Independence Day? Riiiight….
Here I am, an American in France, contemplating the meaning of independence on a rainy 4th of July. This is the second year in a row that I don’t feel “free” enough to venture back to my native California. Perhaps I’m being a little paranoid, but the so-called “sanitary crisis” has turned travel into a poker game. Would I need to be tested? Would I need to quarantine there? Would my family or friends want to be around someone who has chosen to remain unvaccinated? Would I be able to enjoy restaurants freely without the hassle of QR codes and masks? What would I be subjected to at the airport? So, I decided to sadly sit this one out: no parades, no barbeques, no fireworks.
This game of Covid “Simon Says” isn’t the only thing that put a damper on my stars and stripes mood. I’ve been mulling over what has happened to the freedoms that Americans have been extolling for the past 245 years, which has compelled me to rethink this holiday altogether. I had a similar epiphany about Thanksgiving and Columbus Day after getting completely different perspectives from what I had learned in history class school. These were just a few of the encounters I’ve had with cognitive dissonance since the Democratic primaries in 2016.
Indeed, my belief system was upended back then. Comfortable narratives about democracy, justice, and freedom were challenged by a very different reality that got me physically sick. Repeated election rigging, HRC’s emails, Seth Rich’s suspicious murder, libelous reporting on Bernie Sanders, and the travesty of the Philly convention plunged me into a funk. What made matters worse was that there were few shoulders to cry on because people didn’t believe me when I ran to them with new, shocking revelations. Instead, I got labeled a “conspiracy theorist” and “anti-American”. It crushed me.
Happily, my tenacity in seeking out information, forging alliances with like-minded people, and focusing on inner work have made me comfortable with my beliefs and (hopefully) a little more eloquent at expressing them. I’m in a much better place than I was 5 years ago, even as the world is going to hell in a handbasket!
Getting back to my country ‘tis of thee, here are a few of the things that I feel epitomize the United States, but have since become empty concepts and meaningless slogans:
Freedom of speech, the cornerstone of American independence, is pretty much dead. We use the First Amendment as a pretext to go to war in faraway countries, and yet, we don’t practice what we preach. The case of WikiLeaks publisher, Julian Assange is the most poignant testimony to the one-two-three punch of lies, censorship, and biased reporting that is prevalent in the US. It’s amazing to think that an Australian publisher is languishing in a British prison at the behest of the US government for revealing its heinous crimes. Every time fabricated charges against Julian Assange fall apart, new Orwellian accusations are concocted to keep him locked up. He should have been released after his hearing last January, but instead, he just spent his 50th birthday locked up in conditions normally reserved for the world’s most dangerous terrorists.
What baffles me is that only a handful of journalists have had the courage to speak up on Assange’s behalf. I witnessed this when I attended his preliminary extradition hearing in February 2020. Most of the mainstream journalists present in the privileged press area just worked off the communiqués distributed by the prosecution team, which naturally resulted in very lopsided reporting — if there was any reporting at all. I could only imagine that these journalists had to resort to these press releases because their editors forbade them from giving their own eye-witness accounts of the kangaroo court shenanigans that took place over those 4 days. Perhaps some of these journalists truly felt they were doing a top-notch job just because they followed the style booklets of their professors at their CIA-infiltrated schools of journalism. Real journalism has died, dragging the First Amendment down with it.
The assault on our freedom of expression doesn’t stop there. Big Tech has been gradually silencing everyone on social media, from the mom-turned-researcher to the Pulitzer-worthy indie journalist, but lately, almost anyone who has posted something more consequential than a cheese plate has been subjected to a garden variety of censorship practices, including shadow banning, “jail time”, content suppression, and deplatforming/demonetizing. It’s a badge of coolness to be branded as one of the newly-baptized “extremists” that are rocking the oligarchy’s boat, but it’s also quite tedious getting stern warnings or even FaceBook jail time for “crimes” like advocating for daily Vitamin D. It’s downright infuriating that Zuck is free to post misleading information on the presumed safety of experimental Covid serums (which, by the way, have a growing list of serious adverse effects). “Thoughts for me but not for thee”, says he…
I’d like to digress and make things clear about the above image. I could find a gazillion memes that misquoted and misinterpreted what Trump tried to say about nebulized hydrogen peroxide and light therapy for treating Covid. Had I put up any of those memes on my FaceBook wall, they would not have been taken down because trashing Trump is practically our patriotic duty on social media. However, when the tables were turned on the Democrats, the “Community Standards” overlords got upset... and I got busted, first for dangerous content ( 24 hours), then for sexual content (72 hours). These bans say more about FaceBook’s biased policing than my lack of taste. To wit, this nearly identical meme is apparently “OK” by their standards.
