Tag Archive for: Liberty

Excuse Me, Sir!

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What ever happened to the maxim, Live and Let Live?  If our experience during the lock downs was any indicator, evil’s mask is now fully ripped off (pardon the pun) and any pretense of allowing a person to pursue his bliss unhindered is long gone.

Over the last several years we have seen stores attacking their own customers for refusing to wear a useless surgical mask.  We saw restaurants and other private establishments checking the medical status of their patrons before being allowed inside. We saw police checking the papers of citizens on the street.  I wonder, instead of having to carry an inoculation card around to prove our ‘vaccination’ status, wouldn’t it just be simpler if we just sewed a symbol on our coats? Maybe a yellow star or something? The old ways are the best ways, amirite?

Worse still, many of these businesses were enthusiastic enforcers of the illegal government mandates. As an example of just how infiltrated our culture has become, did you know that in the early 20th century, many American businesses were against the automatic withholding of income taxes for the simple reason that it forced businesses to become uncompensated agents of the newly established Internal Revenue Service (and continue as such today)?

But not this time around.  This time, not only was there only a modicum of pushback by businesses to join the Mask Enforcement Bureau, but some actually embraced their inner tyrant in the exercise of this new-found, corrupt and illegal power over their fellow citizen. I should create a patch that reads, “I Was a Conservative In Portland During the Lockdowns”

With this in mind, I wanted to share with you something I found online that I felt was a good example of the underlying thinking of the people who happily tried to put the “un-vaccinated” into concentration camps.  The truly horrific thing here is that this person honestly believes what they’re saying. Have a look:

“The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

“To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart.

“Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

“A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

“The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.”

I hope the tyranny that is only lightly sleeping in this person’s mind is as visible to you as it is to me. All this author needs is a government mandate that requires putting your cart back and empowers individual citizens to report any ignorant shopper foolish enough to not comply.

But I want you to see something: the writer’s underlying premise. She asserts that a person’s right to self-govern is contingent on their ability to self-govern.  This, my friends, is the very top of the slippery slope and completely misapprehends what a ‘right’ is at all.  There is no recovery from this starting point and it all goes downhill from this underlying assumption.

A belief based on the premise of contingent rights is an abomination to Humanity and Human Respect itself.

Now I’m not here to argue whether returning a shopping cart is good, bad, or completely devoid of any value at all.  After all, opinions may differ on the subject (the very definition of ‘subjective’). But I would like to highlight that this short passage of someone pretending to intellect and insight is the very epitome and embodiment of the rotten reasoning displayed by the Karens that we encountered during the illegal lockdowns and mask ‘mandates.’

The Road Paved with Good Intentions Inevitably Leads To…

Let’s engage in a thought experiment to show our citizen-tyrant where their reasoning ultimately leads.

Remaining within the context of the grocery store, this anonymous author, believes that anyone NOT using the corrals are inherently ‘bad’ and summarily incapable and unworthy of self-governance.  OK. Now consider the implication she creates: This inability to self-govern means that some authority must step in to correct and manage the noncompliant citizen.

But this same grocery store also provides kiosks for self check-out, doesn’t it? And yet no similar requirement to make use of this other employee-reduction tool exists within the author’s mind.  Why not? I’ll simply say because she hasn’t thought of it yet!  But she will…

The grocery store provided these machines for use by customers just as with the shopping cart corrals.  All that is missing is a slick marketing campaign by a grocer attempting to stay in business in an environment of constantly rising costs (I hear Pfizer’s marketing department might be available) to convince the shopping public that using self check-out is the ‘right and good’ thing to do; anyone failing to use the self check-out kiosks generously provided by the grocer is inherently ‘bad’ and suitable for shunning or arrest (God help you if you went to the human cashier maskless…)

Think I’m kidding? Think I’m exaggerating?  Don’t forget, these are the same people who spent 50 years preaching ‘my body, my choice’ to justify killing children but when the marketing changed, suddenly the individual had no right to refuse what was injected into their body. The intellectual dishonesty and logical contortions this requires puts Wetzel’s Pretzels to shame.

