[iamnotwhoiam]

What country do you live in? Can you criticize the leader without going to jail? Do union representatives get murdered? Are police there to help you or to extort you?

I live in an actually authoritarian country. Only the most privileged people here don't get vaccinated, and among them it's a very small group, and mostly foreigners. No one is forced to, and no one is being forced to do anything else with their body.

I find this jump to tyranny argument disgusting. How on Earth would that work? In a country where one man can order the military to kill its own citizens there is no logical connection between vaccinations and smoking or obesity.

Americans (and a lot of other nationalities in the West, but mostly Americans) need to gain some perspective on the difference between tyranny and responsibility. I got vaccinated (with a Chinese vaccine, the horror!) because I consider it my duty to my family, my adopted country, and the world.

And guess what? Vaccination has been stupendously effective and our country is almost back to normal. And still the government is not locking up smokers or fat people.

[SuoDuanDao]

>Americans (and a lot of other nationalities in the West, but mostly Americans) need to gain some perspective on the difference between tyranny and responsibility.

You're right, we do. I for one am happy to take an experimental RNA therapy in hopes a new and better cure can be developed from the results. But it has to be my choice. If the government has the right to shoot me with a novel serum for the sake of public health, what's to stop them from forcing me to expose myself to the virus itself in the next pandemic? Or shooting me with something more permanent if they decide my thought harbours the next dangerous viral pandemic?

You've my sympathies for the state of your country, but I honestly believe if more of your fellow citizens had drawn a bright line around abstract concepts like bodily autonomy, the authoritarians who took it over would have, at the very least, had a much harder time when they were starting out. That's its own kind of responsibility for those of us who don't live in a genuinely authoritarian country yet

[quantumBerry]

I live in the US. Here the police do extort, union representatives have been murdered, and Ben Franklin's own grandson was jailed for criticizing our president adams. However we are certainly pretty low on the authoritarian spectrum, compared to many other countries.

Our own military has done quite horrible things to US citizens, including killing and jailing them in foreign detention centers.

Having spent time in "authoritarian countries", I can tell you even in those countries the common man can often criticize leaders in private, and as I foreigner I have had them confide in me about problems in their country. So it isn't some defense to say that because the common man can complain, it isn't authoritarian.

>And guess what? Vaccination has been stupendously effective and our country is almost back to normal. And still the government is not locking up smokers or fat people.

Despite the dooms-dayers on the internet and media, virtually the same has happened in the US. Nowadays almost all the deaths are the unvaccinated, which for the vast vast majority of them that was their own voluntary decision.

[CryptoPunk]

>>Do union representatives get murdered?

Do strikebreakers get murdered in your country? Because they did, regularly, in the West, and the rhetorical victory of the mafia/socialist-infused labor union movement was so complete, that the murdered were dehumanized as "scabs", and those who protected them, villainized as "union busters".

In the US, you cannot be anti-union and not be under threat of violence, whether it's Larry Elder's staff being assaulted (with hardly any media outcry):

https://twitter.com/realthinkmax/status/1435761238017908740

Or Rand Paul being attacked and almost killed by his neighbour, to the shrieking laughter and encouragement of the public sector:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

Here are some leftists preventing people from entering a bookstore to buy a book they decided others aren't allowed to read:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkSlsiKVqP8

Totally accepted by society. No media outcry. The media, by the way, is fully unionized too:

https://nytimesguild.org/

[iamnotwhoiam]

I fucking hate this website I'm done.

People here love decrying "tyranny" in America and I will either laugh or cry when they their principles come up against the slightest of inconveniences. "Oh I can't go to the closest movie theater unless I get vaccinated and I have to go to the one in another town? Fine I guess I'll get tread on just this one time".

Unfortunately I can't delete my account so I'm just going to change my password without looking.