NEW WAVE FREEDOM FIGHTERS

I like freedom.

In my early twenties, between various jobs, I took a series of multiple-week hitch-hiking and/or camping trips, with no set destination. I carried only what fit in my red backpack and slept wherever I found myself at nightfall: in woods, parks, railyards, graveyards, under bridges and behind dumpsters. One night, at 2 AM, I tried to sleep atop a dark brick London outhouse but a tiny female constable caught me scaling its one-story side, blew her whistle from a half block away, ran toward and scolded me and ordered me to move along, lest I be “put in the nick.”

I slept on various US mountaintops, on Goat Island near the precipice of Niagara Falls, atop Land’s End’s Celtic Sea cliffs, inside Salzburg Castle’s ramparts, in a baseball dugout at Indiana University, in woods next to UNC’s football stadium, in the attics of English and Dutch stone farmhouses, in a sheep field at Loch Lomond’s north end, inside Boston’s Logan Airport, on the deck of an overnight North Sea ferry, in bushes in Munich’s Olympic Village and in a small, remote Bavarian train station, where, after closing time, the non-English-speaking station master smiled as he locked me in; we communicated only with gestures. When I awakened the next day, the setting was as spectacular as the Heidi movie: jagged peaks with a lake and long-stemmed wildflowers in the foreground.

Before Uber and couch-surfing, hundreds of strangers gave me rides and/or invited me to sleep in their homes or apartments. No one worried about anyone’s germs. Many said interesting or funny things or told touching stories during long conversations.

Late on a Saturday late August, 1982 afternoon, shortly after I had seen a four-foot-long, dead rattlesnake on the side of the road, two West Virginia youths in a big pick-up truck sped past me on a slightly down-sloped, open section of rural two-lane highway before skidding to a halt on shoulder gravel. I ran 50 yards toward them. They told me they were going most of the way to the place written on my cardboard sign. I dropped my pack in the truck’s bed and climbed over its tailgate.

As the road entered the woods, twenty minutes of Hell ensued. The driver floored the gas pedal, the big engine rumbled, and we barreled off like the Dukes of Hazzard in the General Lee. He drove at the highest speed that would hold the narrow, curvy, rising and falling, forest-lined, two-lane road. We passed every one of the few vehicles ahead of us, no matter whether we were on blind curves or not. Each time we passed someone, my truckmates both yelled, “Yeeeeee-HAAA!”

In exactly those words.

They were chugging beers and passed a bottle back to me. I slid across the truck’s bed every time they accelerated or rounded some bend. They repeatedly looked back and me and laughed. I pretended I was having fun, pumping my fist to signal them to keep it up. They didn’t need encouragement. When they got to the crossroads nearest my destination, they again skidded to a stop on another gravel shoulder. I jumped out, smiled and high-fived them. I doubt they were deceived.

After spending the next five, tranquil days walking in the West Virginia mountains, I emerged from the woods and walked along a rural road to a three-way intersection with a general store, where I bought some food. I struck up a conversation with the house-dress-wearing, brown-haired, forty-ish checker. After a few minutes, she said, twangily, “Ah lock (i.e., I like) you. You don’t seem lock a hippie.”

Ah locked her, too. She was lively and plain-spoken. She told me the afternoon school bus would soon come through and that she would ask the driver if he would let me tag along. She did and he agreed. This wouldn’t happen in New Jersey.

I rode the bus for about 45 minutes with two dozen well-behaved kids under 14. The bus traveled on one long, densely-wooded, lightly used two lane, rural road with very widely-spaced, very modest roadside homes. Every five minutes or so, the bus would stop. One or two kids, say a sister and brother, would disembark and disappear on foot up unpaved roads on the forested hillsides. Given the topography and tree cover, in much of the Mountain State the sun is visible only a few hours each day. I wondered what it was like to grow up or live deep in these woods, far from other people and maybe without enough serious food.

I could tell many dozens more stories about these plan-less trips. Looking back, it’s hard to believe the trust people showed in, and the favors people did for, me as I lived out some frivolous vision of freedom conveyed to me by Jack Kerouac, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Richie Havens, et al.

