(Meaning: Please consider your compliance with Covid mandates and protocols, before it’s too late)
I’m sure you are familiar with the old fable about how to boil a frog. You don’t simply drop a frog into an already boiling pot of water, as it will surely jump out. If you want to boil a frog, you place it in comfortable, room temperature water. Then, you slowly raise the heat until the water boils and cooks the frog. The frog doesn’t perceive the changing water temperature until it is much too late.
I’ve been thinking about this fable for some time amidst all this pandemic hysteria – the propaganda, the division, the mandates. Our liberties and freedoms have slowly been worn away. It is only now that we are in a pot of almost boiling water that we’ve realized what is happening.
Up until now many of us have been complacent about the danger growing all around us, because we weren’t yet uncomfortable in our pot of water.
Back in March 2021, NY state first introduced the Excelsior Pass, an electronic app for housing your vaccination status. My gut reaction told me that something was off. While on the surface sounding like a helpful idea, something in me intuited that it was dangerous. I mostly kept that thought between myself and my husband, not knowing if I’d sound crazy. Sadly, it seems now that my intuition proved correct.
Here in NY some 80% of adults are vaccinated. And maybe I’m wrong, but I think the prevailing thought about showing vaccination cards is that it’s not a big deal. I think most people are generally thinking – I got vaccinated so I could get back to normal and live my life. If I have to show my vaccination status in order to do that, I’m ok with that.
And I totally understand and sympathize with that line of thinking. We’d all like to get back to normal. The problem I see is this – making people present vaccination status does not achieve normalcy. It simply reinforces division and segregation and the loss of the unalienable right of liberty. We see it right before our eyes in New York City.
Many people in power in our government seem to believe that they have the authority to give and take away freedom and liberty. But since we are not likely to give up our liberty easily, the government does all this in the name of the common good, for our safety and protection. It’s helpful to have a seemingly sensible explanation as to why you are taking away freedoms from individuals. We don’t realize that we are like frogs in the pot, slowly being boiled by our government, with each small infringement upon our liberty slowly raising the temperature of the water.
But I refuse to be boiled like a frog!
For the last three months or so, I have made it clear in various scenarios that have arisen in my life that I will not be producing vaccination cards to anyone – Not to participate as a school volunteer; not to go to a ticketed event; and not to go into New York City for any reason.
Every time we participate in this charade, we are condoning it all. When we show our card in order to participate in society, we are agreeing that the government has the right to take away our participation in society. And we bow to an illegitimate authority each time we follow an unjust mandate.
Now, I realized that this is not a black and white situation. For example, supporting one’s family might be a scenario in which compliance is necessary. But, I’m talking specifically about MOST of the daily situations in which we are faced with compliance in order to simply not be uncomfortable. Because I think that’s the situation in which many of us currently find ourselves.
So I pose to you (and I also reflect upon) this question: What’s more important, preserving freedom or our own comfort?
Maybe our comfort does equal freedom. Maybe being able to show a vaccination card to go to a Broadway show or on a cruise is freedom. I understand that to a point. One’s freedom to live comfortably is not wrong in and of itself. But that type of freedom is for one’s self alone, and it forgets about one’s neighbor.
What about our God given freedom to exercise conscience? Or the freedom to not be coerced into forced vaccination for our children? What about freedom for small business owners to earn a living without complying with government mandates? There are so many freedoms infringed upon when we comply with unjust government orders for our own sake and benefit. So, for those of us who are able to forego our own comfort in order to fight for the freedoms of all, I believe we owe it to those who cannot fight.
There is a video clip of an interview with psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson running through social media that I think is particularly pertinent. He said he’s been telling his students for years, if you lived in Germany in World War II, don’t think you’d be the hero. As harsh as it sounds, he says, you’d be the Nazi or “you’d at least not be saying anything.”
Mr. Peterson’s point is one that we as Catholics should understand well. We are broken, flawed sinners, all capable of evil. We know that without God, we are selfish, self-centered and seek self-preservation at all costs. Without Him, courage does not exist, and we hide in the face of terror. So please don’t get angry at me for a comparison to the Holocaust, because that is not what I am doing. But what I am saying is that we can learn from where history has been. And we can see that a large segment of that population did nothing when faced with totalitarianism.
And it’s good to consider why they didn’t do anything in the face of evil – and to realize that we are just as likely to do nothing in the face of evil as well.
Human beings have an uncanny ability to justify our behavior, or lack of action – My actions won’t have an impact. It doesn’t matter what one person does. There’s nothing I can do. I have to do comply because of XYZ. If I keep my head down and comply, eventually this will pass.
We are two years into this with no end in sight in the eyes of the powers that be. The longer we do nothing to oppose mandates, government overreach, and the segregation of part of our population (the unvaccinated), the more apt the comparison between WWII Germans and ourselves becomes. So, the sooner we wake up to our cooperation with what’s happening in our country, the better. Totalitarianism remains a possibility today and always.
Our government is taking over our lives and slowly removing our liberties. We see it all around us. Around the world, we see the unvaccinated confined to their homes, stripped of all freedoms, or put in detainment centers. Closer to us, we haven’t yet experienced such tyranny, but, we know people have lost jobs because they object to forced vaccination. In NY state we await an impending vaccination mandates for our children. And in the major metropolitan cities of our nation, the restrictions are completely draconian. (Maybe you’ve watched the viral video of a crying child and his mother surrounded by half a dozen police officers because the child didn’t have a card in a NYC restaurant.)
None of this is right. Nor is it justifiable. None of this respects the dignity of humanity and our God given gift of freedom. Yet, right now, we still have a choice. We must do what we can to chose freedom over comfort. We must stop participating in this system in any way we can, so that we are not complicit in the tragedy, abuse and harm that comes from all of this. Here’s a start – stop showing vaccination papers.