So now that people have been instructed that using self check-out is the ‘right and good’ thing to do, the grocer may now reduce the grocery’s workforce.  See how that works? That simple and repeated marketing meant to change behavior and imbued with ‘goodness’ ultimately leads to the firings of grocery store employees around the world. And why? Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions (and marketing).

I’m reminded of a woman I dated in the 1990’s.  She was nice enough; smart, pretty, and clever.  Unfortunately, her parents were very liberal and she graduated from Middlebury College, a small private, liberal Arts college in Vermont. She didn’t stand a chance of maintaining any individuality of thought after being steeped for so long in such an illiberal environment.

Politically, there was little we had in common, but if we avoided political conversations, things went generally smoothly.  Now, as you might imagine, she was fully invested in the recycling religion. She separated garbage with all the solemnity of Catholics taking Communion and she never missed a chance to try and ‘re-educate’ me on the topic (it was a short relationship).

That is, until one day when I told her that I care about the homeless too much to recycle.  The quizzical look on her face told me that I had introduced a concept she was struggling to understand, and I was loving it.  So I explained it to her:

“The existence of garbage and the desire to recycle has created a micro-economy in every city in the United States. This micro-economy has producers, consumers, retailers and cash flow just like any other marketplace. I am not talking about the garbage men who pick up your nicely separated trash. I am talking about the homeless.

“The homeless absolutely depend on their ability to pick through garbage, pull out the aluminum cans and sell them to recycling centers. This meager amount, such as it is, allows them to earn an income and provides them the ability to survive within an urban center. This micro-economy provides a service to the city (recycling) while at the same time provides cash flow to those who need it most and are willing to engage in the work.

“If you separate your garbage yourself and allow the garbage company to collect it before the homeless can collect it themselves, you have effectively made the homeless even more desperate than they already are by removing a key source of income.

“The free market has already provided a solution and rendered moot the need to separate our trash. Don’t you care about the homeless?”

Forcing my girlfriend to choose between two sects within her Liberal religion was just icing on my rhetorical cake. And I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure that my 1990s Middleberry-educated girlfriend would get along like a house on fire with the shopping cart author.

I can just hear it now.

“Separating your trash for recycling is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.  Recycling is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. Recycling is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to recycle.”

The Solution

As we’ve seen over and over again, it appears that it is inherent within Human Nature itself to desire power over others. Whether it is forcing others to wear masks, return shopping carts or shame people from smoking in public, we will never escape Karens, in all their forms, and their inherent desire to control their fellow citizens. We also will never escape the dogmatic and evil marketing meant to force us into these frameworks of acceptable thought (yet more control).

The solution to this is not yet more control or a banning of this or that.  It is but mere education on the nature of Natural Rights, the very foundation of the American Constitution that we may knowledgeably resist control by others and create a truly free world.

Here’s to watching the other shoe drop in 2024!

Good Luck,

R. Altomare

Founder, BreathEasy

breathez.org

Find Patriot Businesses, Spread the Word, Live Your Life

A Sea Change in Stumptown?

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To a typical Portlander, if the destructive results of Liberal dogma remained in the city center, the virtue-signaling voters felt safe in their hip neighborhoods surrounding the city. But a funny thing happened on the way to Marxist Utopia: the drug addicts, homeless camps, needles, fires and Antifa foot soldiers didn’t stay in the city. The Liberal cancer has now metastasized and spread outside of the ‘no judgment zone’ of the city; it is now encroaching on liberal families just trying to make a living. Homeless camps are now popping up in quiet, ‘nice’ neighborhoods of real taxpayers who depend on property values to climb. What’s a liberal to do?

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The Bath Towel Boycott – How I Put Tyranny on Mute

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I needed new bath towels.

Noticing that my once-luxurious bath towels had grown old and a bit used up, I decided it was time for a refresh. I may be a single man living the life of Riley in Free Florida, but that doesn’t mean I’m uncivilized, does it?

Yup. It’s gonna be one of those essays…

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“The Problem is Choice”

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The Ultimate Weapon Against Tyranny

Folks, I have updated this essay three times with updated losses experienced by Target, Bud Lite, etc.  It seems like their losses know no bottom.

