How Naomi Wolf Got It Wrong
"'We' Didn't Love Freedom Enough."
“We Didn’t Love Freedom Enough.”
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If...if...
We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation....We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
“We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” That stings and it does so because it’s true.
I have now read Naomi Wolf’s essay, Thanksgiving in a Victim World, three times. The first time through I could hardly believe what I was reading. Am I missing something?? I’ll have to read this again…
Two more times through, and I still hope I’m going to understand something differently, that something will dawn on me and I’ll say, “Oh, yeah. I get that!” I keep hoping I’m going to see the point of view that equates the shame and fear that stem from actual assaults with the shame and fear that Dr. Wolf says people in the “lockdown” states now feel more than two years into the “COV!D” crime.
Well, three times through, and I’m still not only not “getting it.” Instead, I still feel the same indignation that welled up the first time.
Dr. Wolf starts her essay describing her recent experience of being in Florida (and later Texas). This part made me smile. The people and their conduct you see virtually everywhere — as Dr. Wolf calls it, exhibit “a relaxed pride.” She describes in glowing terms her happiness at engaging with babbling babies, chatty store owners, and seeing friends bowed in prayer together in public, going so far as to call the experience “heavenly.” She’s right. It is.
That’s where the good part ends.
Under a “Blanket” of Shame & Fear
Upon her return to the gulag (a.k.a. the “great” northeast), Dr. Wolf comes to a conclusion about what “blankets” the “lockdown” states, and this is where she goes off the rails. She spends the last part of her essay describing people in the gulag states as being under a blanket of “shame and fear.” This stems, she says, from the following:
“We were all violated in front of one another.”
“We were all made helpless to save one another or ourselves.”
“…we were stripped of our powers…”
What?? This is so hard to read. Why? Because it’s untrue.
“We were all made helpless…”? “We?” Who “we”? “Were made helpless”? By whom? Who did the “making”? Not me. Not my husband. Not my friend “Sue” who stood her ground multiple times in front of uniformed dopes and store managers while the former issued citations for “trespassing” based on the latter “victims’” demand that my friend be thrown out and charged…for declining to breathe through a snot pouch. Does a raging store manager who calls the police sound “helpless” to you?
Given Dr. Wolf’s PhD in English, I must assume her use of the passive voice in “We were all violated…” or “We were made helpless…” or “…we were stripped of our powers…” is on purpose. The passive voice to describe the results of the full-on participation of the great majority can be no accident by this fine writer.
Oh, the irony of lamenting outcomes two years later that stem directly from the active cooperation with the unlawful and indecent and doing so using language in a way that suggests no other choice was open to any of us. This is untrue. So, now the collaborators and perpetrators — New Yorkers, New Englanders, Californians, etc., etc. — are now the victims??? This is almost as bad as that Oster character over at Brown and her calls for amnesty crap.
“We” Failed to Defend.
The use of the passive voice is only the half of it. Dr. Wolf attempts to make the case that the violations the people in MA and NY experienced now manifesting as a “blanket” of “shame and fear” equates to that which results, for example, from sexual assaults that a child experiences at the hands of an older child or adult or the mass rapes that take place at gunpoint during times of war.
A child at the mercy of an older one or an adult or groups of women and girls rounded up by armies and raped constitute true victims. That’s being stripped of power. That’s being “made”. That’s being violated. In these cases, the shame and dishonor lies solely with the perpetrators. It breaks my heart to know that so many suffer shame through no fault of their own and live with a lurking sense of danger for the rest of their lives. To have that shame and fear compared in any way to what those in “the cradle of liberty,” for example, brought on themselves? Over a respiratory infection? That just completely pisses me off.
Quite simply, the vast, vast majority in my former home state of Massachusetts (and then New Hampshire for a short period) failed to defend. Worse than that, so many seemed to like the chance to demand certain behaviors or express their disgust at those of us who did stand and refused to be “made.” Two examples:
While still working, I attended a (virtual) meeting that included my immediate colleagues, as well as a member of the organization’s most senior-level executive staff. This meeting took place after the idiot in the corner office on Beacon Hill issued his mask mandate in early May 2020.
Chit chatting a bit before we got down to business, this senior member mentioned going grocery shopping. Horror of horrors, a man was in the store. He was shopping, too, but without a useless, dirty, bacteria-trapping petri dish strapped to his face. Want to know what this person told us having witnessed such ghastliness? Incredulous at such inconsideration, “stupidity”, and audacity, she said, “I just stared at him, but I really wanted to just walk up to him and slap him right across his face.”
