one anti-vaxxer's opinion
we are positioned on the precipice of a slippery slope that leads towards increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures, the grip of which is unlikely to release even once the pandemic is over
I hate "slippery slope" arguments, they're the laziest of arguments. Instead of arguing over whether the policy in front of us makes sense given present circumstances, we have to argue over whether some other policy that nobody is advocating for makes sense. Does it make sense to wear masks on airplanes? Skip over that entirely, instead we have to argue about "increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures" while imagining a world in which we've all had chips implanted and are controlled remotely via drones.
We're already seeing that these "control measures" are evaporating even before the pandemic is "over", so, I have to call bullshit.
Every time somebody wants to enact a new law, or repeal an old law, you have to deal with people who bring up the slippery slope. If we pass this law, then what about the next one, and the next one. If we repeal this law, then what happens when we repeal the next one, and the next one. Like the people who call marijuana a "gateway drug". "Sure, marijuana is relatively harmless, but if you legalize marijuana then people will move on to using heroin." And the people who wanted to keep gay sex illegal because if you legalize gay sex, then what about having sex with children, or animals. Ugh.
If you are a Libertarian or an Anarchist, if you identify with an imaginary utopian society in which there are no laws, OK, you're going to argue against every new law as a form of "tyranny", but in the real world people create rules to live by as members of society. As we keep bearing more children and producing more stuff and crowding into more densely populated urban areas, these rules get more complicated, and it starts to feel like nobody has any control over the rules anymore. So we start creating abstract enemies like "capitalism" or "socialism" and "the deep state" or "wokeness" and people stop trusting each other, stop trusting "the media", stop trusting doctors, scientists, or teachers ... we decry the increasing "authoritarianism" on all sides ...
Anyway. We're just all way more crowded than ever before. And the Internet doesn't help, it makes us feel even more crowded than we are.
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I've noticed that many people, including myself, react to our apparent loss of control from the urban capitalist population explosion by looking for some way to assert our own independence from it all. For some people, rejecting vaccines and masks have been their way to assert independence from the "increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures". For others, it has been wanting to audit the 2020 election results. For others, it is becoming vegan, or going net zero emissions, or stopping immigration, or quitting Facebook, or joining a third party.
I never expected 100% of adults to go along voluntarily with a vaccination campaign for COVID. But I never expected their reasons to sound so wacky. I should've studied my history, though. People's reactions to pandemics in the past were pretty darn wacky. Did I forget the gay friend I had about 20 years ago who was convinced that HIV didn't cause AIDS? I had anti-vaxxers in my own family even before COVID came along. So much wackiness. Why people freak out about vaccines more than they do about ibuprofen or coffee is beyond me. If we still lived in a pre-vaccination world you'd be pretty darn happy that vaccines came along. "Increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures!" Yeah, how about your brother dying from Tetanus because he got a cut on his knee while the two of you were roughhousing in the back yard. Thank Goddess for the Tetanus vaccine, invented in 1924.
I hate "slippery slope" arguments, they're the laziest of arguments. Instead of arguing over whether the policy in front of us makes sense given present circumstances, we have to argue over whether some other policy that nobody is advocating for makes sense. Does it make sense to wear masks on airplanes? Skip over that entirely, instead we have to argue about "increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures" while imagining a world in which we've all had chips implanted and are controlled remotely via drones.
We're already seeing that these "control measures" are evaporating even before the pandemic is "over", so, I have to call bullshit.
Every time somebody wants to enact a new law, or repeal an old law, you have to deal with people who bring up the slippery slope. If we pass this law, then what about the next one, and the next one. If we repeal this law, then what happens when we repeal the next one, and the next one. Like the people who call marijuana a "gateway drug". "Sure, marijuana is relatively harmless, but if you legalize marijuana then people will move on to using heroin." And the people who wanted to keep gay sex illegal because if you legalize gay sex, then what about having sex with children, or animals. Ugh.
If you are a Libertarian or an Anarchist, if you identify with an imaginary utopian society in which there are no laws, OK, you're going to argue against every new law as a form of "tyranny", but in the real world people create rules to live by as members of society. As we keep bearing more children and producing more stuff and crowding into more densely populated urban areas, these rules get more complicated, and it starts to feel like nobody has any control over the rules anymore. So we start creating abstract enemies like "capitalism" or "socialism" and "the deep state" or "wokeness" and people stop trusting each other, stop trusting "the media", stop trusting doctors, scientists, or teachers ... we decry the increasing "authoritarianism" on all sides ...
Anyway. We're just all way more crowded than ever before. And the Internet doesn't help, it makes us feel even more crowded than we are.
-----
I've noticed that many people, including myself, react to our apparent loss of control from the urban capitalist population explosion by looking for some way to assert our own independence from it all. For some people, rejecting vaccines and masks have been their way to assert independence from the "increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures". For others, it has been wanting to audit the 2020 election results. For others, it is becoming vegan, or going net zero emissions, or stopping immigration, or quitting Facebook, or joining a third party.
I never expected 100% of adults to go along voluntarily with a vaccination campaign for COVID. But I never expected their reasons to sound so wacky. I should've studied my history, though. People's reactions to pandemics in the past were pretty darn wacky. Did I forget the gay friend I had about 20 years ago who was convinced that HIV didn't cause AIDS? I had anti-vaxxers in my own family even before COVID came along. So much wackiness. Why people freak out about vaccines more than they do about ibuprofen or coffee is beyond me. If we still lived in a pre-vaccination world you'd be pretty darn happy that vaccines came along. "Increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures!" Yeah, how about your brother dying from Tetanus because he got a cut on his knee while the two of you were roughhousing in the back yard. Thank Goddess for the Tetanus vaccine, invented in 1924.