There is an earthquake occurring across the nation and our enemies are waking to the fact that their war on America and Americanism is not going as they planned.  I have a hunch that in just a few years’ time June will ‘transition’ (pardon the pun) from Gay Pride month to Traditions Pride month. So terrifyingly powerful are coordinated boycotts that companies will begin marketing their wares by proclaiming how much they love and support traditional American values. As Rush used to say, “don’t doubt me”

In recent weeks, we’ve seen large companies increase their use of lifestyles defined only by their sexual practices as topics for their marketing campaigns. In each of these socio-economic engineering experiments, woke companies have been met with powerful opposition from a majority segment of the country at large. Nationwide boycotts have sprung up in opposition to these companies with absolutely bankrupting results. The most ironic part of their decision to celebrate people based on their sexual practices is that they cannot back out of it now.  Any reversal of their chosen course would be read as submission to Right values. Actual threats of violence have been made by the very group these woke  companies supported in the first place.   I swear, deciding to work with the alphabet mafia is like negotiating with an alligator on the promise he’ll eat you last. There is no negotiating with a mob, no matter how pretty their dress or glittery their sequins.

What is likely most surprising to the boards and leadership staff of the large, woke multi-nationals across the globe is that the massive boycotts they are seeing are not blowing over like they used to.  I am positive that when planning these marketing campaigns directed at transvestitism, sexualization of children and its implicit support of pedophilia, these woke companies likely anticipated and expected a ‘slight dip’ in sales in isolated locations around the country.  

“Sure, we’ll probably see a dip in fly-over country, but we’ll more than offset that with increased revenues in NYC and other more enlightened locations.”  

But to their astonishment, the anticipated ‘slight dip’ has become an absolute panic-inducing crater of Michael Bay proportions and there are no signs of it letting up.  In fact, now that our Cause is on its way to claiming its first scalp in Bud Lite, we are realizing that our power is much greater and more far reaching than we could have imagined.

  • Bud Lite has lost nearly 30 billion.
  • Target has lost over 12 billion.
  • Kohl’s stock price has lost over 20% of its value.

And let’s not forget Fox News. Depending on which demographic you measure, Fox’s purge of Tucker Carlson has resulted in a net loss of 40% of their viewership!

These losses are cataclysmic in the aggregate and should be absolutely terrifying to boards that have allowed the DIE camel nose under their tent. They have their fingers stuck in a veritable Chinese finger trap and there will be simply no escaping it unscathed.

Oh, and can I make a suggestion?  Before you risk a boycott from your core customers, it would be a good idea that your product is actually good.  I mean, have you drank Bud Lite?  Yeesh, it’s disgusting…This was the easiest boycott in the history of boycotts…

But why?  How is it possible that not only are these boycotts living longer, but their impact is so much stronger than they’ve ever been before?  

I daresay that what has changed is the interconnectedness that the internet and social media have provided to even the smallest of voices and niche interests.  People on both sides of the social divide are realizing that they can now spread an idea across the entire globe nearly instantly. We ALL have a Bully Pulpit now. 

Guys, do you realize that the total losses of Bud Lite and Target alone are equal to the GDP of Serbia?  Do you realize that our boycotts just bought a small country in Central Europe?  And we’re just getting started. We are finally eating our Grape Nuts and fighting back in the only language our enemies understand: Cash Flow.

And here’s the best part: This is a battlefield they cannot win. Because at the end of the day, we will always have a choice about if and where we spend our money. 

Every spending choice we make is a personal boycott or boycott.  

For every big box store that markets sexualized clothing to toddlers, there will appear 10 mom-and-pop stores who believe in traditional values and the American Way. They will notice an unserved market and sell to it. 

I think Neo said it best.  In the Matrix Reloaded when he said,

“Choice, the problem is choice”

And this is what our enemies will never understand: Choice is the ultimate weapon against tyranny. With every abridgment of our Liberties, Liberty will find a way to adapt and subvert its incessant need for absolute control. Liberty will always surpass any attempts to yoke it into submission. Human nature demands Liberty; it is as inevitable as the dawn.

Sincerely,

R. Altomare

Founder, The BreathEasy App

Find Patriot Businesses, Spread the Word, Live Your Life