from the late 1960s to today is nothing less than the fundamental destruction of traditional American society to fit the needs of a globalist empire that more and more regards the American People as an adversary to be subdued and replaced.
Which is also how they regard Freedom and Liberty.
