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Privileged Idiocy: the Anti-Quarantine Protests
To call the people protesting the COVID 19 lockdowns “activists” is giving them too much credit. The idea of comparing quarantine protesters to freedom fighters is an insult to freedom fighters, the notion of freedom, and anyone that’s ever fought for anything. Freedom fighters put their lives on the line for the sake of others, in opposition to oppression by the state or an otherwise powerful entity. Freedom fighters protest because of injustice, because people are suffering and being killed. These gaggles of jackholes are protesting being asked to stay home for the sake of other peoples’ lives and their own. Freedom fighters are beaten, gassed, shot, they are brutalized and killed, and trashed in the media. The most these idiots have to worry about is the strong likelihood of wilfully contracting a dangerous disease, becoming sick, and infecting others. There are no commonalities, only contrasts.
The existence of these quarantine protest groups, and more so the response to them, displays a glaring double standard in our society. Unlike actual freedom fighters, civil rights activists like the besmirched Rosa Parks, the jackhole hordes protesting community lockdowns, store closures, and social distancing, have had to face very little opposition. From what I’ve seen, these brain-dead degenerates freely march around with their anti-American flags and their astoundingly stupid signs declaring that they “want a haircut,” or comparing infection containment protocols with communism, clustered in close groups, bleating their warped misconceptions of freedom and liberty and misappropriated claims of violated rights. They’ve been free to stand on state property, city property, and private property, endangering themselves and others. They’ve openly carried guns. We’ve all seen the photos of these jackholes standing on state building steps, brandishing assault rifles. But I haven’t seen photos of them being arrested. I haven’t seen them being beaten by batons and bitten by police dogs. No video of them being knocked off their feet and thrown through plate glass windows by fire hoses. Haven’t heard one account of tear gas or rubber bullets or live rounds being used on these so-called activists.
If these people were not crackers, all hell would be raging. These groups, predominantly white conservatives, skewing heavily male, from what I’ve seen, are the only such groups that could get away with this horseshit in this country. Imagine if black people protested injustices committed by the state. You shouldn’t have to imagine too hard, and your imagining should bring with it images of the uproar and brutality that almost inevitably comes with activism staged by black protestors and people of color in general. Black people protesting the killings of unarmed black people by police, and the lack of consequences for the police, systemic state-sanctioned murder, are called rioters and terrorists. They can hardly assemble peacefully without being victimized by police squads armed with military-grade weaponry. People of color can’t protest actual injustice, literal murder and abuse, without facing hostile state opposition. Meanwhile, these MAGA crackers are being asked to chill at home, and they’re completely losing their shit, coming out en masse with guns and whining about freedom. It’s not even as though they’re being “forced” to do anything. All the directives given have been more like guidelines than mandates. You might get a fine, but I haven’t heard of that happening much. It’s not like armed police are threatening to gun them down if they step out their front doors. But then, the whole base of the conservative quasi-fascist movement is predicated on the propagation of grievance narratives. They must present themselves as victims for the pretense of legitimacy. People who have the privilege of never having been on the receiving end of real offenses have to hyperbolize inconvenience into injustice.
It’s not just a matter of politics, but also an exhibition on the efficacy of cultural brainwashing and the idiodically self-destructive lengths to which people will go to satisfy the will of their capitalist masters. They’re so eager to return to work, these crackers. Chomping at the bit to get back to earning their pittances by the grace of their corporate owners. They decry the idea of taking “government handouts” in this time of crisis, misunderstanding, apparently, that all of the government’s money is our money already, and that whereas most of it is spent making weapons, keeping people locked in cages, and killing people, a tiny bit of it is being, or may be, used to do something actually productive. If the government gives you a stimulus check or unemployment pay because you lost your job, or pays for your medical care, or funds food banks and medical centers, they’re not giving you their money, they’re giving you your money back. The idea that individuals, anyone other than the wealthy elite class, can be opposed to government assistance during tough times, to welfare, to universal healthcare, and universal basic income, is insane, and evidence of how easily people can be manipulated to act against their interests. The wealthiest Americans aren’t at all so self-sacrificing. The rich will take every government handout they can.
The COVID 19 pandemic can be called a natural disaster, but the crisis we face is primarily the product of our response to it and the failure of systems we created. That our society is structured on principles of capitalism, a system which depends on everything always growing and being more productive, more efficient, means that it is doomed to fail catastrophically every time something goes even a little bit wrong. As has happened many times before, and is happening now. That the system we have isn’t “true” capitalism, in the sense that corporate welfare, government subsidies and the bailouts that save businesses every time they fail, goes principally against the rules of capitalism, which compounds the underlying problems, and makes more pressing the need for, if not a “true” socialist model, then one with at least the safety nets this crisis insists we need. People should not have to risk death to go to work, and they shouldn’t have to go to work as a requirement for living.
These people are members of a death cult.
It’s easy to write them off as a whiny bunch of cracker-ass bitches, but that would be selling short how deranged these folks are. Staying home all the time has been lonely, at times depressing and anxiety provoking. And I feel for those who are stuck in small apartments in cities and literally can’t go outside. But things could be so much worse than this. You could be in a hospital, dying from disease. You could be in prison. You could be dying of disease in prison. But being asked to stay at home, where your stuff is, where you’re comfortable, where you’d probably be spending most of your time anyway, that’s a straw too many?
These people aren’t freedom fighters, or revolutionaries, or anything other than entitled jackholes. They’d be a harmless joke for the rest of us to laugh at, if their actions were harmless. If they all get infected and die, fine. No loss. But their selfish actions are putting at risk everyone with whom they come in contact, including the healthcare workers who will inevitably struggle to keep their dumb asses alive.
