Garrett Soldano, the founder of Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine, one of the groups participating in Wednesday’s Fuckwits on Parade, had this to say about that punk-ass stunt:
“Keeping healthy people at home is tyranny.”
Tyranny. What is it? Where does it come from? How do you spell it? Conservatives know they don’t like it, but they’re having some difficulty, the poor dears, trying to figure out what actually constitutes tyranny. Happily, I am here to help! Here are some useful examples.
Saying ‘Happy holidays’? Not tyranny. Being kidnapped by the authorities for dissent? Tyranny. Giving folks access to affordable health care? Not tyranny. Routine torture to obtain confessions from political/religious dissidents? Tyranny. Having a limit on the number of firearms you can purchase in a month? Not tyranny. Having your home bulldozed to make way for a settlement of ‘approved’ citizens? Tyranny. Requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for birth control for unmarried women? Not tyranny. Being shot by agents of your own government for voicing anti-government opinions? Tyranny. Telling folks to isolate themselves at home to mitigate the death toll of a pandemic? Not tyranny.
See how easy it is? You don’t have to have a brain like Stephen Hawking to tell the difference between 1) laws/rules/regulations you disagree with, or you think are stupid, or you find overly restrictive and 2) tyranny.
Another useful tool in determining tyranny: compare and contrast. Ask yourself ‘What would happen if I showed up armed and dressed in camo on the capital steps in Lansing, Michigan to protest against the government?’ And then ask the same question, this time using Riyadh, Saudi Arabia? (HINT: the correct answer is ‘In Lansing, after a while I’d go home and grill burgers’ and ‘In Riyadh, I’d be arrested and have electrodes attached to my genitals.’) Ask yourself ‘In Lansing, what would happen if I protested by blocking traffic in front of the emergency entrance to a hospital?’ And then ask the same question, only using Pyongyang, North Korea. (HINT: the correct answer is ‘In Lansing, people would be upset because I was acting like a horse’s ass’ and ‘In Pyongyang, they’d put a bullet in the back of my head and feed my body to the pigs.’) Ask yourself ‘What if I carried a protest sign and chanted for the governor to be locked up without a trial?’ and ask the same question about Harare, Zimbabwe. (HINT: the correct answer is ‘In Lansing, the police would protect my right to protest’ and ‘In Harare, I’d disappear and never be heard from again…and so would my family.’)
Tyranny.
See? It’s simple. If you can publicly call your government officials tyrants without fear of being arrested, assaulted, or killed by the authorities, you’re NOT living under tyranny.
But just to be sure, I took a look at Governor Whitmer’s ‘stay at home’ order. I wanted to get a sense of exactly how tyrannical it was. She explains the reasoning behind the order. “To suppress the spread of COVID-19, to prevent the state’s health care system from being overwhelmed, to allow time for the production of critical test kits, ventilators, and personal protective equipment, and to avoid needless deaths.” Not very tyrannical.
Not tyranny.
But then comes the meat of the order. The real test of tyranny. The order prohibits “businesses and operations from requiring workers to leave their homes, unless those workers are necessary to sustain or protect life or to conduct minimum basic operations.” That’s not just disappointingly non-tyrannical, it’s also a reasonable step to reduce the body count during a pandemic.
What about personal restrictions? I mean, that offers some opportunities for serious tyranny. Her order expressly tells folks it’s okay to “leave the house to get groceries or needed supplies” and to “engage in outdoor activities like walking, hiking, running, cycling, kayaking, canoeing, or any other recreational activity” so long as it was consistent with remaining at least six feet apart. That’s not tyranny. That’s good government.
Tyranny.
You know what would be tyrannical? A government that required its workers to labor in conditions known to increase the probability of dying simply to maintain a certain economic standard for the nation’s elite.
As I write this, the butcher’s bill in the United States is 37,175 confirmed Covid-19 deaths and 609,587 confirmed active cases (13,509 of which are considered to be in serious or critical condition). Those are confirmed cases. Because of inadequate testing, we don’t know how many actual active cases exist or how many people have actually died from Covin-19. The confirmed cases undoubtedly underestimate the actual cases.
Not tyranny. Heroism. Stay home. Wear masks. Wear gloves. Wash your damned hands.
Let me just repeat that. We have 37,889 confirmed Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. There are 157,451 confirmed deaths worldwide. That means the United States, which has about 4.25% of the world’s population, accounts for around 24% of the world’s confirmed Covid-19 deaths.
