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Washington State Lawmaker Locked Out of the Capitol
Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to why Republican Rep. Jim Walsh, from the Grays Harbor city of Aberdeen, has had his keycard to the Capitol buildings canceled? Anyone?
Yes, the reason is that Walsh has not presented the required papers to the state indicating that he has been vaccinated against the CCP virus. The state health Nazi edict that all state employees must be vaccinated or lose their jobs has resulted in the termination of about 1,800 state employees. Not all those employees were terminated — many quit voluntarily. Do you understand what that means in the state of Washington? It means that many well-paid state employees gave up their cushy jobs and state pensions to resist the Democrat government’s edict that they must submit to an invasive medical procedure to keep their jobs.
Walsh is an elected official, and the state cannot fire him for any reason, but it can make his life difficult by locking him out of his own offices and the legislative chambers where the people’s work is done. Or, normally is done. The official who explained that Mr. Walsh could work remotely like most legislators have for the past 18 months cares not for the people’s business. He answers to a Higher Power, the state health department, which has demonstrated that it is so powerful that with one stroke of the pen, it can deny people livelihoods and freedom of movement. Those who do not yield, will be denied access.
I am ashamed to live in this state.
Published in Politics
Please don’t compare such things to Nazis. There is a multi-order of magnitude of difference between the two and the comparison cheapens the deaths of the 10+million murdered in the camps.
They didn’t suddenly become NAZIs when they started killing Jews. They were Nazis well before that.
And I think it is incredibly inappropriate to tell people to stop warning about that trajectory because it hasn’t happened yet. I’d hope we are capable of identifying it before 10M more are dead.
Else, those 10M died in vain.
I certainly understand your point, @caryn, but it seems to me that the bureaucrats are demonstrating a tendency to grab every opportunity to trammel on the freedom of others.
Fine. But comparing them to Nazis is a gross exaggeration and suggesting otherwise is to make Nazis mere overzealous bureaucrats. Therein my objection. See Stina, above, for exhibit A and B. Tends to bring out the Jew haters.
So rich, calling names instead of addressing the points.
Just like Susan’s post about the sweet college covid rule instructor/ enforcer who was compared to a concentration camp Kapo, the differences between educators or 311 callers reporting on businesses that are allowing people to wear masks or not checking vaccination statues are categorically comparable to Germany’s nazi collaborators and later East German informers. The differences are matters of escalating severity: quantitative not qualitative.
I’m looking for a tipping point. I’ve been looking for one for forty years.
I want to win every chance we get, but I believe that, when we lose, our opposition brings that tipping point closer and closer. They’re moving too fast, alienating too many — waking too many to the danger the radical hard-left, the woke and progressive front, represent.
Authoritarianism all tends to blend together. It doesn’t matter if it’s Mao’s cultural revolution or Hitler’s national socialism or Stalin’s communist utopia or North Korea’s sick little family tyranny. Authoritarianism suppresses dissent, punishes people who don’t confess to share it’s beliefs, and demonizes its opposition as it seeks to control.
How many lives have been unnecessarily lost around the world, due to the Left’s hold on the medical establishment, and promotion of vaccines that can be deadly in themselves? How many American lives have been lost, because the Health Overlords refuse any kind of treatment to those infected? How many lives might have been saved, if the lockdowns had not happened, or elderly not been forced to die alone and in despair? How many hospitalizations could have been prevented by allowing any and all potential treatments to be used (Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, zinc, etc., none of which are dangerous)? The Left around the world has the blood of millions on its hands, and I think that’s comparable to what the Nazis did in Germany in the Holocaust. I am Jewish, and I make this comparison.
People who want us to wear face diapers or always have our vaccine “papers” with us at all times want to see people loose their small business and their houses and their jobs and their life savings. This is now their purpose in life.
I know you are and that’s why I was so shocked to see you use it. Perhaps you do not have the correct perspective on what’s going on. I speak from within the Infection Disease research world and have been involved with Covid testing and have done continuing medical education on Covid from the start. The drugs you listed have been used and have shown little to no efficacy against the virus. Those drugs are not even remotely the panacea their proponents make them out to be. If they have any effect, it’s very likely due to their known anti-inflammatory properties (one of the most effective drugs is the–quite inexpensive–steroid, dexamethazone, a strong anti-inflammatory). Aspirin has also shown promise for similar reasons and I suspect motrin would as well. Most people treated with them would have gotten better without treatment; they are not wondrous life-savers. The vaccine is no less safe than any other and, so far, safer than several others that have been in use for decades. I don’t think vaccine mandates are a good idea, but I do think vaccines are. The only way out of this pandemic is through immunity. Same way we get through most every other novel infectious disease that comes along. Immunity comes either through vaccination–the easy way–or through disease, which is associated with a great deal more morbidity and mortality than the vaccine. The numbers are squishy, but some hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from Covid. Even one hundred thousand is more than a bad flu year–with vaccination. We have very few anti-viral drugs. Viruses are best controlled through vaccination. Prevention is always better than treatment. How is that not understood?
I repeat: your comparison is over-wrought and inappropriate. Losing a job or being put on remote work in the face of refusal to vaccinate is not the same thing as extermination camps (for decades, we have not permitted children to attend public schools unvaccinated for the childhood diseases; this is not terribly different). It’s not even the hint of the same road. Yes, there are petty tyrants throwing their weight around. Yes, there are politicians and bureaucrats taking advantage and not “let[ting] a good crisis go to waste.” Still not the same thing.
