In Canada, we have a day to remember the veterans of war and to honour the sacrifices they made in order for us to enjoy freedom. Never have I understood so well what freedom actually means. Remember when you were able to voice your opinions, travel anywhere in the world, go to restaurants or movies, and take part fully in society? Freedom means not being worried that someone will come to your door in the middle of the night and drag you off to a camp because of a post you made on a social media platform.
In many countries over the past two years we have come to understand how fragile our freedom really is. So many of us learned firsthand how easy it is for the government to convince the public that you are a menace to society. Seeing average people gleefully police neighbours and co-workers by “turning in” unvaccinated family and friends shocked me. This is how I came to know what evil actually looks like: a former friend’s face twisted in anger as she discounts my objections or the self-righteous countenance of my co-worker as he forwards the government email to the boss, knowing it will get me fired.
Unethical Amnesia: The Truth Hurts
“A Liar is Forgetful”- Persian Proverb
Now that more and more evidence on the damage these “vaccines” are doing to people’s immune systems have come to light, why aren’t there outcries of anger? Why are so few people apologizing for their abhorrent behaviour and making amends to those of us who tried to sound the alarm?
Instead, we are being told to forget what happened to us and to grant “amnesty” to those who perpetrated the hatred and bad-mouthed us all over the internet. Why?
It turns out that they just don’t want to remember how terribly they behaved. According to research by Maryam Kouchaki:
“We hold ourselves to be moral agents in the world, so evidence of wrongdoing creates all sorts of dissonance between our ideas about ourselves and our actual behavior. The unethical amnesia acts like an ‘adaptive defensive behavior,’ helping our egos sidestep unpleasant truths.”
Hold That Thought!
While there is little hope that we’ll get an apology, let alone restitution, we can keep the memories of the wrong-doing alive by continuing to tell our stories. We can also use the information gained over the past two years to protect ourselves from what may happen in the future.
There are many studies that show that most people – especially people in their 20s and 30s – tend to remember negative experiences better than positive ones. This is thought to be a survival mechanism as someone who is younger may need to rely on those negative experiences for survival over their lifetime.
In case you’ve forgotten: Here is Global on how best to exclude unvaccinated relatives from your Thanksgiving dinners. The Atlantic reporting that there is little to no sympathy for anyone who is unvaccinated and dies of Covid.
Here Global news gets really nasty only nine months ago: “We should be pushing them extremely hard. We should be persuading and pressuring vaccine holdouts in every way we can think of — educating, incentivizing, penalizing — short of all-out public shaming or frog-
marching them to clinics and forcing needles into their arms.”
Planting a Persuasive Seed
We now know that by stating what “should” be done to people, Global is planting a seed in people’s minds. This is a tactic the government / media regularly use. In an article in The Globe & Mail, Harvey Schachter sites the work of Robert Cialdini and his book, Pre-Suasion, “At the core are privileged moments, identifiable points in time when an individual is particularly receptive to a message. Essentially, you are focusing attention on something that can help to shape action later. He notes that the news media does this regularly by highlighting issues that don't tell us what to think but do indicate what to think about.” Are any of you willing to trust anything the mainstream media publishes again?
Besides the insults and lies from the media and the loss of freedom we endured, we have had a hard lesson delivered on the reliability of those closest to us. Finding out you’d been disinvited from Thanksgiving Dinner by relatives you’d hosted dozens of times seemed like something from a bad movie.
Missing a dry bird with boorish people isn’t where the horror lies: it’s in the realization of what comes next.
Déjà vu
This has all happened before – many times. A group of people is labelled a nuisance by the ruling elite or government of the day. At first they are “tolerated” but soon they become scapegoats and are blamed for every financial or societal failing. (In our case, for every medical failing.)
This is how it started for the Jewish people before World War ll. First the government whipped up public opinion against them through propaganda. Emboldened, the government began forcing the Jewish people to wear an identifying arm band. What came next really was the stuff of nightmares.
Who Can You Trust?
Those of us who had always thought that relatives or friends would band together to help us stand up against the unfairness of the government have been completely disabused of our foolish hope. If we had remembered how the Jewish people were treated by their neighbours and former “friends”, we would not have been surprised at all.
I am not comparing our suffering to that of the Jewish people. I only want to emphasize that we must never forget what authoritarian governments AND ordinary citizens are capable of. Remembering this, it becomes easier for us to understand how the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, among others, could have happened. We also have more compassion for persecuted people because we have faced a little of the fear, isolation, and near hopelessness they must have felt. This is honouring the lessons of history.
We must not ignore the sickening realization that it could happen again (and is happening to others even now). This past two years has been difficult, but it has given us a small taste of the personal sacrifice required to stand up to tyranny. The courage of those who have gone before us and fought for freedom is nothing short of astounding.
Nunquam non Paratus – Never Unprepared
“Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave die only once,” Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Lessons from your own ancestors should not be lost to time because they can help you prepare for what may come. Remember, too that your resistance to the coercion will go down in your family’s lore. I want to be a beacon of hope and courage for a distant relative who finds themselves in a similar situation. We are writing our own history.
“Nunquam non Paratus” or “Never Unprepared” is our family motto handed down from my Scottish ancestors who fought many a battle against various oppressors and rival clans. I also have First Nations’ ancestors who were derided by the authorities and religious leaders as “uncivilised” and rounded up into “re-education schools.” You could say that fighting for freedom is in my blood.
We now know for certain that we can’t count on politicians, health “authorities”, journalists (I use this term loosely), educators, social media, or most family and friends for help or support.
Now is the time to prepare for self-reliance, if you have not already done so. It is important to be able to look after yourself, at the very least, no matter what comes next. Have a bug-out bag ready in case you need to leave your house in the middle of the night. Wish I was kidding.
Going to Ground
Those of us who refused to be vaccinated came to our decisions from many different cultures and viewpoints. We must put aside our differences and focus on what we have in common: realization that government authorities have been taken over by those with a different agenda – either fiscal or worse, doesn’t matter; mainstream media is now a propaganda arm of the regime; knowledge that people who did not stand with us cannot be counted on to help us; and the discovery that we have strength of character, resilience, and uncommon resourcefulness.
These are the very attributes that the Resistance or Underground has had in all times throughout history. You are in good company.
We may never get our apology, but we have been given a warning. Let's not forget it.
More of Kathleen Kelly’s writing can be found at www.helpwithnow.com
Any member of our community is welcome to contribute.