To wrap this up, I’d like to say that while Trump is far from the most articulate speaker out there, even I could figure out what he was trying to say. Really, did you think he wanted us to ingest Clorox? In that case, perhaps we should let Zuckerberg and Dorsey censor us for our own good. But if we allow Big Tech to be our nanny, we should stop taking a day off to celebrate freedom.
Of course, some people do have freedom of speech. They’re the highest bidders, they’re the ones helping out the establishment. They’re the ones pushing Covid vaccines on pregnant women. They’re also the ones hiding the alarming number of spontaneous abortions that have occurred after those women got the jab.
The assault on Freedom of Speech doesn’t end there: Jeff Bezos has thrown his hat into the ring, by limiting or even blocking sales. Ambiguous and ultra-anally-retentive “Cancel Culture” has led to the further banning of classics like John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax”. I’m still not sure what is wrong with these books.
Arbitrary Covid restrictions on gatherings have given the powers-that-be a convenient tool to suppress mounting public discontent. The Yellow Vest movement, the French trans-societal tsunami that swelled up in 2018 with a long list of establishment-crushing grievances, was beginning to inspire protests around the world. The Covid lockdown was far more effective at stemming the tide than all the flash balls, water cannons, and tear gas grenades the riot police deployed. On the other hand, the stage was given to “socially acceptable” protests like BLM, which I feel serve more to pigeon-hole people into certain thought categories and thus keep the populace divided and distracted.
The restrictions on gatherings have also profoundly affected another major tenet of the First Amendment: the freedom to practice religion. Many churches, no matter the denomination, are much more than mere places of worship. They have become community centers that serve as the glue holding an increasingly fractured society together. They have stepped in where our government has slacked off, caring for the needy's minds, bodies, and souls. These are places where people can find solace in the maelstrom of perpetual fear. On a more spiritual level, without these sacred venues, there is no place for people to raise the vibrational frequency through group prayer or meditation. People around the country are being deprived of their spiritual sovereignty. That is huge.
Freedom of speech? Nixed. Freedom of religion? Nixed. Freedom of choice for what we put in our bodies? That’s the next one heading for the chopping block. Actually, we haven’t had much of a choice for a while. We drink poison in the form of fluoridated water. We unknowingly eat genetically modified foods drenched in herbicides. We’re getting microwaved with 5G and other EMFs. And Lord knows what we’re breathing in if these so-called chemtrails exist. Now we’re facing another unknown: a vast array of serums disguised as life-saving vaccines. For me, this is the ultimate game of Russian Roulette. I have chosen not to play, but almost everyone around me has gone through with it. Thankfully for them, so far, so good. But I have poured through the VAERS reports in the USA and EudraVigilance database in Europe, and knowing the immediate and longer-term risks of taking part in this experiment enough for me to say “NO WAY!”.
As those around me are running to get vaxxed in the hopes of attaining some normalcy in their lives, I wonder if each jab they get is pushing me out of their world. Many of these people don’t see any harm in having “vaxxed only” discos, contact tracing in restaurants or triple masking on long-haul flights. It’s a small price to pay, and so they obey. They know where I stand on this, but don’t realize that I could well end being an outcast. They are helping pave the way towards medical apartheid. The hideous blue face mask will be the new Star of David for the dirty unvaxxed. I hope I’m wrong, but that thought alone puts a damper on my sparkler.
So does this all make me anti-American? You’d think so, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. The real anti-Americans are those who have repressed us and have created ideological divisions that have destroyed families and friendships. I think we are teetering between a bright future and Orwellian dystopia. To get fate on our side, we all need to push karma in the right direction, and that entails taking a good, hard look at how we got to this point.
There are so many things to love about America: its stunning natural beauty, its vibrant diversity, its can-do spirit, and its unique traditions. I miss the outdoor blues concerts, the hokey July 4th parades, and amazing eclectic street food. There really is a lot to love. One thing I like best about Americans is their resilience. Like tender blades of grass that break through the cracks in the concrete, I have complete confidence that one day that the resilience of the American people will rise up make the USA shine once again.