That’s not tyranny. But it’s really, really, really bad government.
gregfallis.com 
I struggle to understand what version of the Constitution these idiots have been reading, and why these (incorrect) beliefs are so persistent.
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Maybe you are reading the wrong constitution. Give that a thought.
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Huh. Funny.
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This isn’t rocket surgery: If you’re not being run over by a tank, it’s not tyranny.
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Hilarious …very good read (or rather write)
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What would you call a government that takes away its citizens rights of free, unencumbered travel from their homes?
What do you call a government that arrest a father in front of his 6 year old daughter at the playground for, god forbid, playing.
What do you call a gov. that forces you to wear a gov approved garment or else you are not allowed to buy food to feed your family?
What do you call a gov who picks and chooses which businesses it will kill and which it will allow to survive?
What do you call a government that uses fear of death as a way to exert its power over the people?
What do you call a government that tries to strip away the citizen’s rights, such as closing gun shops as if that somehow made the virus spread more.
You may not want to call it tyrannical, but it certainly is not the government of these United States. The overreach of power over the people has been unprecedented and it is all based on faulty information, scare tactics, a media in bed with one party pushing an agenda of “the sky is falling” when in fact the sky is actually just fine.
Here in CA where we face some of the draconian government officials who are letting criminals out of jail while arresting sail borders for breaking the “you can’t go outside and live your life” decrees, the population is over 39 million. of those 39 million 1087 people have supposedly died from Coronavirus. That is a whopping .000046% of the population. CA has destroyed lives and livelihoods over odds that are worse than trying to win the damn lotto. And while people are losing jobs and homes, domestic violence rates have gone up 25% in CA since this started. Child abuse is way up as well as susicides. I venture to guess the suicides may outpace the death rate of covid.
So in the end, it is not just about our freedoms and civil liberties being violated, it is the damned reality that their current cure is far worse than the damn illness, and all because it makes a bunch of sheep feel safer seeing everyone else forced to wear a mask that does no damn good at all.
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What would you call a government that takes away its citizens rights of free, unencumbered travel from their homes?
That’s hardly an accurate description of the situation, but during times of an easily transmissible viral pandemic, I’d call a government that required its citizens to temporarily remain in quarantine a ‘responsible government.’ Especially when the disease can be spread by asymptomatic people.
What do you call a government that tries to strip away the citizen’s rights, such as closing gun shops as if that somehow made the virus spread more.
Two things. First, gun shops are NOT a civil right. The right to bear arms does NOT also require or protect dedicated marketplaces for firearms. Second, any location where people gather in close proximity during a pandemic should be closed or have entry limited because that DOES facilitate transmission. Nobody’s 2nd Amendment rights are being abridged.
of those 39 million 1087 people have supposedly died from Coronavirus
Dude, that’s evidence that California’s ‘stay at home’ order has worked and is still working. That’s called success.
it is all based on faulty information, scare tactics, a media in bed with one party pushing an agenda of “the sky is falling” when in fact the sky is actually just fine.
At some point today we will hit 40 thousand CONFIRMED Covid-19 deaths in the US. That’s 40,000 citizens who died in the last 4 months — an average of 10,000 deaths a month from this disease. That’s 3/4 the number of US troops that were killed in Vietnam in a decade. The sky is not just fine.
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My wife’s father died two weeks ago. COVID-19 took his life because someone on his care team at the long term care facility in Princeton wasn’t careful enough and became infected and passed the virus onto him. Two other people in the facility have died since then. My wife and her siblings lost their father. My mother-in-law lost her husband. My kids and their cousins lost their grandfather and you’re concerned about your inability to buy a gun?
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Khurt, I’m so very sorry for your loss.
One of the many, many problems with a pandemic is the scale. Most folks stop thinking about individuals and only think in terms of raw numbers. It’s the difference between tragedy and statistics — it’s just so awful to think about forty thousand specific people dying, and their families. It’s easier to cope with a vague notion of forty thousand deaths.
Again, my condolences.
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Of course, China’s lying. But still.
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Exactly. We still had adequate warning to reduce the number of deaths from Covid-19, but our government didn’t act on those warnings.
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The King, I mean president, needs someone to blame if not China then Russia will do. That’s an eye catching title to share.
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Blame China. Blame Obama. Blame the state governors. Blame the news media. Assert authority to act, but refuse responsibility for acting. That’s the Trump administration standard operating procedure.
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