There’s been a lot of talk of “Freedom Days” lately, with New South Wales and Victoria emerging from their prolonged, gruelling lockdowns. Mainstream news reports reveal an excited, vibrant polis rejoicing in regaining their freedoms and returning to “normal.” Perhaps the nightmare of lockdowns can now recede into memory.
Except, Victoria and New South Wales are not back to normal, are they? In the latter state, people who have decided not to be vaccinated against covid are still ordered to remain confined in their homes – barred from entering restaurants, cafes, gyms, etc.
Whatever happened to medical treatments being voluntary and free from coercion? That should always be the case, even if the novel covid vaccines were the safest vaccines in the world and there had been no reported side effects whatsoever. Of course, that is clearly not the case. I personally know many people who have had loved ones suffer from severe adverse reactions, and it seems that everyone I talk with has a similar story.
Despite these alarming and widespread occurrences, people in both states must carry their proof-of-vaccination documentation at all times, either on their mobile phones or as authorised paperwork (if they don’t use a smartphone) to participate in society. Masks are still mandatory virtually everywhere, despite hard evidence suggesting that they make little to no difference regarding viral transmission. Gatherings of any kind are still severely restricted. For example, “Religious ceremonies will be allowed for up to 20 fully vaccinated people or 10 unvaccinated people indoors,” and “Masks will still be required when leaving the home. The existing exemptions will apply.” Do you feel free yet, Victoria?
Are we living in a Stephen King novel? In what dystopian world is all this construed as freedom? It beggars belief that mandatory vaccination, mask mandates, vaccine passports (the foundation of a Chinese-style social credit system), closed borders, and excluding people from society would fit into anyone’s understanding of the term. Bear in mind that this is all supposedly to protect us from a virus with an over 99% survival rate.
Perhaps Australians are so historically and philosophically illiterate that they have forgotten what freedom is (a symptom of the abysmal standards of our failed education system). Our concept of freedom was the inheritance of our British ancestry, now virtually erased from our cultural consciousness. Perhaps people think that the restrictions are worth it because they believe that covid poses a deadly threat to them due to the fearmongering mainstream media. Perhaps people simply feel hopeless and powerless to stop the wave of bureaucratic tyranny and comply to keep their jobs and avoid social ostracisation. Perhaps it’s a combination of all these things.
We will only have our freedom back when we return to the “Old Normal,” a dystopian term that, worryingly, many have accepted without much of a fuss. Freedom will be restored when we are rid of all the things described above and the government begins to treat covid like any other disease that is roughly as dangerous as the flu. There are many ways of handling outbreaks, including early treatment with the drug starting with the letter “I” that must not be named.
What Victorians and New South Welshmen are currently experiencing is not regained freedoms, but the beginnings of a society with a fundamentally different relationship to government than what our parents and grandparents enjoyed. Theirs was one in which freedom of speech, freedom of association, and liberty of conscience were sacred. Our forebears deemed these ideals worth fighting and dying for. That is the Old Normal. The New Normal is a system in which you must demonstrate your compliance with the arbitrary and dangerous whims of the medical bureaucracy to be included in society.
Vaccine discrimination is every bit as wicked and disgusting, not to mention scientifically absurd, as the racial segregation of America’s past. In fact, it’s worse than segregation. Segregation means separating different groups of people. What we are witnessing today is outright exclusion, with unvaccinated Australians increasingly having very few places to go. If you’ve ever wondered how inhumane and obviously discriminatory policies such as segregation were accepted, now you know. We are living in such a time. It’s quite ironic, given that we’ve been banging on about discrimination of other kinds in Australia for over twenty years.
Thankfully, there is pushback, and freedom of speech is not completely dead yet, despite the best efforts of the Big Tech giants and the mainstream media to censor perspectives that deviate from the public health narrative. We are seeing Victorian police officers speak out against the treatment of protestors, healthcare workers who have been sacked for refusing the jab joining forces to raise awareness (one wonders why they would refuse the jabs), and a few Liberals who still remember the values Sir Robert Menzies founded their party upon. My hope is that the public will be exposed to these perspectives more and more and, as the absurdity of the situation becomes more and more apparent, people will find their courage and speak out.
Hopefully, Australians will wake from their stupor and remember who they are and that the freedoms we have taken for granted for so long are simply indispensable. The “Old Normal” should not be relinquished as a bygone era, it should be reclaimed with tooth and nail, because it was taken on false premises. Politics is downstream of culture, and our elected officials must be made to see that they are accountable to us. Time will tell.