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Throughout my life, I’ve done more than my share of unconventional things. I don’t try to be different for its own sake. Nor do I do the same things that other people do, just to fit in. If don’t withhold my perspectives, hoping that people will like me. I don’t like restrictions on my comings and goings or activities.

My wife and former bosses would tell you that I’m not a rule follower. Once, while hanging out with two work colleagues, one said I resembled Mulder on The X-Files; the other agreed. I never saw that show, so I asked them what Mulder was like. One said, “He ignores his bosses and does whatever he wants.”

I don’t deny that I’ve done some of that. At work and in life, some rules don’t deserve compliance. Following bad rules often thwarts the accomplishment of a mission. Dysfunctional rules are made by people unfamiliar with the settings for which they prescribe these rules and thus, don’t understand the practical problems that such rules create. They don’t see how enforcing these rules annoys or alienates those subject to them.

Despite some rule-breaking, my bosses kept me around. I showed up on time, worked earnestly and brought no drama.

As a high school junior, my history teacher, Mr. Steinkamp, assigned an essay in which we had to agree or disagree that “One should disobey rules that s/he finds unjust.”

You can guess my conclusion. Inter alia, I noted that history favorably portrays selected rule-breakers: e.g., Jesus Christ, Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson, Raoul Wallenberg, Gandhi, Rosa Parks and the lunch counter sitters.

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Before March, 2020, though I had taken many freedoms for granted and broken some rules, I hadn’t seen myself as either a rebel or Constitution-thumping Freedom Fighter. Being a North American "Freedom Fighter" connoted flag-waving, camo-wearing, food and water storage/“prepping,” a personal arsenal and some mawkish devotion to our white-wigged “Founding Fathers.” I thought “tyranny” was an archaic word. I would never sing “I Gotta Be Me” or “Freebird,” unless you paid me a lot of money on karaoke night.

Moreover, the “Freedom Fighter” label evokes dark images of mercenaries or Central American Death Squads or the Taliban. Though, with the benefit of hindsight, seeing how the Ortegas have jailed, oppressed and mistreated Nicaraguans in the past decade, maybe the Contras deserve some credit for foresight.

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I’ve often thought that the needs of a group or a nation were more important than the interests of a distinct minority. In general, I believe societies should seek to promote the greatest good for the greatest number. I also believe that individuals who live within well-functioning communities live more happily.

Despite appreciating and exercising personal freedom, I used to think--and still do--that Americans are too free in some ways: land and resource use, predatory business practices and reproductive technology spring to mind. Individual behavior in each of these realms can harm many other people.

My Day 1 opposition to the Covid response was based on practicality, not ideology. I knew the virus was badly overblown and that lockdowns, closures, masks and fearmongering would hurt far more people than they would help. Enforced isolation undercut peoples’ need to interact, face-to-face. The NPIs and, later, the shots were disingenuously sold as protecting others, even though only a tiny fraction of old, sick individuals were at any risk. I saw the NPIs and shots solely as efforts to advance destructive political, economic and social agendas.

The notions that hospitals would be overrun or that the unmasked, unjabbed would kill others were factually groundless. Besides, those who felt they needed to protect themselves were free to hide in their homes or behind masks; if masks worked, no one needed to hide from anyone. Similarly, if your vaxx worked, why did you care if I vaxxed? Those who weren’t afraid should have been allowed to make their own decisions and assume the microscopic risk entailed. Seeing that the Earth did not swallow those who lived normally amidst the Mania would have shown the fearful that the viral threat was badly overblown and, thus, truncated the terror.

Instead, governments used Coronamania as an excuse to go full-on authoritarian. The gullible citizenry cheered governments as they took this oppressive turn. Worse, people ratted out neighbors for going outside, hosting visitors or refusing to mask. Later, they demanded that non-vaxxers forfeit their livelihoods and medical insurance.

Seeing basic freedoms brazenly taken away—and seeing people not only tolerate, but support, such deprivations—during Coronamania has disgusted me. The development of a government/media/university surveillance and censorship apparatus—and expressly supported by various politicians, who’ve forgotten their oath to uphold the Constitution—is repugnant creepy.  Covid neo-authoritarianism has made me see myself as a Freedom Fighter, despite any negative connotations ascribed to that label.