It starts somewhere . . .
Maybe its better to say the state government is going down a path that could end in policies akin to those in Nazi Germany. People need to realize anyone can become persecuted for any reason, and this near-pogrom of non-vaccinated people sure looks like the beginning of something worse. Failure to sound the alarm is not an option . . .
Except the policies we are talking about (forced medical treatment) is literally something nazis did. They had brilliant scientists for their era, too. Top notch and cutting edge. Real, breakthrough stuff.
But everyone hears “nazi” and goes to concentration camps. They were doing terrible things BEFORE that, too. Not AS terrible, but they were still doing bad things. And these policies are pretty close to the same as the early nazi policies.
I’m not trying to compare to the Holocaust, but these petty tyrants are enacting things the Nazis did do.
Interesting case. If the executive has the authority to issue a medical order (e.g., AIDs-testing with results for public disclosure, insertion of a subcutaneous police tracking chip, a mandatory sex-change operation…) with the certain knowledge that its political opponents will refuse, doesn’t that give the executive excessive power to control/shut down another branch?
There is an equal protection issue in that an unvaxxed person (with no previous actual infection) is only slightly less of an infection risk than someone vaccinated four months ago (especially if Pfizer). If controlling spread is the policy justification then it would seem that mandatory test screening at the entrance would be far more reasonable and legally cognizable than mandatory vaccination.
Anyone remember the feces hurricane Rick Perry suffered after his proposed HPV vaccine mandate? Biden and every politician who wants to impose a COVID vaccine mandate should suffer the same fate . . .
How about NAZIs in 1932?
That’s a very interesting question, Dave.
I generally agree that comparisons to Nazis should be used cautiously, as they represented an almost idealized extreme of institutional evil and we should never minimize that. At the same time, Dave’s point is a good one: “Nazi” wasn’t always synonymous with transcendently monstrous inhumanity. It started out as a populist socialism, not unlike the foolishness of Bernie Sanders or the Ocasio-Cortez chick. Then, as I understand it, when its organizers realized that biting the capitalist hand that feeds you isn’t necessarily a winning strategy, it found another victim group in order to avoid losing the support of big business.
We should probably be on the lookout for an American quasi-socialist movement that tries to gain the support of big business (Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.) while demonizing, oh, I don’t know — mothers who show up at school board meetings, tourists foolish enough to walk into the Capitol building when they see the doors open, etc.
Not that that would happen here.
Interesting that this post was promoted to the Main Feed without being altered by the Editors.
Hitler’s targeting of Jews long predated 1932. There’s evidence that it went back even further than published in Mein Kampf. Jews were always his primary target and he exploited anti-Jewish sentiment following WWI to launch his movement. The Nazis. First and always Jew haters. They killed a lot of others along the way in their desire for racial purity. The continued murders of Jews throughout Europe, particularly Poland, were of a part with centuries of pogroms. There is NO comparison with anything going on in the US today.
Altered? You mean like with pets having their **** cut off?
So is your contention that if they aren’t vilifying Jews than they aren’t being nazis?
Is it possible the democrats are trading on animosity towards another group in order to gain power?
Actually, a lot of the left seems to be rather anti-Semitic too.
Yes. Just not only and I think there’s still enough shame that they are more hesitant with being openly so. It’s bad enough that it slips out occasionally.
But they aren’t the only group the left is after in the vilifying department. I think we are fighting tooth and nail over curriculum that vilifies white people. I think the nazis did something like that to the Jews, too – teaching kids that Jews were evil oppressors.
What I can’t understand is why Caryn is fighting so hard against drawing the parallel when there are such clear parallels in existence.
And the assumptions I’m jumping to are incredibly uncharitable, but I’d like to hear from her why she thinks CRT curriculum should not be compared to Nazi Germany’s curriculums against Jews.
Very true, @caryn, but the comparison I was making was with the middling low level bureaucrats who had nothing to do with policy making. They were hangers-on who took the opportunity for a job, with some authority to make others do their bidding. That’s the people we are dealing with now, those who are taking advantage of the Covid Crisis to impose their will on others.
Caryn can speak for herself of course, but I think she’s (gently) saying that white people and vaccine refuseniks in America today are not the equivalent of Jews in 1930 Europe.
I think the others are saying “not yet.” And pointing out that “the Nazis” were already “the Nazis” before The Holocaust. Years before concentration camps etc, the Jews and others were already being treated as “other.”
Part of “never again” needs to include recognizing signs before the worst happens, again, so it can be prevented. And not just about Jews either.
Would it help the analogy if it were opened to worldwide reactions, say in Australia for example? How many steps are we away from enacting the levels of control and oppression they have in Australia? I sense and fear we are hanging on to their coattails and our “betters” are enthusiastically running towards further draconian restrictions. To quote Brandon : He is losing patience with us(US). Whether you call them Nazi-like, or authoritarian, or looking out for our own good, the policies, mandates and punishments are not the same as freedom and liberty, which we should not freely give up.
So first they took away our guns and now they’re enacting lockdowns and mask regulations?
Now, if it were Democrats being locked out of the state Capitol . . .
Democrats tend to flee their state capitol to deny the Republican majority a quorum. See Indiana, Texas, etc.