Trouble in the neighborhood
Yesterday, I posted a message to my neighbors via a social media app. By this morning it had been deleted.
This is the world we now live in, where everyone has rights, including freedom to hold opinions and express them, as long as…
I could follow that dangler with all kinds of things like, as long as it’s not the wrong kind of opinion and you aren’t the wrong kind of person, but you already know the litany.
So, I’ll just share the post further. You tell me if it’s censor-worthy or not.
We’re losing touch with our humanity, and it’s hitting our children hardest.
The worst damage won’t show up for a long time, all too late to help.
No matter which ‘side’ of an important issue we’re on, there are lines we simply must not cross, because stepping across them is to step outside our humanity.
I shared this in the interest (and hope) of moving towards better mutual understanding with my neighbors. I share it here for the same reason: mutual understanding with all who read it.
What follows it the original post verbatim.
Hey everyone. I haven’t posted in a long time, but I read the posts every day.
This post won’t be popular (putting it mildly). And yeah, it’s long. Thanks for taking the time to read it. 😊
I’m sharing this in the interest (and hope) of moving towards better mutual understanding with my neighbors.
I grew up in a country where simply expressing an opinion (as opposed to trying to influence/incite/force others) was universally recognized as my right, except among a minuscule faction of people who were so afraid to hear criticism/contradiction that simply listening to a contrary opinion posed a threat to them.
Over the last 20 years, that “faction” now seems to be the majority.
This post isn’t about COVID or masks or lockdowns or any of that. The ‘pandemic’ has served as just a trigger for what I’m talking about here. The trigger could have been something else.
But as far as the ‘pandemic’ goes, let me put it ASIDE for purposes here with this:
I’ve been doing research a long time. I started looking into the “vaccine hesitancy” issue at the beginning of the measles scare. Remember that, only 2 years ago?
I went in open-minded, but I got into it because of the transparent BS we were being fed. I had the measles, my siblings had the measles, all my friends had the measles, hell — EVERYBODY in the 50s and 60s got the measles. No one born after 1970 seems to know what a “measles party” was. Measles were the “get out of school free” card, cuz you could stay home but still be well enough to have fun. No one I knew died. No one I knew so much as stayed in bed, let alone went to the hospital. COVID makes that hoax/scare look like a same-time, same-channel dry run.
As I talked to people on both “sides” of the vaccine controversy, before I formed any conclusions about what it entailed, (just my unique way of research I guess, lol,) I quickly found out where the intelligence was and where the please-preach choir was. With little exception, on the “Vaccines are completely safe — Based on science!” side, I found dogmatic, unsupported claims; lots of appeal to authority vs. actual understanding; lots of thought-terminating clichés; no research or really bad research; and, after just a little bit of trying to find out why they believed what they believed, I got treated like sh*t and vilified just like they did other supposed “conspiracy theorists” and “anti-vaxxers” — even though all I was doing was asking questions and objecting when I got BS instead of facts and information. With little exception, on the other ‘side’ I found people with legitimate questions, copious research, who were not trying to be a ‘side’ other than to look for answers (my definition of “intelligent”) and objected when they encountered BS, but got lumped together, misrepresented, and vilified instead of getting intelligent responses and their questions answered.
COVID has been different than the measles scare only in that the cultism now is much worse.
Like I said, it could have been any kind of spooky threat, but a health threat gets through to everybody.
So, to my point (finally, I know, I’m a writer who has a lot to say and likes to write, sorry about that! 😁 )
This is about how we treat each other when we have seriously different opinions about what’s going on. The events of 2020 are just a case in point.
I’m a smart guy. Research is my deal and I’m good at it. I’m also extremely honest because I’ve found that it’s the quickest way to resolve problems — including when the real problem is the people who don’t want a problem resolved. My opinions are informed by reading source material (peer-reviewed scientific, psychological, and sociological studies) and talking to lots of people. So I have plenty of factual and expert (others’ as well as my own) basis for them, and I can talk at length about them — with an open mind.
So why do I get treated like sh*t by mask-wearers when they see me without one?
Leave aside my rights as a human person, many times over the months now, people have violated the Constitutions at federal and state levels and violated several Washington state laws when they harassed, coerced, extorted, assaulted, and mobbed me and some of my family members. I have RCWs, will share on request.
We were doing nothing wrong, same as them, with the only difference being that they could actually see my face, while everyone else was walking around like real-life NPCs.
There’s been the other side, too. My beautiful, caring daughter-in-law went with me to rent me a car. Both of us declined politely the mask we were offered, and the rental agency employee was gracious about it. She ended up dropping her own mask down after a bit, it was just easier to talk. My DIL noticed and complimented her on her beautiful smile, which I’m pretty sure made her day. (You’d have to meet my DIL, she radiates and can warm anyone’s heart.) My DIL said to her that it’s so sad with this mask thing, we can’t see each other’s faces anymore, our beautiful smiles, our sad pouts, or anything else that the eyes don’t show.
We are being dehumanized, say what you like about the reasons and justifications. It’s happening. It’s affecting our children big time.
So I liken how some people have treated me since mask mandates became the law du jour (yeah, I mean “jour”) to a kind of road rage. Being behind a mask is a bit like being behind the wheel in our car-bubbles, “protected”, so we feel more free to bark and demean and hurt people who scare us. It doesn’t seem to matter that I and others have reasons for our opinions and choices that are far more thoroughly thought through than what seems to be the norm: the TV/news media/political or medical authority said it, I believe it, and that settles it!
Well, no — that’s just fine for you, but it really settles nothing for the rest of us.
I just wanted you to hear a dissenting voice — a human, intelligent, caring voice — and how it’s been for people like me, now in a world where dissent itself has become guilty until proven innocent. And I wanted to ask you to remember that we’re all people, we all matter, we’re all inescapably, intimately connected (no matter how hard we sometimes try to pretend we’re not); and that when we bless, we bless us all, ourselves included; and when we curse and hurt, we harm us all, ourselves included. Especially our children.
I like to do experiments. I haven’t done this one in a long time. For a while I was asking people, “If there was no news but for some freak reason all the killing in the world — people, animals, forests, whatever — stopped for just a 24-hour period, do you think you would feel it?
Everyone I’ve ever asked has said, “Yes.”
We don’t fully understand how we’re connected or how tightly we’re connected, but it’s a fact. Loving your neighbor as yourself is just smart, given that fact. It makes me wonder how many people actually do love themselves, though.
