“418,000 Americans died in World War II. Now we blindly piss away those hard-fought freedoms, allowing ourselves to be ruled by tin-pot tyrants”
THE KAREN PREMISE: “We should stop at nothing to prevent all deaths from COVID-19. This is why we should all be okay with shutting down our entire way of life. Get used to it. It’s the new normal.”
THE KAREN PREMISE, UNPACKED: Yes, we’ll lose more people from deaths of despair caused by the shutdown than from the virus itself, but those deaths aren’t really important. Only deaths from “da virus” are. It is worth destroying the lives of millions due to the permanent closures of businesses. This includes not only those who put their entire livelihoods on the line and are now bankrupt, but also the employees who lost their jobs as a result. Losing our entire way of life is an acceptable sacrifice to prevent virus deaths–no matter the cost. [NOTE: Not one Karen has suffered from the effects mentioned above. The vast majority of them are tucked away working from home and still collecting their paychecks.]
Not being able to work, being forced to live like caged animals with muzzles, not being able to travel freely, threatened with fines, jail, or violence for resisting the loss of our birthright of freedom, getting mocked for decrying the loss of those freedoms? Well, this is the price people must pay to save our precious, comfortable lives. Meanwhile we hide in our living rooms and peek out from behind the drapes worrying that others might resist. It is essential we confront those who refuse to comply with government edicts; well, maybe confront is too strong of a word. Perhaps reporting violations to the brown-shirts to do our dirty work is a better solution. We will remain brave in the face of opposition by shouting from our keyboards with photos of us wearing masks so our virtue will shine bright in solidarity with our comrades . Only then will “the unclean” come to their senses.
MY ANALYSIS OF THE KAREN PHENOMENA: In 1941, our ancestors decided to stand in opposition to a threat to our freedom. Over 418,000 Americans lost their lives to defend our way of life in WW2. In the end, it was generally agreed by the majority of the population that this was the price we had to pay to maintain our freedoms. We were willing to risk it all to keep our American way of life, allowing us to work, leave our homes at will, shop at our neighbor’s businesses, eat in restaurants, frequent our local pubs, freely move from one state to another without quarantining ourselves for weeks, and generally move about without having others questioning our right to do so.
Why was it acceptable to lose so many lives to preserve our freedoms? At what number would that have been unacceptable? Most believed so strongly in defending our rights they were willing to send their sons and daughters to die in defense of them. No one was willing to live under the rule of psychopathic dictators, drunk on power. There was no price we weren’t willing to pay to keep our hard-won freedoms.
Now we are faced with another enemy. This enemy is different because it’s tiny and we can’t actually see it. It fights us from within our bodies and we don’t even know it’s there. Fortunately, over 99% of us have a built in army to fight it off. Some of those battles are worse than others. Many don’t reach the level of bodily harm. There is however less than one percent of the population who will lose their lives to this enemy. We fight enemies similar to this every year, losing 40,000-80,000. But this enemy is worse. Maybe twice as bad. At what multiple of annual flu deaths do we believe it’s worth an entire world shutdown? Apparently, that multiple is two. Yet, the world accepted the loss of 80 million lives in World War II in defense of freedom.
Interestingly, after only the initial battles against this enemy we have willingly given up our hard-earned freedoms to keep this enemy from taking more lives. We’ve lost the war because our cowardly leaders surrendered to the enemy while the army of Karens cheered them on.
Karen tells us these loss of freedoms are temporary. I say, let history be our guide. Rarely in history have lost rights been restored by those who took them away. The leaders have learned how easy it is to use fear to keep the public at bay. They won’t forget this. It has been a powerful lesson for them. They may, at their will, casually offer to return some of our rights, one piece at a time, all the while expecting gratitude for doing so. They carefully calculate at which point they must stop before people fight back. That’s how governments work. They chip away a little at a time to gain more control, then back off when they must. Two steps forward, one step back. Need I tell you how that turns out?
Sadly, we’ve lost the willingness to defend our natural rights. Without a good fight, we will not return to normal and it seems there is little momentum to jump into that fight. I always feared losing our country to war mongering communists, despots, and other evil authoritarians. I never in my wildest dream, believed we would lose to an army of grassroots Karens, cowards all. We are not losing to tin-pot governors. We’re losing to the Army of Karens who enable them. Meanwhile, the lives lost to conscription by the tyrants will not be honored.