A personal friend wrote on social media recently:
The covid bull**** did us all a favor. I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out for a minute. All the people demanding more lockdowns, that the unvaccinated be punished, that vaccine passports be required, that mask mandates remain in place forever, and all that **** are all speaking loudly and openly about it. Those are the people who are a threat to anyone who wants to remain free. They are the people who will report your activities to the government. They are the secret police. They’re the people who will expose the Jews hiding in your attic, metaphorically. Take careful note of who those people are. Smile. Be polite. Tell them nothing. Do not invite them to your home. Do not make friends with them. Watch your communications carefully when they’re around, and don’t talk to any of their friends or family they haven’t cut off. Those people may not be quite so far gone, but they are also an information security risk, because they will casually and unthinkingly tell their friend in the secret police anything you tell them. Because of this covid disaster, we no longer have to wonder who in our local area is a threat. They have self-identified, and we should act accordingly.
I agree. What’s more, my friend is a nurse (in a very demanding area of medicine and health care), and so is fully informed (and then some) about COVID-19 and its risks, and the extent of the masquerade being played out by the so-called “authorities”.
I’d like to emphasize a couple of things in what my friend said, and didn’t say.
- Nowhere is it argued that we should target those who act like that. This isn’t about retaliation, or revenge, or anything aggressive. This is about preserving our own security, keeping our own counsel, and not exposing ourselves to the risk that a “Karen” (or multiple Karens) might tell the authorities that we don’t go along with their program, thereby making us more vulnerable to external pressure.
- The comments about “report your activities to the government” and “secret police” resonate with me. That’s exactly what I’ve seen in more than one part of the world. The authorities don’t have to blanket a town, or a region, or a nation with uniformed statist enforcers. They only have to have enough of them to deal with known threats. How does a threat become known? Because somebody tells the authorities that they’re a threat. That “threat” doesn’t have to be overt, or violent, or even dangerous. Mere independent thought, mere refusal to go along with the official line, is all too often considered dangerous by those intent upon imposing their views on the rest of us.
- “Information security risk”. Another good phrase. Unless you’re in an area where you can be open about your views without endangering yourself (and in large parts of America today, you can’t do that), you should (as we’ve said many times before in these pages) “be the gray man” (general information at these links, and more specific advice for emergencies here). Don’t do anything that makes you stand out as a potential target. Beware the “tall poppy syndrome” when it comes to thinking for yourself. The very fact that you do so will be seen as a threat by those who don’t.
A final thought. If you’re surrounded or outnumbered by COVID-19 “Karens” in your area, or place of work, or whatever, remember that they feel safe because there are lots of them. They draw strength from each other. Take a leaf out of their book, and build up your own circle of like-minded people who can (and if necessary will) provide mutual support against “Karen” pressure. Don’t stand alone against the storm; stand with, and stand by, those who’ll resist it with you. It helps.
Peter
Also: the category "uniformed statist enforcers" need not be limited to regulars on the official government payroll. Keep in mind that in some jurisdictions the Brownshirts already have quasi-governmental status, or at least immunity from prosecution plus special protection against self-defense by their victims.
I believe I unconsciously already knew this. My circle of friends has been pretty stagnant since 2019 and is shrinking as we stroll further along towards socialism.
Thanks for the refresher; it can only help reinforce my beliefs.
Hmmmmppfffff.
On your blog roll, Pastor, I see a certain Comrade Misfit. Will you practice what you preach, Pastor?
Excellent advice. OPSEC is key, and identifying both the grey and black hats is essential.
However, we must remember that playing a good defense doesn't lead to winning. it just means you lose more slowly.
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? […] The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
I dont know. This is a critical time and the question must be answered now, Is our nation too far gone into tyranny that speaking out is a useless action? Because if we adopt this gray man stance and slink back into the shadows, we are almost certainly guaranteeing that the tyranny wins and whatever personal safety we are buying will be a thin, cheap, and bitter one, and likely short as we are systematically hunted down.
Isn't this mindset better suited for a people already enslaved? How is this American? Yes, the bad guys are on top at the moment but it's a very precarious hold they have and they know it. That's why they are taking such hasty and desperate measures to consolidate power and neutralize all threats— ex. the military, state governors, local law enforcement.
Sure, this op sec stuff is smart advice but we may well bitterly regret being so timid and fearful when, as Solzhenitsyn counseled, a bold defiance might have swept away the thin ropes that are upon us now.
This. Those bastards are the ones that need to be made to keep their heads down. They have shownnthey are not our countrymen so they need to be driven out of our country.
Here's a small instance of the shoe being on the other foot. We had our summer gathering/birthday celebration last week. My friends are all on the same page. Some of my wife's friends are woke. And the wokest among them showed up in my back yard wearing a black face mask. I told her to remove the mask. She said, no. So, I walked away for a moment to take a deep breath. I returned to the table, and told her firmly, "You will remove the mask, or leave. No third option."
She complied with the mandate. But I doubt she'll be back.
JWM
I believe Robert A. Heinlein (undoubtedly many others, but not the NRA) pointed out that no war has ever been won by the Dept. of Defense.
God preserve the right.
Thanks, this post stirred me to re-read this excerpt from Aristotle's Politics:
"Wherefore those who denounce tyranny and blame the counsel which Periander gave to Thrasybulus cannot be held altogether just in their censure. The story is that Periander, when the herald was sent to ask counsel of him, said nothing, but only cut off the tallest ears of corn till he had brought the field to a level. The herald did not know the meaning of the action, but came and reported what he had seen to Thrasybulus, who understood that he was to cut off the principal men in the state; and this is a policy not only expedient for tyrants or in practice confined to them, but equally necessary in oligarchies and democracies. Ostracism is a measure of the same kind, which acts by disabling and banishing the most prominent citizens. Great powers do the same to whole cities and nations, as the Athenians did to the Samians, Chians, and Lesbians; no sooner had they obtained a firm grasp of the empire, than they humbled their allies contrary to treaty; and the Persian king has repeatedly crushed the Medes, Babylonians, and other nations, when their spirit has been stirred by the recollection of their former greatness."
https://archive.org/details/aristotlespoliti00aris/page/130/mode/2up
If things are so bad that anyone must temper their comments lest the Karens report them to the authorities, it's LONG PAST time to start shooting those people in the face, and then going after their families and ending their genetic line as well.
Lest I be misconstrued, I mean that literally and exactly.