In the States, perhaps more than anywhere else, freedom is illusory. If one is denied freedom, one has no expectation of such. It might be argued that much of the world denies freedoms granted there. But are they really granted there? Democracy is a sham when some votes count more than other votes; when votes can be coerced by power to favour power; when mass persuasion, mass hysteria, mass delusion collude to garner votes. Majority grants authority, which, assuming power, determines, not right, but advantage, in assuring the continuation of power.
Rightness cannot be determined by majority appeal. Rightness is independent of the number of those who recognise it, defend it, uphold it. One person might be right, and everyone else misguided, beguiled, deceived. Vision is granted to but few, the few astute enough, courageous enough to see beneath and beyond the smoke and the mirrors.
But then, again, it is those in authority who identity and define the courses and constraints of mass gullibility. Authority is not concerned with general well-being, but with their own personal power and gain. Right is made wrong; wrong, as it is corrupted by the wishes, motives, and schemes of those in power; fashioned into a fallacy of right, a delusion of right, sleights of hand, betrayals of loyalty, Trojan horses, every one.
The rules in the States are ambiguous. In the exploitative guise of community interest, so-called norms are interpreted of those with money and power – those able to manipulate, to sway, to own those who make the rules, the misappropriated leaders, the politicians, be they in government, church, or school. The exclusive investments of the privileged elite are thereby maintained seemingly effortlessly – through their commercial, industrial, economic influence, their concomitant contributions to their special interests.
In much of the world, the laws are arbitrary, reliably erratic. There is no question who can get away with what, when, where, and how, and what to do should one get caught offending. When the rules are arbitrary; so is the punishment.
Arbitrary is more easily navigated than ambiguous. If one has only one choice, deviation is possible; freedom, is calculated as risk. Where many choices may seemingly be made, as in the States, many of those choices are accompanied by insidious hazards, rendering all choices but the right one fraught with peril – right, often spurious, determined by majority opinion, community consensus, mandated by authoritarian promulgation and ultimatum.
Only in the States is offence taken as right. One is only free insofar as one agrees with and emulates the status quo. Elsewhere, correctness is based on the strength of one’s argument, not simply one’s self-perceived righteousness in disagreement with the opinion of others. If one is offended, it does not mean that she or he is right.
Currently, in the States, ubiquitously, ambiguously, those who are offended by the mandate to wear masks are allowed to strut their defiance publicly, without consequence; while those who are offended by these who so flagrantly disregard the general public welfare are expected to remain quiet, to repress their indignation.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 continues its pernicious execution of fate. Hundreds of thousands dead, arising from the broken promises of only self-proclaimed greatness, one of history’s most colossal of failures, rendering a misguided perception of supremacy, contributing to a general population toxic with foods, with beliefs, with hopes, which flatter taste but feed not, which offer immediate gratification but satisfy not, swollen insufficiencies, all, swallowed as names of better things. Toxic lies. Toxic lives. Toxic deaths. Toxic reckoning.
She or he who is truly free blames no one else. If freedom is but a fetter to a greater freedom, it is but the apparition of freedom. Freedom is never given; it must be taken.
À la recherche de licornes. 