Lost Freedoms? So What!

I have a close friend who is currently planning a trip to Mexico. He is a super sheep and is “Vaxxed to the Max.” In Canada we have this dorky totalitarian system of mass control called ArriveCAN. Basically it is a digital ID sort of app that documents, and thus controls, entry into Canada. Originally it was used to govern the movement of vaxxed and unvaxxed travellers (and punish the unvaxxed) and thus controlled citizens and residents (and visitors as well once people were allowed to visit again) arriving into Canada, (thus the ingenious name, “ArriveCAN”). This spiffy little app installed on your smart phone keeps tabs on the carrier’s compliance with various requirements such as multiple PCR tests at particular times before, after, and during quarantine, random phone calls to ensure quarantine requirements are met, and daily check-ins to be sure you have not attempted to escape your private, state-mandated, prison, much like an invisible ankle bracelet with the same monitoring required of accused or convicted prisoners.

Many Covid travel restrictions have temporarily been lifted, but not the requirement of using the ArriveCAN app. Gee, I wonder what’s up with that? I even read somewhere that the government has made an announcement that they can’t see a time in the future where it won’t still be required. Gee again, I wonder what’s up with that? Oh well, does it really matter? That’s what my friend said when I questioned why he would need the app when he was told, because of his vax status, he didn’t need to test, or quarantine, when he got home. (If this information isn’t correct, don’t come down on me, requirements here are like moving targets and change in a heartbeat, which is the intention, of course). “So what?” He said. And I responded, “Doesn’t it bother you that you are required to be inconvenienced, even unnecessarily have your privacy invaded, for no good reason?” “I have nothing to hide,” he says. “If my government thinks it is important, that is reason enough.” Gag me with a spoon.

At times like these I do wonder if I am the fool these sorts of people seem to think I am. Am I really a paranoid whack job that is constantly looking over my shoulder for the silhouette of the lurking G-man in the shadows? Is my government really consciously out to get me? ME?—just some dinkis with absolutely no secret subversive potential not only to my own government, but to anyone? Interesting to note, it was the average everyday person who was surveilled, and eventually persecuted the most in the countries known in history to be totalitarian, fascist, or ruled by dictators.

I suppose it is just that my definition of “being free” is different than how these folks define the word. Also “being free” is really important to me. I am pretty well read, and much of what I read is about places like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. I know what it actually means to not be free from a cultural/nationalistic perspective. I know what a Bill of Rights or a Charter of Rights in a country’s Constitution means and how sacrosanct they are supposed to be. And more importantly I feel my reading has taught me how to be a good weatherman, a person who can predict what is coming, and where something will ultimately end up—at least well enough to take note of the possibilities, and at some point in the evolution of a country heading toward totalitarianism, the distinct probabilities. Freedom, as I define it, is a pretty elusive thing (meaning people, particularly governments, have a difficult time defining it), and is quite easy to have illegally, or unethically, abused. Personal freedoms are protected by law, but not given by law. They are inalienable, which means by definition they cannot be given or taken away, and in most countries that recognize them, they are considered God-given.

“Oh please,” many of these types of sheep will say, “don’t be so dramatic. We do not live in a communist country (“communist” is usually the word they use to denote ALL countries with little or no freedoms). If we did, you would know it!” Well, first of all, I DO know it, just because you don’t doesn’t mean it isn’t there (I am speaking to the sheep here, not you, the reader). Secondly, we aren’t quite fully there yet, and when we are, you probably WILL know it.

The other lame part of their argument is that we never HAVE been free, as well as never have had privacy. We are all on social media day in and day out, all have Amazon Alexas in our living rooms, and creepier still, in our bedrooms, we follow and obey hundreds of laws that restrict our freedoms day in and day out. “Your freedoms have already been taken away,” so shut up and keep digging that ditch. “Yes, boss, shakin’ the bush, boss,” (a quote only movie aficionados will understand!)

Maybe the above is not so lame after all; they’ve got a point here. It is true that many of us (me certainly) have spent a good part of our lives as sheep. It took all of this to wake us up. I would rather be late than sorry. You, Mr./Ms. Sheep, will be sorry. Or will they? They don’t seem to think so as they waltz unabashedly into oblivion—all the while thinking all is just fine, “think positively!” they say. Ignorance is bliss, eh?

I tend to think many of them will never wake up and see that indeed it matters that what freedoms they had are now gone. Maybe if things get really “Mad Max” out there they will figure it out. But like our friend the frog in the pot, they may hang on no matter how hot the water gets. And maybe it will never get hot enough for any of them to really care. Think A Brave New World, no one there really cared all that much that they were manipulated fully and completely by the powers that be. Even the masses in Orwell’s 1984 didn’t seem to care much that they were automatons and did nothing that Big Brother didn’t want them to do. Yet they lived in constant fear and squalor, not even free enough to love. Did they notice that?

I have spent the past couple of years running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get people to see what is happening around them. At best I am ignored, at worst I was attacked viciously for being a selfish degenerate. I honestly don’t think these people want to be free. It seems that they would prefer a totalitarian regime residing over them, making tougher rules and laws so things are easier to keep stabilized, getting rid of the riff raff, the trouble makers, the thinkers, the artists and poets. What good are they? Remember when people were speaking out so vehemently about the unvaxxed, how the health system shouldn’t waste money on them and they should just die? I remember. And it bothered me quite a bit. They don’t care, rules make things easier, and the less freedom everyone has, the easier it is to make rules that stick, and rules, if broken, that are easily punishable.

Not a pretty picture.

So what do we do? We keep insisting that this doesn’t continue to happen. We keep insisting that those of us (“us” denoting ALL humans) who don’t seem to want freedom change their minds and realize what exactly that means. Obviously most people have never lived a life where their freedoms have been stripped from them like those from truly totalitarian countries. They have no idea what they are giving up.