I
t was said that Josef Stalin once plucked a live chicken in front of his followers. Granted, the story may be a fable, but one can easily envision the brutal Soviet dictator doing just that. As the narrative goes, Stalin forcefully clutched the chicken and stripped the squawking, struggling bird of its feathers.
He then set it down.
“Watch,” Stalin said, as he dropped small amounts of grain on the floor. The bird began following him around the room, pecking up the grain. “Do you see how that chicken follows me for food?” he asked his followers. “People are like that. Even if you inflict great pain on them, they will follow you for food the rest of their lives.”
Are we turning into Stalin’s chickens?
After the emotional and economic pain we’ve endured, are we willing to give up our family businesses, our livelihoods, our very freedom for tiny scraps of compensation from a centralized bureaucracy?
In a recent televised interview, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) suggested that the American people should NOT go back to work.
“When we talk about this idea of reopening society, you know, only in America… when the president tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work?” the Democrat representative blathered. “When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say, ‘No, we’re not going back to that.’”
You can watch her on camera here: https://bit.ly/SayNotoWork.
Hey, if healthy, able-bodied Americans don’t want a job, they should be free to sit around the house as long as they like. Go ahead, be an unproductive, self-indulgent dilettante or couch-surfer or whatever suits your fancy. Just don’t cheat your landlord, hijack your family or ask hard-working taxpayers to support you.
Yes, certain people are busy at home taking care of their family and others are UNABLE to work, for a variety of reasons, but I’m not referring to THEM.
Does AOC see us as her chickens?
What, exactly, is her plan for those who would boycott work? Will she be setting up a tent village in her yard? Levying additional taxes on those who DO work to pay for soup kitchens? Entertaining the masses with fairy-tale passion plays about how much better their lives are because they voted for her?
Frankly, I hope AOC continues to prattle on. Let her keep spewing her Democrat Partyvision for the United States reborn in the image of Cuba, a country where “tech skills”equal to the fabrication of replacement parts for a 1958 Dodge and health care equates to an occasional aspirin.
Good citizens who want to go back to work are currently forced to comply with government mandates to stay home. These are not laws, mind you, but “orders.” We are being told, essentially, that people whose lives are affected by the virus are more important than those whose lives are being destroyed by other illnesses and economic hardship. We are being plucked of our livelihood, our confidence and, yes, our health, while being thrown chicken feed.
Americans are increasingly perplexed and angered. Draconian — and often inexplicable or even capricious — measures are being formulated and enforced at many levels of government, in the name of “saving lives.”
A few examples:
• Liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries are “essential,” but golf courses, parks and beaches are not.
• Parishioners have been fined for attending drive-in services in their own vehicles on church property.
• In Michigan, aisles in big hardware stores are roped off so customers cannot purchase vegetable seeds, carpeting or paint. The governor there has deemed canoes and kayaks acceptable on the state’s many lakes, but motorboats are forbidden.
• Left-wing officials are closing gun stores while their sheriffs are releasing criminals from jail (to a broken economy)… so they won’t catch the virus.
• Visiting your grandmother is forbidden, but a cab ride with an older taxi driver is fine.
• Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking Californians to volunteer — californiavolunteers.ca.gov. So we cannot work, but it’s safe to volunteer?
At what point will you question what’s going on? Do you expect NO death from COVID-19 before venturing out of the house? If law enforcement, “for your own safety,” mandated you to climb aboard a train bound for Pandemic Protection Camp, would you pack a bag? How far does the government have to push before you’re jolted awake?
Last weekend in Encinitas, police handcuffed three people and removed them from Moonlight Beach for disobeying county closure “orders.” They were not read their rights, but simply hauled away. One of them shouted, “This is America.”
An observer can be heard on video asking police, “What about your oath?”
Yes, what ABOUT that oath those officers swore, to uphold the Constitution? Maybe they should read our founding document again.
So should we all, including Gov. Gavin Newsom? You might want to call him and make that suggestion — 916-445-2841. Then tell him to #ReOpenCalifornia.
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Patricia Suzanne is a professional writer, retired small business owner, and conservative Republican activist. She was born and raised in the once Golden State of California, now a land of despair and disrepair for all but elite leftist Democrats and their cronies.
