There’s a whole chunk of our movement exploring the options and finer points of using religious beliefs or whatever else for exemptions from vaccine mandates, that misses the boat though.
You’re playing their game if you’re helping to build work arounds within the system of authority they’re building, don’t work around it like it’s something that’ll be there no matter what you do, attack it like the Southwest Airline employees did. They just won.
No mandate for that airline.
You don’t have to come up with a reason for exemption and if you think you do, you’re getting tricked into going along with it. I can’t play the hem haw games lol, I can’t pretend to have a special reason when I shouldn’t need one. I say no, I don’t want it, that’s all the reason I need. I’m exempt. Anyone wants to fight me over it, I’m down for that.
I get where people are coming from who want to sidestep attacking the mandate outright by having an exemption, but my position is you don’t need exemption, they don’t have the authority to do what they’re doing. I’m not going to play their game by finding work arounds, I’m going to smash the illusion of that authority.
I’m not going to pretend to have a faith I don’t have, or a condition I don’t have, I’m just going to say no.
It’s kind of like when California first legalized medical weed only, and not recreational, I thought that was disgusting because I knew just as well as everybody else that half or more of the medical marijuana users were recreational users.
Stoners were happy because they could get a card, and all the sudden something that was illegal had no risk for them BUT why the fuck should you have to lie?
Why pass a set of laws meant to be ignored and abused when you could just do it right the first time and make the laws match reality?
I.e. Why not just legalize it all the way? We eventually did end up doing that, btw.
With more sense, we could have skipped ahead to full legalization right away, and that’s what I argue we do in fighting against these vaccine mandates.
Don’t encourage people to come up with dishonest reasons so they can work within the corrupt system being built up around them, instead encourage them to undermine, erode, and destroy that authoritarian system of compliance with honesty and a middle finger.
Hide behind religion if circumstances dictate you absolutely must, hide behind whatever other reason and play their game, but recognize that you’re playing their game all the same, basically acting as controlled opposition to them, and it’s not going to work, you need to break the compliance pattern they’re creating cuz compliance is the whole point.
If you come up with and use little workarounds to exist within that system, you might think you’re defying it but you’re just becoming a part of it.
Mike (Breaking Bad): “The moral of the story is: I chose a half-measure when I should have gone all the way. I’ll never make that mistake again. No more half-measures, Walter.”
Also, from Bill the Butcher
(Gangs Of New York): “I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. So because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth. You can build your filthy world without me.”
Now granted, Bill the Butcher was the kind of rabid nativist left wing nuts accuse people like me of being; that’s Democrat projection though.
I’m not self-conscious about quoting him cuz I’m keenly aware of how different I am and confident in how obvious those differences are to anyone who cares to look – despite what my political opposition claims.
Just cuz he had a good line about halfassedness, compromising your beliefs, and having integrity, doesn’t mean I agree with what his overall beliefs were or what he stood for.
Still makes a good point so I’m going to quote him here; same as why we have statues of confederate soldiers, of former slave owners, and all the rest – you don’t have to be in 100% agreement with somebody to learn from them, or to be able to identify the little of what they got right among all the shit they get wrong.
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Modern Republican 