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Earlier this month I wrote this on the NewCatallaxy blog:
Freedom Day last Wednesday. Had coffee in a café for the first time in, I don’t know, five months, was it? Had lunch in a restaurant the next day. Oh joy, free at last! My club even let me in on Friday to use the gym. When will this freedom ever end? Well, it could end tomorrow, of course, if Perrottet is panicked by dire predictions from NSW health minister Brad Hazzard or by chief health officer Kerry Chant. Methinks I shouldn’t make plans too far ahead, when hysterics have the ear of Dear Leader.
The first comment from a reader could be read as taking issue with my sentiment:
Freedom Day is fake concocted bullshit that makes me particularly outraged. I was free the day I was born into this world. Never forget what they have taken away from us.
I’ve expressed similar outrage. Our freedoms to speak freely, to assemble, to travel, to engage in the ordinary business of life are God-given, I’ve written. So they are, but rulers and governments can take them away, as they have throughout most of history. The people of Hong Kong are feeling it now, as are the women in Afghanistan, as did the East Germans before the wall came down, as did dissenters in revolutionary France.
But wait, there is no need for the past or foreign parts in order to tell the tale. Lest we forget: remember the pregnant lady in Ballarat handcuffed and hauled away for exercising her free speech via a Facebook post; the peaceful protestors in Melbourne bombarded with rubber bullets; and the middle-aged lady knocked to the ground and pepper sprayed in her face from close range by a male police officer, sworn to protect her, for daring to object to the rules made on high.
America’s founders had it right in 1791, in drawing up the Bill of Rights; the first ten amendments to the Constitution. All of these amendments had to do with protecting the individual citizen from government. How can that be? Elected by the people, for the people. It can be so because many of those seeking political power are corrupt. Their goal isn’t to serve the public, it’s to wield power. They have what amounts to personality disorders. This has to be recognised and countered as America’s Founding Fathers tried to do. Unfortunately, as the virus has shown, they didn’t try hard enough. And that certainly applies in Australia and in most regions and countries now laughingly making up what used to be called the Free World.
Normally, when selecting people for occupations which allow them to carry truncheons, guns and other means of exerting power, we recognise that bad eggs might apply. Police forces and armed forces are the prime examples of such occupations. Measures are put in place to spot and weed out thugs and psychopaths. Obviously, this is by no means foolproof, as the police thuggery in Victoria showed. Nevertheless, society is aware of the problem. It’s about time we all started to be aware of the much greater problem of dysfunctionality among politicians. And, accordingly, supported new iron-clad constitutional restraints on their power.
You might have caught yourself saying: I couldn’t tout myself, compromise and genuflect, for years on end, before party branches, party bigwigs and then out on the hustings in a desperate bid to grasp the prized seat. Of course you couldn’t. But then you don’t have the same lust for power over your fellows. You just want to get on with a productive and fruitful life as best you’re able.
These people who represent us, more likely than not, are not like us at all. You see the problem. We’re being represented by the unrepresentable. Doubt this, then think about the premiers of Victoria, WA and Queensland. Who could they ever elect to represent them? King George III in his latter days?
I made the mistake of looking forward to Perrottet becoming premier. I mistook him for one of us. Immediately he extends the tenure of vaccine passports. On a dime he switched last week from living with the virus to COVID-panic mode. For some reason not borne out by science or logic, or even hospital admissions and deaths, I have to wear a completely useless mask again inside the foyers and lifts of my apartment building and when shopping etc. QR codes are back. Disobey and these are some of the penalties determined by diktat by those who we elect to serve our interests:
For breaching a public health order. In the case of an individual, the maximum penalty is $11,000, or imprisonment for 6 months, or both and a further $5500 penalty may apply for each day the offence continues. The NSW Police may also issue on-the-spot fines to individuals of
♦ $1,000 for breach of a public health order
♦ $500 for failure to comply with a direction to wear or carry a mask for those aged 18 years or older
But annoying inconveniences and ridiculously onerous penalties are simply the tip of a fetid iceberg. They get nowhere near the sheer unadulterated despotism of vaccine mandates. It’s reasonable to prevent those suffering from a deadly transmissible disease from interacting with others socially and at the workplace. Now, imagine if you can, a situation – and it’s barely imaginable – in which a healthy unvaccinated person is excluded from interacting, while a sick and contagious vaccinated person (Typhoid Bill, so to speak) faces no obstacles. That’s silly. Couldn’t happen.
Well it is happening. It’s rife. Most of those contracting the virus and passing it on are vaccinated.
Those identified as close contacts and spending the (Merry) Christmas season in isolation should understand that those with whom they have come into contact will almost certainly have been fully vaccinated. Surely pollies can figure that out? Apparently not.
Should have mentioned. Many politicians are not simply power hungry, they seem to be short of enquiring and logical minds. That too might come with the territory.