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Labels—especially those that people ascribe to themselves—can be misleading. During the Scamdemic, many ostensible defenders of freedom showed they’re unworthy of their names or of respect. When basic rights were taken away in reaction to an unscary virus, the ACLU stridently and ignorantly endorsed lockdowns and mask and vaxx mandates. This reactionary NGO’s website’s explanations of their Covid stances are laughably ignorant and histrionic.

So was the panicky libertarian response. Before the Scamdemic, I had long thought of libertarians as naive blowhards. During the lockdowns and mask, test and vaxx mandates, these self-appointed champions of freedom not only stood idly by, they supported the foolish restrictions. Given the chance, during Coronamania, to do something redemptive and constructive, timorous, science-deficient libertarians threw in with the authoritarians. What happened to the core libertarian principle that everyone should assess his own risk, live accordingly and accept the consequences of doing so? Governments spending trillions on the Covid potlatch should also have offended Ayn Rand devotees.

Additionally, the media and universities, who are supposed to ask questions regarding public matters, abdicated this responsibility throughout the Scamdemic. News coverage and op-ed pages fueled Coronamanic authoritarianism. Covid dissidents were not only censored but vilified. Universities took big government grants to establish and run their branch of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

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I’ve never been a Boy Scout, either literally or figuratively. I knew of specific historical examples of our federal, state and local governments’ involvement in a wide array of sinister, corrupt or dysfunctional covert actions. I surmised that many other scams and scandals occurred behind the scenes.

But the Covid clampdown was different. It was out in the open. It was mass scale. It directly hurt me, my family, many people I knew and, by logical extension, billions of others. We lost many irreplaceable life experiences. Via inflation, we lost chunks of the limited wealth we had, thus limiting our future choices. Neighbor was divided against neighbor; families and friendships were riven. Some who were coerced or conned into injecting lost their health and lives. The mitigation and injection crusades were plainly phony, with no serious justification or redeeming aspect.

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At election time, many assert that you’re morally obligated to vote because millions of young American men died for the freedom to select at least some public officials. But during Coronamania, both elected officials and bureaucrats arrogantly took away freedoms to assemble, work, travel, worship and to speak or hear unpopular views. Now, many of these same officials endorse passage of “anti-mis/disinformation” laws. Beyond the irony of liars claiming to discern truth, what about the First Amendment?

The above-listed freedoms are more important, and more routinely exercised—than casting a very occasional, individual—and thus, very diffuse—ballot that often offers the unsatisfying choice between the lesser of two evils, as in the current presidential contest. The Coronamanic authorization of mail-in voting has further diluted the rights of those legitimately authorized to vote.

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During Coronamania, our government, media and universities exhibited monumental indecency. They stole Constitutional freedoms on the bad faith premise that a respiratory virus could kill anyone. They arrogantly, repeatedly violated the public’s trust.

In reaction, many who saw the Scam, as I did, have reluctantly re-identified as Freedom Fighters. But what we call ourselves or how we dress matters much less than what we do in response to forthcoming government edicts and actions. When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

The Scamdemic has shown that exercising individual freedoms and defying bad rules can benefit the larger group. Those who defied bans on gathering fared better, mentally and physically, than those who hid from others. Resisters also, per Emile Durkheim, gave others implicit permission to defy the pseudo-Emergency Orders then in place and further exposed how unthreatening the virus was. The public also became better informed when Covid dissidents expressed media and government-suppressed truths. Further, when people defied vaxx mandates, they made society more vital because they prevented additional vaxx-induced deaths and disability. We who declined the shots also served as a large control group to show vaxxers that not only did their shots fail, they caused injuries and deaths. In the Covid context, freedom was functional; we needed—and should have defiantly exercised—more of it.

I can’t predict what forms my future resistance will take. I hope that, having belatedly seen the governmental abuse of authority during the Scamdemic, more people will resist subsequent authoritarianism than when they did during the Covid response.

But who knows?

In the meanwhile, I have plenty of food stored in my basement and plywood and paint to make more signs.