I am writing this prior to any explanations or specifics regarding the new "executive order" to the Department of Labor dictating that all employers with over a hundred employees institute either the COVID shot or perpetual "testing".

I am also writing before what I imagine will be endless paychecks for lawyers and whatnot as the issue is debated ad infinitum.

Simply put, within the order for all federal employers, contractors, and their employees to get the shot or get fired, there is the dictate to the DOL to force almost every company to institute the same.

My field has a great deal of nuance and "gray area" reasoning; philosophy and history are certainly maligned for both the sophistry and inanity of their practitioners, but my perspective from my scholarship does not follow that stream (as inane and sophistic as I may be most times).

There is no nuance in this.  There is no gray area in this.  This is not a new issue:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. 

Forgive me for reversing the word order a bit, but I thought it necessary to add this as well:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

I will lean on my own reference a bit and state, unequivocally, that the "state of liberty" of the United States citizen is, demonstrably and factually, wholly lower than was that of the colonial subject of George III (1738–1820) by all metrics.

We pay more taxes, we pay more fees, we must ask more permission for a home and livelihood, we must tolerate more interactions with official regulations, we must bend to more and more authoritarian intrusions into our lives than did anyone who wrote, signed, ratified, or approved of the United States Declaration of Independence.  We are, by all rational metrics, living the life that those dead guys sought to prevent.

Few, once having power, have ever voluntarily relinquished it.  Despotism — what is in truth plutocracy (being the only actual form of government ever to persist) — is the norm.  Chaos and violence are the natural state of society.  Peace, stability, security, and responsive authority are unicorns to even the most superficial reading of human history.  The prosperity and stability of the United States is a historical aberration.

This dictate to the DOL is the line.

Simultaneous to the screeching noise about "it's not a heartbeat!" and that "medical decisions should be between ... and ... doctor," this is done.  Ignore the irony; ignore the gaslighting.  This is a declaration of war on the United States citizen.

Efficacy and safety of the shot are meaningless arguments.  Existence or mortality/morbidity of the pathogen are red-herrings.  Religious or medical exemptions are wholly vacuous, as are the cards that one might download and fill out (being sure to spell "Maderna" correctly).  None of this matters.

I am not your property; you are not mine.  My sensitivities are not your obligations; your fears are not my limitations.  My existence is none of your concern, and your "policies" extend only to the surface of your skin.

Enough with the arguments.  Enough with the nuance and venues and newest issues or topics or headlines or events.  These are all distractions.

We — meaning you and I — have three options available to us: comply, ignore, oppose.

I do not agree.  I do not consent.  I will not comply.

If, by furthering this already long train of abuses and usurpations of my individuality, my autonomy, my absolute right to self-determination, my option to ignore is taken, what is left for me?

I have a Master's degree in history.  I state, flat-out, that this is the line.  This is the event, the thing, that will be taught to disinterested eighth-graders in two hundred years, if they are lucky enough to exist and be disinterested.  Today is the day that the shot was fired.

I am watching nervously because this is more than a Stamp Act, more than a march on Lexington's Armory.  What comes of this dictate, how this policy is put into practice will determine how we are able to determine our own lives from here until they end.

My friends, this is it.  We do not have the luxurious privilege of sitting this one out — of refusing to engage.  Comply, ignore, or oppose.  Refusing to choose is the choice for the first.  The second is becoming impossible.

If I live to my 80s, what has happened today will be written in my book of how it was.  I will compare today with firing on Ft. Sumter (1861) or the march on Lexington (1775).

I request, I ask, I plead with every organization; every church, synagogue, club, union, lobbyist, school, corporation, and library — I am begging every group in this nation — suspend your arguments, disagreements, positions — they can wait.  Stop this thing, or we all lose the ability to have our groups and disagreements.  Call, sue, march, fundraise, protest, boycott, sit-in...block the interstates like Australian truckers if you must.  Make this stop!

Use every means at your disposal — short of murder — to make this stop, before it's too late.

This is it.

Decide.

Image via Max Pixel.

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