Why Don't Americans Appreciate their Freedom Enough?

COVID Scam had Shown Majority would Trade their Freedoms for Safety

My three year old piece, so don't mind if something is behind the times there, but my conclusions are still relevant now.

My main disappointment with Western society at large came together with a very painful realization that people in the West in general and in US particularly don't appreciate their basic freedoms and rights enough.

When I came to the West from Russia about six years ago, I thought that the West is the bulwark of freedom. I thought that here I could love whom I was born to love without being judged and bullied for it, and that I could also speak my mind freely and openly without being shut down, censored or even politically prosecuted for it.

It seems that I was largely mistaken. It seems that the West is no longer a free place, for the last two years at least for sure, and, what's worse, that people here don't even appreciate their freedoms and human rights, and don't even want to fight for them. I don't know is it because people here just took their freedoms and rights for granted for way too long, and, hence, forgot how to appreciate them and fight for them, or because they never actually liked freedom too much, just went along with it all this time. Be it as it may, but the age of freedom in the West came to its end, and no one seems to care.

To be sure, attacks on our freedoms, coming ironically mostly from the Left, from so-called 'progressives' began long before last year, before COVID and BLM. 'Progressives' attacked freedom of speech especially viciously, denouncing it as an 'excuse for bigots to spew their bigotry', and canceling and banning everyone who disagreed with them, every conservative in particular. Cancel culture existed in the West for few years already, it just became much stronger last year due to the rise of BLM and 'progressive ideology' in US overall.

It seems that 'progressives' fail to understand that free speech protects everyone, not only 'bigots', and that to allow people to speak their mind isn't the same as agreeing with them. You're free to disagree and even to speak back. But it seems that for 'progressives', the only way to deal with disagreement is to ban and to cancel. While in truth, only open calls to violence should be banned in truly free society, not anything else. But alas, the Woke and their cancel culture ban everyone whom they disagree with.

However, the Woke attacked and canceled only those with whom they were disagreeing, and mostly their political opponents. At large, if you kept silent on your political views, you still could have enjoyed freedoms and human rights in the West prior to 2020.

COVID had changed everything. Unprecedented restrictions on basic human rights and freedoms - draconian lockdowns, mask mandates, and now evil fascist 'vaccine passports' - fell on all Western society in a blink of an eye because of the virus with mortality rate of 1%. All criticisms of those policies were aggressively censored and banned by the Big Tech, and all dissenters were forced to comply under the threats of arrests and fines.

That was a tremendous attack on people's basic human rights and freedoms, and certainly not justified by the seriousness of the virus threat despite all media propaganda and 'experts' misleading claims. Yet, it was implemented, and this shit lasted for more than a year already, and is going to get only worse due to the vaccine passports.

So what was the public response to this unprecedented attack on our basic freedoms and rights? Were there mass demonstrations and protests against draconian lockdowns and mask mandates? Was there at least a broad public discussion on the subject of other possible ways of handling this pandemic without hurting our freedoms and rights so much? Nope. Well, some people went to protests but they were minority, and they were labeled as 'selfish morons, science deniers and conspiracy theorists' by mainstream media. Majority, however, went along with all the draconian restrictions, however irrational and fear (and not science!) based, without even questioning.

That what upset me the most. Majority of people were ready to trade their basic human rights and freedoms for the elusive and false sense of safety and moral superiority. Majority of people were ready to sit at home for weeks without being allowed outside even to exercise.

People working in tourist, music, culture, bar and restaurant industries were silently complying with restrictions which were killing out their businesses and leaving them unemployed or bankrupt. All of this despite that there never was solid evidence that strict lockdowns worked better against the virus than voluntary social distancing, and mask mandates - better than mask recommendations.

There never was a solid evidence that this virus was ever a serious danger to anyone but elderly and already sick, and that locking down the whole society was really the only way to combat this pandemic, instead of target protecting the most vulnerable (e.g., elderly in nursery homes).

Still, people went along with all those irrational and paranoia based draconian restrictions without protesting, without questioning, without discussing possible alternatives as it should have been done in any democratic society. Nope, they simply believed media and authorities that those draconian restrictions were the only way, believed without any solid evidence or proof. They believed them and allowed authorities to strip them of all their basic rights and freedoms.

But it was even worse. Not only people kept allowing authorities to take their basic freedoms and rights away from them, they were actually cheering it, and THEMSELVES insisted on discrimination of their fellows for a 'wrong medical decision'.

Yeah, I'm telling of millions of vaccinated people rooting for fascist vaccine passports which would create unprecedented since Nazi Germany segregation and discrimination. But many people are cheering it and want it to happen. I fail to understand it.

So it turns out people in the West don't really appreciate basic freedoms and rights. They don't respect the constitutional right for everybody to make a medical decision without being pressured into it and punished for a 'wrong decision'. They don't appreciate the privacy of personal medical information and want to make it public. And, worst of all, people are eager to discriminate against their fellows, or, at least, to allow this discrimination as long as it's not them who are discriminated against.

That reminds me of thousands of years of homophobic discrimination against gay people, or terrible racial discrimination of Black people. White and straight people might not have necessarily 'hated' gay or Black people but went along with their discrimination as long as it was not them who was discriminated against, and, moreover, when they actually benefited from this discrimination (like white slavers benefited from Black slavery).

The same happens with those vaccine passports shit - vaccinated people would benefit from discrimination of unvaccinated ones (all economy and travel would be opened to them at the expense of unvaccinated people). Ofc, vaccinated people falsely justify this fascist discrimination by the fact that unvaccinated people are 'selfish and irresponsible'. That again is exactly the SAME as to justify the execution of gay people by homosexuality being 'a sin' (and again, falsely!), or Black slavery by Blacks being 'inferior' race (again, falsely). Just like vaccinated folks label unvaccinated ones 'contaminated, selfish and irresponsible' falsely, and justify their discrimination based on that. Time had passed but majority of people are still nasty and disgusting assholes who are eager to discriminate against their fellows and to profit from it.

Anyway, overall I don't see people in the West appreciating their basic rights and freedoms, not even in the slightest. They are ready to give them all up, or to trade them for a false sense of safety and moral superiority. People themselves invite the authorities and 'Big Brother' to take charge of their lives instead of taking a personal responsibility.

Indeed, people call their sheepish obedience a 'social responsibility', their blind and unwarranted trust to everything media and 'experts' say - 'informed scientific worldview', and their giving up all their freedoms and rights - 'caring for the greater good'.

I again fail to understand that and I'm so much, so much disappointed with people in the West. Those who don't appreciate freedom enough would lose it pretty soon. But those idiots would be even happy at that. They don't want freedom after all. They want SAFETY. They don't want to think for themselves either but to obey everything they are told by authorities without questioning - perfect slaves. I despise this slave mentality so much.