Posted on 03/16/2021 5:05:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Have we turned into a surveillance society of the type that used to be common in the Soviet bloc?
Both sides of my wife’s family were broken up during and right after World War II. As a result, she has family in both Poland and Croatia and has kept in close touch with both. We’ve sent our teenage sons to the month-long Polish Scout Camp where they teach the kids fieldcraft and basic survival skills. It isn’t basic training, but the kids build their own camps, prepare their own food, and get ready for another Russian or German invasion. My son’s welcome gift upon arrival was a Fiskars ax.
In the 1970s, when my wife visited Croatia as a teenager, the country was still clearly under communist control. She happened to be there during the Christmas holidays, a celebration that the communist government forbade.
Despite this edict, Croatia has always been a predominantly Catholic country. Therefore, many Croats, rather than abandoning Christmas, tended to celebrate the holiday quietly, out of the neighbor’s sight, lest a non-Christian neighbor inform on them, subjecting them to a police visit and arrest.
When my then-teenage wife learned of this, she loudly exclaimed that she could not believe people could get arrested for celebrating the birth of Christ! Her Croatian family quickly closed the windows and pleadingly “shushed” her to prevent unscrupulous neighbors from hearing the incredulous teen and, perhaps, informing the police.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Patience, Grasshopper.
So much for snitches get stitches.
Some are doing their best to emulate old school Soviet Union.
Meanwhile in Russia people are becoming more open and free?
I like your peckerhead synopsis. I suspect that lot has THRIVED over the past 12 months.,,on both sides of the aisle. Mask Karens are reprehensible, but I admit I cringe when I hear about some massless John Galt-wannabe intentionally walking into a store where BY LAW you have to be masked and calling everyone “sheep”...dude, respect the private property rights of the store owner, buy your own dirt and preach the gospel there.
It all started before this past year,
“See Something Say Something”
Conservatives are starting to name and shame like liberals have been doing for months.
I understand naming the person who made false allegations and got someone cancelled.
I publicly disagreed with a local right-wing political organizer about naming and shaming people not wearing masks right while demanding masks. While publishing lists of people who turned in neighbors to cops is legal, taking pictures of grocery store clerks with it under their chin to punish them for non-compliance in the hope it gets the mask mandate withdrawn ... was counterproductive.
They think that reporting the selfish haters is a GOOD thing. You’re protecting the people by identifying the threats to society.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
By C.S. Lewis
We’ve gotten threatening letters from the HOA next to us (we’re not in it) and threatening letters from people in it over stuff we’re not guilty of.
They’re so used to blanket threats and form letters ... they sent a letter threatening to turn us in for our loud barking dogs ...
We don’t have any pets. I know who does, but when you’re just going to send me a couple of threatening letters without even getting critical information, $*#(&@& you.
“what kind of darkness resides in a man’s heart”
Some people who think that they have power, will use that power, because they can.
I credit the major stimulus for the Civil War, being: the news media (selling a lot of newspapers)
The major stimulus for the Spanish Civil War (1930’s), being: the telephone circuits built up after WW-I (until then, Spain did not have a national network of telephone communications - but upon its buildup, the polyglot of different communities that has been slowly learning to get along, began to divide as the “like-minded” found each other on the phone).
The present major stimulus, being: the Internet and mobile communications
For example, your kids were “mostly peaceful” and safe in the station wagon parked near the grocery store (while Mom went inside to get food) . . . until people with mobile phones made a ruckus, *because people with mobile phones can.*
Nothing has brought that point home more than the last year.
Thanks. It may be that soon, she’ll have formed her own group, and I’ll have other activities to keep myself pleased, too.
Absolutely.
I respectfully disagree with your assertion that mask mandates are actual LAWS. They are not. They are executive orders from governors or mayors. They are not LAWS in the way that other laws are passed, ie, by our state legislatures. Most states have not codified these gubernatorial orders, and most states have not challenged the authority of the governors. In doing so, it appears that the mask mandates are laws, but they aren’t in the way we have understood laws in the past.
However, I agree that for those who walk in without masks and call others sheep isn’t particularly helpful, and if a store owner wants masks on his property, he does have that right to deny service to anyone he doesn’t wish to cater to.
Complaints of barking dogs but you don’t own any? You’re not even part of the HOA? You’re right! Eff them!
We’re on another street that backs up to the HOA. Two people in this section have yappy dogs. The HOA sent nasty letters to all 6 neighbors that I know of ... including ones who don’t have dogs. The threat was that they’d call the cops for noise ordinance violations, have the dogs taken away.
My son’s reaction was, “Can we get a dog?”
I intentionally bought this house in a small subdivision NOT in an HOA because I heard so many horror stories.
One of the tackier idiots tried to tell us we HAD to decorate for Christmas. Sorry, not in the mood and not in the budget this year.
Part of Deep State’s strategy from the get-go has been to gin up a game of lets-you-and-him fight.
To pit Americans against each other.
I bleeping refuse to play.
Love your son’s reaction!
I hate HOA’s and yet, I loved this house we now live in so much that I am willing to be in one. Soon after we moved here, one neighborhood gal asked me if I would like to be on the board. I told her that was very nice of her to think of me that way, but no thank you. I tried very hard to be polite about it. She kept on until I told her that if she knew me better, she would realize that I view people’s property as their own. She asked what if the grass grew too tall? I told her there were already city ordinances that apply to such things.
The funny thing is, there seem to be new houses being built on the few lots that didn’t sell for such a long time. Every single one of them has a variance from the restrictions that the other owners had to deal with. So the rules are meant to be broken if you can just convince someone to let you do it.
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