Considering the depth of response I received from my last post, it confirms justification to hold varying degrees of skepticism at those who preach the moral high ground. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at the rest of us. Each person rightfully dances to the beat of a different drummer.
Much of the feedback on previous posts found humor in my writing, and there is more of that to come. But know this, great comedians have a serious side. I don’t claim to be a GREAT comedian, but the comedian known as Mason Loika can be intensely serious. Just ask my partner, Alice McCormick.
For anyone who believes my last post was too personal or private to reveal publicly, I submit that privacy no longer exists. When fundamentalist Muslim terrorists executed heinous suicide missions on 9/11 of 2001, they killed more than almost 3,000 people who died in New York’s twin towers or on the airplanes that crashed into them and other iconic buildings. Those animals ended our right to privacy.
Good governments have an obligation to protect their people, and our privacy is regularly infiltrated to root out those with criminal intent. That’s part of the toll extracted from us day after day. Having secrets is only an illusion. That’s why legalizing the counterculture’s use of marijuana is important; we’re all in this together.
I revere the new generations who will function in our brave new world and make it work for people whose skin color, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation or national origin is different. All these differences make up the organic stew that will constitute the society in which we love and can thrive. We must stand guard against creeping gentrification too.
Therefore, with all due respect to our citizens of the future, I will continue to speak openly and honestly on this website.
My family, friends and curiosity-seekers, as well, deserve nothing less.
Does this mean we are not entitled to privacy because it doesn’t exist?
Privacy is an illusion. Certainly we’re entitled to illusions. Any more is subject to governmental order. I have no problem with that.
It has occurred to me that as Americans, there are enough of us who have decided that our personal safety falls squarely on the shoulders of the government, and none of it on our own. We have come to depend on the government for so many things that should be our own responsibilities. We have the government tell us what products are safe to use instead of using common sense on children’s toys, or even in our CHOICE of where we eat when we go out. People sue restaurant chains in order to force them to serve “healthier” options when they could just as easily patronize an establishment that serves the food they want to eat. KFC and McDonald’s both have been sued because either fried chicken wasn’t healthy, so the oil had to be changed, forever changing the flavor of their delicious chicken to what it is today. McD’s sued over french fries being fried in “fatty” oils. The government has since stepped in and decided that it is up to our ruling class to save us from ourselves. If we would just chose to go eat somewhere else, or fill out enough comment cards to these businesses, they would change a menu to meet what the customer wants, or they would go out of business.
Apparently, a lot of us also do not listen to what is actually said, or draw logical conclusions to statements. The government feeds us statements such as ” People with high cholesterol eat a lot of red meat.” This does not automatically equate to “Red meat causes high cholesterol.” Examine the phrase of “A lot of people that drank water died.” This does not mean that “Water causes death.”, but a large majority of people will use this type of logic to “prove” a point. We as American adults need to learn to read what is actually stated, and understand that all information that is fed to us, is given from a point of view, making it biased to whoever funds that project.
I take issue with the government telling me that they need to monitor any and all of my conversations because of the fact that I use a word that may or may not show up on their list of “buzzwords”. Online and over the phone, these terms are not taken into context, when they use the fact that “he said ____ ” in some post regardless of how it is used. Same in airports, it usually doesn’t matter if you say “bomb” in the manner of “I have a bomb”, or in the manner of “Peyton Manning threw a bomb”. You could still wind up with your ass in a sling, all because the TSA thinks you might have a bomb, because you talk about football.
Again, as with most things I say, personal responsibility is paramount to us being a “free society”. We cannot be free if we give all the responsibilities to someone else. Who we are slaves to depends on who we give that power to control us to, be it a loved one, the government, or a stranger. It does not matter. Slaves we still are.