“The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. The choice is yours,” President Joe Biden said in a Thursday afternoon tweet.
While it is likely that someone other than the president actually wrote that tweet, it is the stand that many have been waiting for in uneasy silence, hoping the nation wouldn’t come to a point where it was a matter of restriction whether or not to take an experimental medical treatment.
Conservatives, even those who have been vaccinated themselves, by in large, believe in the individual’s right to be treated, not as a walking talking time bomb, but innocent of COVID until proven guilty. In fact, while no one could have known the turn this would take, some consider the first mistake to have been acquiescing to the COVID shutdown in the first place, saying it could have been the first in a long line of power plays.
Biden’s edict-style tweet did not go unnoticed by conservatives, including lawmakers such as Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) who responded by tweeting, “The choice is yours’ sounds an awful lot like a threat, Joe.
“You have no business issuing fear-based ultimatums to the American people. They have the freedom to choose whatever they please – vaccine or not,” Biggs said, according to The Daily Wire.
“Imagine if Donald Trump issued this kind of bulls*** ultimatum. The liberals would have lost their freakin’ minds (not that they have much up there, to begin with, but still),” tweeted conservative pundit Tomi Lahren.
“[If] Trump had been pro-mask from the start & said this now, the woke crowd would be taking to the streets,” tweeted senior Mediate columnist John Ziegler. “This is clearly a move to help the masked cult accept this new edict by making them feel better knowing they can still feel morally superior to, & be allowed to shame, others.”
Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis asked simply, “Is that a threat?”
One of the most interesting things about the push to ensure that Americans are masked is how we were able to arrive at this point. Typically any mandate restricting an individual’s rights has to do with protecting other people. In other words, my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins … because of potential pain and suffering to you.
I’m allowed to hurt myself. I can punch a tree trunk as many times as I want because the tree doesn’t have rights.
The mantra of masking and mandatory vaccinations has been that we do it to protect other people. Your grandmother, your friend with cancer, the expectant mother in your office, and while those are noble causes a) no one is allowed to demand that I protect my grandmother or anybody else, against my will. And b) while the merits of masking are questionable, there is little to no information that leads us to believe that a-symptomatic (or those incubating the virus) individuals are spreading the virus anyhow.
If someone wants to wear a mask, by all means. But telling the well (who we have very little reason to believe could be a danger at all) that they must do something to protect the other-well (who also might never get sick) by taking steps that could be harmful to their health (yes, both the vaccines and masking do have some risks involved, but you already know that) is not only illogical, it’s altogether unconstitutional.
We get it, COVID is bad, but so is a government whose eyes light up with greed when they discover they can control people.
We hope this is nothing more than a push for well-being. We pray that everyone in the White House has the American people’s best interest at heart and that there are no power-hungry forces at work, seeing how far Americans can be pushed so that those in Washington receive maximum payout. It is our fondest wish that freedom and justice prevail.
But in the interest of being wise as serpents and gentle as doves, we will trust a little and verify a lot, otherwise, opportunity will be snatched by the opportunists and the worst-case scenario could be the reality.