What frustrates me most is that there is no hope and no escape plan. At least in the US, people can flee from blue to red states. 1 Million people did this year from what I read. In Australia, we have no such choice. Every state is blue (US blue that is) no matter what government is in charge. My prediction for 2022 is that it will get a lot worse. Our leaders got away with everything they unleashed onto us, so naturally, they move on to the next level. They always do.
It seems to me that the key to breaking this spell under which the bulk of the population appears to be held, is to weaken the mainstream media.
It also seems to me that, with the advent of Omicron, the WHO and the global governments previously held in thrall, are weakening in their resolve to maintain the ludicrous policies of virus containment. It is the Press that is still whipping up the hysteria.
Social media, interestingly, has been the bulwark of the Resistance. The world’s eminent dissenting epidemiologists, virologists et al have all used the internet to explain how viruses work and how, and why, the “pandemic” is not as governments have claimed.
I believe that this battle will be waged in the future through the internet.
Incidentally, an indication of the future battle field can be seen in the news coming out of Sweden that they have developed sub-cutaneous vaccine passports:
http://www.spectator.com.au/2021/1/12/Sweden-puts-vaccine-passports-under-our-skin/
Thank you for the link, vickiesanderson; it was certainly interesting information. I have never believed that the jab is the mark of the beast; it doesn’t quite fit the description in Revelation, and I know plenty of people who have gotten it that I have no doubt are God’s children. But the connection has been obvious for many months, and this information about having a vaccine passport inside one’s forearm, to be scanned, makes it so obvious that a blind man on a galloping horse should be able to see it. “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Rev. 13:16-17.
Homer,
Hope springs eternal.
As regards hope: Omicron is looking like our get-out-of-jail card – a super-infectious but mild-mannered variant that, if left to run its course promises to blow away its nastier forbears, establish a live-and-let-live social contract with its hosts (ie the vast majority of we humans), and then followed by its ever-milder mutant progeny, retire into relatively benign endemicity. (With a distinct bonus – conferring upon those unvaxxed fortunate enough to be infected by Omicron a natural immunity to COVID, the strength and quality of which will be the envy of the vaxxed).
As regards experience: Flying in the teeth of the evidence on Omicron to date, Governments, the MSM and the Medical Establishment continue doubling down with the same tired, ineffective, cruel, harmful and nonsensical strategies that will unnecessarily and tragically prolong the current misery.
Observation: The Australian Government, and some of the more enlightened and politically courageous States appear to be softening their rhetoric and actions (albeit whilst hardening their vaccine monomania) in the face of the reality of Omicron.
Conclusion: This gives me hope that enough people are beginning to see through the BS and are expecting their governments to see Omicron for the Godsend that it is and change course accordingly.
May Hope triumph over Experience!
So much for the American Bill of Rights when Americans have the poorest quality of life on average and the least freedoms in the developed world.
For freedom, real freedom, you need systems to protect you from ending up in the gutter.
Americans are bankrupted because they fall sick; they have so few worker rights it is almost Third World.
Clearly their system failed and failed them.
Demands for freedom without associated treatment of the matters of responsibility -to self and others- are the stuff of minds yet to engage with reality.
“It’s reasonable to prevent those suffering from a deadly transmissible disease from interacting with others socially and at the workplace.”
This is a seemingly valid point, but after 21 months of arbitrary despotism in the name of public health and safety, even this rings alarm bells for me. We have to learn to love freedom more than we fear death. That’s what it comes down to. If we can’t do that, we’re going to lose our freedoms, because in life death is a given.
@John2,
Covid original was not particularly virulent and more than 600 doctors said that in a letter to Dan Andrews last year, which I believe was published on Quadrant.
Each variant since has been less virulent or weaker which is generally the way of it with viral mutations.
Covid from the start was nasty for the very old and very sick with 2-3 co-morbidities, particularly if they were in aged care, no doubt stuffed to the eyeballs with antibiotics and drugs every day, thereby damaging immune function even more. However the risk group is always at risk from everything, including the common cold.
If Moronic, sorry, Omicron, serves any purpose it will be as a means to ‘get out of jail’ particularly with a Federal election looming. Let us hope.
And the essence of freedom in this context, is seeing your fellow-man as an end in himself, whose rights and freedoms you must respect, rather than as a threat vector whose rights may be disposed of to purchase a little more comfort or longevity for yourself.
Nothing new here, unhappily. people (including myself) have made these points for over 12 months now. Homer J above is right, of course: there *is* no exit plan. Omicron is certainly behaving as the evolving pattern of coronaviruses predicts (despite Sheridan’s silly comments). So Govts promote panic harder, just in case.
Perrottet came on strong about deregulating and “living with it” in the beginning. A deliberate strategy to try ingratiating himself as a new Premier, while knowing Hazzard and Chant would line him up like a wooden duck if “cases” climbed. And so it went …