Well, I was a little ahead of myself in September when I said that a new mandate was rolling out. As you know, if you read this blog, I live in Los Angeles. I was vaccinated, early and fully. And Los Angeles, the City, has indeed made it a mandate that the unvaccinated may not enjoy indoor activities. If you don't have proof at the door of a restaurant or any indoor venue of your proper status, you cannot enter. In that this mandate is to protect the health of the populace, it is not considered, by the Garcetti gang, to be a restriction of freedom or a form of segregation based on a power enforced category. It will go into official effect November 4. As I (and far more well known people) have been Cassandra-ing since last year when masks became the new delightful (not!) accessory of the hip and elite, it is precisely another lasso to assure the corraling of every one of us and complete control of every aspect of our daily lives. It has been the classic use of an opportunity of which the Democrat party had long promoted. You take a real situation and you mold dealing with it in a way that has profound, and disastrous ramifications on the very nature of the society in which we used to live in an illusory comfort. It was perfect. How can anyone argue against public protection? The hook. And the net to reel us all in. Do you note that now any objection to anything being imposed arbitrarily and inconsistently is being compared and then identified with domestic terrorism?
I have had a battle within myself. I am not young. My sojourn in the work world ended a long time ago. I have no children or grandchildren about whose fate I must worry as did my father about me when he predicted years and years ago the crumbling of this society. From a practical point of view, I do not need to care about any of this. I have neither power nor given my age and life expectancy statistically, a stake in the long term corruption of the nation and the world. I could take the "So what?" position. Who cares if the government restricts my freedom as life itself is more toward the end than toward the beginning. I have enough to get along in my little space, with my cats, my music, my books, my television, my pretty terrace with hummingbirds. I can talk to people on Zoom or some other app. What's the big deal in showing my vaccination status and proving that I am among the clean and safe? What's the big deal at having to wear a mask for five, six, or ten hours to travel in a plane? What's the big deal to pay 25 dollars for a movie where I have to have a mask? As my friends who try to tell me it's not so bad say, "When you sit down you can eat the whole time so you can get away without wearing it." Unless you get one of those flight attendants or movie ushers who will have you arrested if you don't keep the mask on between bites. So, what's the big deal?
I found and find wearing the accepted mask unbearable over anything more than a short period. I could get by wearing a plastic mask that covers nose and mouth. I was told that it isn't as effective. This makes me laugh, with irony, as the accepted masks do not prevent the small droplets of infectious germs from getting in, in addition to how much the masks are handled in the average passing conversation. In the early days of the pandemic lockdown, my wearing the tolerable plastic mask was rejected nearly everywhere. Apparently, the business and local powers that be have forgotten about that, and lately I can wear it mostly everywhere. So, it is less for me a big deal to wear the plastic mask. To the extent I might want to get out and about, I probably could tolerate that kind of mask, and maybe shoot out to the occasional movie or show.
So what we are losing our freedoms? So what that in every part of your life you and I are being tracked and mandated by technocrats and unelected administrators? I am a less than a grain of sand in history.
But, on the other hand, I have loved and love my country. I have loved and love my Church. I see both crashing out of the usual human hubris that always seems to corrupt civilizations. I am here. I sense in some deep place that I, that you, are here for more than just passing through and taking no stands. This country had the answer in hand, the very principles on which it was founded. If human beings understood that it was the best we humans could do given our inherent imperfections, we would not be so eager to destroy it. Our pride caused the fall. And our pride makes us deny the fall and to insist we can be perfect without the principles of Eden. The way I see it I have an obligation to blow on the embers of the God and Country. Now, all that means for me, at this moment in time is that as best I can, I don't collude with the morally wrong if I can avoid it. So, I will not participate in the segregation of those who have made the health determination or the moral determination that they will not be vaccinated. The covid numbers have been going down, so what is this about? Do you not know that a large percentage of the unvaccinated are in the minority community? Do you not remember what happens when people are segregated according to some physical reality about them?
There are some things I cannot avoid. I cannot always avoid a store, as much as I have done, and try. But I can avoid my pleasures in solidarity with those who are being segregated. If most of us did that, I believe the mandate would end, because alas, it would affect some decent small business owners as much as the earlier lockdown did. I am not the kind of person, at this point in my life, who recommends that groups go to restaurants and entertainment places demanding to be let in. The business owner cannot overturn anything. But if we withhold our attendance under the terms proffered, I think the fall out would immediately cause a reversal. At least that is my hope.
Do not collude with the segregation to the extent that you can. My entertainment and yours is not worth the continuing encroachment and the new serfdom.
That's the big deal.
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