One of the more confounding things in the Brave New COVID World is the notion that people who have done everything governments at all levels have demanded over the last 20 months (vax, mask, lockdown, social distance, etc) are boisterously in full J’Accuse mode at anyone (everyone) who has quit playing the game. They also choose to cower in abject fear in the presence of those of us who don’t, blaming us for their fear.
Their thinking appears to be that those of us who haven’t played the perfect game demanded by the COVID autocrats are somehow putting the lives of the accusers at risk. One recent example of this was a woman who wrote a piece in the Anchorage Fish Wrapper on Oct 13 entitled Other people’s personal freedoms shouldn’t endanger my child. In the piece, she attempts to make the case that unvaxxed people attending Anchorage Assembly meetings somehow put her unvaxxed child at risk. Her youngster is recently out of chemo and still in recovery. Prayers for her complete recovery.
The letters section has multiple letters demanding everyone else do something to their bodies to keep the letter writer safe. An example from Oct 14 is entitled No right to infect others, with the assumption that anyone unvaxxed is intentionally and always infecting the pure people who are vaxxed. Comments to the contrary are studiously removed (censored) by ADN.
Personal freedom of others in both pieces is blithely discarded so the writer(s) can somehow feel safe. They demand it. They insist on it. And they feel morally justified making these demands. These people are demanding their friends, neighbors, and everyone else in the Anchorage Bowl put things in their bodies and / or behave in certain ways so that those who choose to live in fear will somehow feel safer.
This sadly, is an example of successful “othering”, turning anyone who disagrees with you into the Other, someone from the other village, other tribe, other family, other nation, etc. When you turn your fellow citizens into the Other, you, by definition dehumanize them. When you sufficiently dehumanize them, you open the door for some real nasty stuff, like Anchorage Assembly Member Chris Constant’s happy little jig on the grave of a freshly deceased conservative activist. Another example would be the positive glee by leftist trolls early in the month upon news of Florida Governor DeSantis’ wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. Keep traveling down this path and it is only a short walk from disagreement to loading those you disagree with onto boxcars.
It’s almost like the left has spent so much of their lives telling other people what to do that they are incapable of even comprehending much less understanding when the Other starts saying no, I’m not going to play anymore. And that lack of comprehension turns into frustration, anger, violence, and increasingly irrational demands for behaviors by the Other that those making the demands would summarily reject out of hand if anyone even suggested they might want to try it. Anyone else remember My Body, My Choice?
Like all forms of leftist nastiness, this has created the opportunity for hilarious but accurate memes. For instance, your failure to use an umbrella in the rain is causing the other guy with an umbrella to get wet. Or your failure to wear a warm coat outside in the cold is responsible for the other guy with a coat on getting cold.
None of this would be taking place if all the usual suspects – Harris – Xiden, media, Big Tech, public health – weren’t beating the war drums for all they’re worth blaming the spread of COVID on individual choice not to vax, actively censoring any and all argument to the contrary. At the risk of violating Godwin’s Law, Goebbels would proud of this persuasive framing and message control, as would Alinsky.
The problem is that an appreciable number of our friends and neighbors have adopted this personally coercive worldview. And they are receiving positive reinforcement from the Usual Suspects, so it will only get worse at least for a while. That is, until those of us on the receiving end simply quit playing and start actively pushing back. What form that takes remains to be seen. But the potential exists for things to get very, very ugly should this continue, as most of us won’t willingly get onto the boxcars. Things that can’t continue, won’t. And in this case, they shouldn’t.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
