Neighbors turning in neighbors

American Thinker ^ | 16 Mar, 2021 | Matt Rowe

[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.

[MayflowerMadam]

My family is in western NY, and Sis and I wanted to visit Mom for her 96th birthday in August. We were going to sneak in using back roads through PA, and had the route pretty well firmed up. We’d fly to Pittsburg and rent a car there with PA plates since TN was on Cuomo’s list of persona non grata. Mom’s farm is in the boonies south of Buffalo near the PA border, and we could hide out there for the duration.

Then we learned that my cousin’s daughter who lives in the same town is a Cuomo Contact Tracer — a lib public school teacher. She would turn us in in a heartbeat. She’s on the outs with her own mother because my cousin refuses to wear a mask. Not wanting to pay a fine or worse, we cancelled the trip.

This is insane and, as you said, evil.

[FamiliarFace]

I’m so sorry this happened in your family. These contact tracers THINK they are doing the right thing, but it is just like Nazi Germany to me. So scary.

[BobL]

“Ironically, in the mid-20th century, we oppressed people in this country who had ever considered being communist. Many ended up “blacklisted” and could not get work and were cut off from association with coworkers and friends.”

Perhaps because they were Communists, and, as we’re now in the process of learning, having the freedoms that our Constitution enshrined also required the citizens to root out those who would use those freedoms to take power, and then destroy the country from within.

Starting in the 1960s, we stopped rooting them out, and so the path to where we are, and the hell that awaits us, was assured, back then. Thanks again, ‘Greatest Generation’, for allowing this nightmare to start.

[MtnClimber]

I agree with you about the communists. We once refused to let them poison our country. We stopped going after them and sure enough they poisoned the country.