Bloviating. That’s the word. He was bloviating. From his mouth came a stream of invectives and grand accusations covering great tracts of space and time. These people, he spat, are the same ones that didn’t let women vote, hate reproductive rights, hosed down blacks in the streets in the ’60s and voted for f***ing Trump! The only explanation he could conceive of for vaccine resistant people was intractable stupidity or insipid evil, and I couldn’t tell which was burdened with the greater antipathy.
With a palette of white and black he painted the portrait of our culture on canvas with broad strokes only achievable with a paint roller. I stood and listened, arms folded, mouth closed; this is my posture when I have the privilege of listening to someone who knows everything. One time my uncle’s pitbull humped my leg valiantly for ten solid minutes. There were similarities. Sometimes you just gotta ride it out.
This man thought the deficit of non-covid vaxxers was knowledge. Because of this erroneous assumption, federal and state governments, and alphabet organizations have tried to increase vaccine acceptance by offering simple explanations from your friendly government experts. When this didn’t take, incentives were offered like lotto tickets and free Happy Meals. After this, they brought out an squinting octogenarian to be impatient at you. After all these tried and true methods were ineffective at increasing vaccination rates, the move was to strong arm people to have to choose between providing for their families, or get fired for non-compliance.
During all this they still thought it was a knowledge deficit. When supplying the knowledge with the incentives didn’t work the only other obvious assumption was that they were dumb, ignorant and needed the stick. What has not occurred is that this is neither a knowledge deficit nor an obstinance problem, but a trust issue.
I don’t want to bore you with the list of reasons to mistrust the experts and authorities on this matter. Let’s just say it may be the same reason you may mistrust the instructions of your woodshop teacher when they show up with 40% fewer fingers and a big toe sewn in place of dominant thumb. Or for the same reason you may mistrust a financial planner living out of his BMW. Or the two goodfellas who give you their word this is the last time the price for your protection goes up.
When it comes to being trustworthy, politicians are rock bottom in multiple polls with no hope of any upward movement. But with vaccine mandates, they seem intent on shifting sideways, probably to make room for the media. As far as the covid vaccine goes, the establishment media, loyal Democrat wingman that it is, pranced up to the public sitting contentedly by itself at the end of the bar, and slid her a lagoon-blue drink, pink umbrella aslant, compliments of that sketchy character salivating by the back door to the alley. When the public responds with a “you can’t be serious” look and slides the drink back, trust is not improved with having two goons sidle up close, sitting backwards in chairs. This only serves to validate fears that there was more “garnish” in that drink than just a maraschino cherry.
Trust is a two way street, and so is mistrust. The Christian invention of limited government was predicated on the fact that man is inherently untrustworthy, and particularly so the more power they yield. Both the ruled and the ruler are subject to the same sins. The tricky part is those same sinners running the State have to mitigate this sin by enforcing just rules, which must necessarily come with some clout. Wise rulers understand their proclivities and take into account the good and necessary dubious glances of those they rule over. We know the darkness of their heart because we know the darkness of ours. Trust, therefore, is not unequivocal; it must not only be won, it must be qualified and enumerated. When that trust is breached, and breached specifically on the agreed upon terms, the question then becomes which party is obeying the rules and which have departed. Any future mistrust on the part of the offended party is completely justified and only rectified through acknowledgement of the wrong and then backing the heck off.
This does not detract from the reality that there are legitimate knowledge based questions which need answering, such as long term sequelae, variant effectiveness, and that pile of unmatched socks that is the VAERS data someone has to sort through. But whatever knowledge deficit exists, it will do no good addressing it until the underlying trust issue is resolved. And the reason governing authorities continue slapping their foreheads in disbelief of vaccine refusal is that they are unable to get close enough to the American psyche due to the length of their noses.
We are very quickly being hypnotized into the silly notion that the purpose of humans is to be governed. It is not. This is not the Matrix; we do not exist to keep the robot overlords of Congress alive with an endless supply of tax dollars. Our purpose is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. The pursuit of this purpose, which each of us has been granted by God, is based on individual conviction and conscience. Call it “pursuit of happiness”, if you want to be a Deist about it. But free enterprise, free speech, and expressive voting follow naturally in the wake of this acknowledgement of individual purpose and accountability to God.
Vaccine compliance, whatever that is, will not increase while draconian measures continue. What we have is a case in point of “the beatings will stop when morale increases” or in this case, when the vaccination rate increases. I do not have much hope for this administration to back off these things. I have less hope still they will recognize the lack of trust is due to their heavy handed and oafish habit of asking to hold your freedoms and then petting them to death. But I do trust in God. I do know that Jesus has authority over all things, and that includes our tripartite government.
As for the bloviators, they would do well to seek a better understanding of covid vaccine refusal, and ask if, perhaps, their bloodshot eyes and the bile in their voice has anything at all to do with it.
Thought Butter 