I don’t want comfort. I want God.
A Rasmussen poll has been making the rounds on certain media platforms (but notably not others). These sorts of polls are not uncommon, often filling in gaps in a slow news day, often intended to befuddle the listener as to how so many people could hold so strange a position. Most of the time these polls are so outlandish that you immediately dismiss them. “9/10 conservatives say they don’t believe in evolution!” “75 percent of surveyed people think the earth is flat!”
In more ordinary times, I tend to ignore these. After all, many polls are easily skewed by biased reporting, or simply ignorance of the statistical method translates to inaccurate reporting. Human error, modeling error – all manner of error could easily dismiss any particularly unbelievable result of any unbelievable poll. Beyond that, 2016 demonstrated just how poor the predictive power of any poll can be. So there is, as there always is, ample room for doubt, ample room for skepticism. I invite you questions.
So the poll I want to discuss is not shocking for how unbelievable it is, nor for how unlikely its results are. In fact, I want to discuss it because it is, sadly, very believable. In fact, despite the incredibly distressing finding it reports, the sort of finding you genuinely do not wish to believe, I do believe it. I do find it ringing eerily akin to truth.
The poll was of voters, asking them based upon party lines what level of vaccination enforcement they would want from their government. Almost 60 percent of Democrat voters, according to this poll, favor a government policy requiring all unvaccinated individuals to be confined to their homes at all times. This proposal is opposed by 61 percent of all other likely voters.
It goes further: 48 percent of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison persons who publicly question the efficacy of existing vaccines on any media platform. To put this clearly, these people would be imprisoned for the crime of asking questions, not for their vaccine status, which I don’t think is a consideration of that question.
I’m not through yet – because 45 percent of Democrats favor the government requiring citizens to temporarily live in “designated facilities” if they refuse to be vaccinated.
These policies are, you may imagine, strongly opposed by the opposition political ideologies represented in the poll. Republicans opposed home confinement to a tune of 79 percent. Only 14 percent of Republicans thought you should imprison people for asking questions.
I don’t have a political party. I’ve registered for both parties at varying points, or none at all where I could. I want it to be very clear that I consider both political parties to be degenerate, debauched tumors, so bloated with corruption and taxpayer dollars that the only surgical implement precise enough to remove them is a military-grade flamethrower. Accuse me of all the bias you please, but let me very clear in what I consider my biases to be:
I am in the camp that is opposed to building concentration – I mean ‘quarantine facilities’ for healthy people.
I am in the camp that thinks the example set by Australia and Austria is inhuman and intolerable, evil in every definition of the word. I am in the camp that believes that it is not my neighbors which shut down my businesses, nor is it my neighbors who threaten me with cages and poverty if I defy their mandates. It is not the people of this county or the neighboring county who I fear. I am not afraid of getting sick. I am not afraid of
COVID-19.
I am afraid of quarantine camps. I am afraid of a society where questions are deemed dangerous by 1/3 of its citizens. I am afraid of a world where access to society is determined by your compliance with unelected health officials. I am afraid of a world where we cannot question, we cannot shout, we cannot be angry or be skeptical or be free. I know many want a world where they are comfortable, protected, safe and unconcerned with unseen and unknown dangers.
Yet if your comfort comes at the cost of freedom, I don’t want it. If the world you want is a world of face-stealing scanners at every door, of a vaccine passport in every wallet, if it is a world of endless anxiety and deep distrust, a world where the human touch is scorned and the human face is obscured, where the bloated and the diseased dictate health and wellness to all and none – I reject it.
Do we remember books? Let me quote one for you, the immortal writings of Aldous Huxley, in his prophetic prose “A Brave New World” as a savage comes to face the makeshift lords of his world. They insist to him the debauched society they rule is superior, civilized and comfortable. All discomforts eliminated, all dangers kept far from mind. They say they prefer to do things comfortably, and to them the savage says:
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
Between our dueling desires, I’ll let you decide which you prefer.