“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
Sadly, because of COVID-19 authoritarianism, we are learning all too well how easy it must have been for the old totalitarian regimes of China and the Soviet Union to get citizens to inform on one another.
Just create a crisis and tell the masses you are a good serf when reporting violators of state orders. This, of course, especially triggers busybodies.
KESQ News 3 reports that the County of Riverside has launched RivCoMobile, an app that allows residents to anonymously report violations of state and county public health orders.
" I am 100 percent behind it because I see people people doing stuff all the time," said Pamela Berghorst, from Cathedral City." I wish I was a private investigator."
-RW
(ht Martin Hill)
[The Tyrant, indeed, has]"nothing more than the power you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?"....from the introduction, by Murray Rothbard (pg 15), to The Politics of Obedience: The discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de le Boetie
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
DeleteCall me a misogynist but I'm willing to bet that most of the snitches are women. Women are much more into following the rules than men are (excluding soyboys).
ReplyDeleteAs a high school teacher I can say, 100% true. The females are super compliant and only infrequently defiant, and even then only in very minor ways, while a significant number of boys require frequent correction, reminders, compromising, deflating their energy, giving them individual attention for a moment...and sometimes of course a stern talking to outside the classroom. (I've almost never had to give referrals to the office for knowing how to relate to people, remembering what it was like to be a teen.)
DeleteThat passivity and obedience of females is a boon as a teacher trying to maintain decent classroom management, but for society it is a massive detriment, and when I see a woman who is outspoken and standing up against injustice at the risk of personal injury (as we've seen with some being arrested in public), I have deep respect for those types!
I recommend downloading the app and snitch like a mad man. I recommended that folks overwhelm the local snitch hotline here on my radio show, and, not saying that is why, but the next day the city asked people to quit calling it. They said they wanted people to understand what it was for, as they were getting so many nonsense calls. Hahaha. They want snitches, give em snitches.
ReplyDeletePrisoners in the USSR shut down a region by overwhelming it with paperwork. The bureaucrats had to respond to each complaint.
DeleteI sent in a tip to de Blasio's tip line, telling him and his cronies to go FVCK themselves and that We the People are in charge. But I heard it was mostly dlck pics and insults that made them close down the tip line.
DeleteThis is sickening.....but yes I would "snitch on the snitches" and just turn in names of every busybody I know.....that nasty old biddy who said she supports this would be number 1 on the list.....then it would be every cop who supports these illegal orders or government employee or union goon or leftist, etc
ReplyDeleteFunny/scary/sad stories from my area. The day the lockdown went into effect a coupla weeks ago, I was standing at my picture window looking out at the street in the distance as I always do. This particular time I was mindlessly munching on some apple slices. In the distance, a couple came walking down the street together normally, but when they saw me they immediately jumped 6 feet apart and began nervously scattering away. I laughed at first, then cringed, as there was no way possible to notify them that I was not a "narc." Still, the level of obedience conditioning already instilled in folks in this country on day one of this nonsense was astounding.
ReplyDeleteFast forward to yesterday. After a few weeks of constant reporting of death tolls and ventilators as well as "see something, say something" type fear mongering on the local classic rock radio station, the DJ was now pleading with folks "not to judge or turn on each other" and to have some common decency for "when this is all over." I laughed out loud. Gee, when you pit people against each other, they turn on each other. Who coulda knowed? The same will be said when the economic devastation becomes apparent.
The customary treatment for snitches in Soviet Union was to drown them in the outhouse. I suggest Americans should adopt the practice.
ReplyDeleteI'm here in Michigan, and despite the army of rebels here that marched (drove) on Lansing yesterday, we of course have our fair share of sheeple, willing to give up their own liberty and their neighbors's liberty in exchange for imagined security. I know so many people that take the position "if it saves one life, it's worth it" and "life is worth more than money/the economy" when it comes to trade-offs in closing down the economy in order to preserve life. It's revolting, the way the liberty movement is on life-support in the era of Coronavirus... Half the population seems to be clueless about how life is going to suck for the next 10 years, thanks to the next Great Depression...
ReplyDeleteThe concept that "life is worth more than the economy" shows total ignorance about what "the economy" is. It's not a house filled with money. Rather, it's a complex web responsible for supplying everyone with the things that they need to live and flourish. Where the hell do these idiots think that things come from? I guess that they'll find out soon enough when the things stop showing up...
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