That sound powerless to you? I suppose we could argue the fact that existing laws that make assaulting a person in a such a way a chargeable offense did “strip” this person of the “power” they clearly wanted to use to smack another human being. Because. Respiratory infection.
Heading up to northern New Hampshire one Saturday morning from our home near Boston, I stopped into a very lovely coffee shop in Nashua, NH. The scene of the crime shall remain anonymous.
I thought I’d give this privately owned, “not Dunkin’ Donuts,” business a try and grab a coffee for the road. This is before New Hampshire’s corner office idiot issued his mask mandate, so I should be good, right? Besides, I’m in the “Live Free or Die” state. Come on, man!
So, it’s Saturday, nice weather, place is busy. I’m looking forward to checking it out. The glass front door has a sign on it that says that masks are required, but, pffff. I’m going in, it’s a place of public accommodation, which means it has to… accommodate the public—and can’t require medical interventions as a condition of doing so. Duh.
I enter, see lots of people in line and sitting at the many tables. Beautiful store, I notice. I also notice I am the only one who is without a useless, dirty, bacteria-trapping petri dish strapped to my face. I notice that virtually everyone is noticing me.
I wait in line — with the moronic six feet indicators — and finally get up to the counter. Further protecting us all from all manner of floating invisible pathogens is a plexi glass barrier. Behind that stands a teenaged girl whose useless, dirty, bacteria-trapping petri dish obscures about 2/3 of her face. Yet I can still tell that she is “having a moment.” I smile — as I always do — and say hello. She is only able to muster the courage to say, “You need a mask.” I laughed inside my head. I smile back and say something about having just waited in line without one…and now I can’t get served? She nods, and repeats herself. Sigh…
I tell her I am unable to wear a mask safely. Again, now dumbstruck, she looks to her right to signal for her manager. I sense that this girl is actually scared.
Over comes the “manager,” who proceeds to tell me that it’s their policy to require masks and that if I refuse to put one on, I can use the drive-through. I reply saying that no store policy can override the U.S. Civil Rights Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act. Demanding a medical intervention as a condition of service violates both.
Undeterred, this proud “American” repeats herself about the drive thru. I calmly say that the law also requires “equal access to goods and services” and cannot demand a medical intervention as a condition of doing so. Demanding that I go through a drive thru or refusing service unless I do violates multiple federal and state anti-discrimination laws.
No matter to this, my fellow free and brave “American” representing the “Live Free or Die” state. As she proudly disgraced herself and babbled about separate water fountains — I mean — drive-thru service, I could see out of the corner of my eye the young girl getting more and more nervous. A line was forming behind me…I turned away from the “parrot” and back to the girl. Feeling badly for her, I said, “That’s OK. All of this violates the law, but I’ll leave it at that and go elsewhere. I can see you’re upset.”
As I walked back toward the front door to leave, I turned my head slowly left to right, looking directly at as many people as I could. Some looked back over their dirty petri dishes and others put their heads down or turned away. I know some had to have heard my back and forth at the counter, but hey. In America, respiratory infections trump its ideals of liberty and the laws to protect it.
So. Sure sounds like some violating went on there, doesn’t it? And who did the violating? Wasn’t me. I stood — with my face hanging out — and declared what was true, what was right, what was American. Two years ago.
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.” ― Thomas Paine
Mr. Paine must be spinning…because not only did Americans “esteem too lightly” that “celestial article,” they tossed it away. Not only did they display their “low approval rating” for freedom, they tossed it away. (Here I use the active voice, “They tossed it away,” to describe what the majority actually did vs. being victims of some force beyond their control that “made” them. Oh, that’s what they say, many of them, but they did it. Willingly. They tossed freedom away like it meant nothing, cost nothing, and confers nothing.)
Contrary to Dr. Wolf’s point of view, had the majority of people in this country acted like Americans, her excuse-making two years later would be unnecessary. The conduct that paved the way to the violations she laments or the thousands of others we’ve all heard or read about could not and would not have happened.
Husbands unable to protect their wives against an unwanted needle to save a job? This is more than two years after the fact, Dr. Wolf! This scenario should have been beyond the realm of the possible. It would have been if the nation had stood up and said two years before, “Hey, you know, you doofuses in corner offices can’t actually make us wear snot pouches. You have no authority to order this and no lawful authority to enforce. So, yeah, we’re not going to — unless we choose to — but why would we?”
Instead what did we get? Almost complete cooperation, along with actual attacks (or a wish for such as I described above) against non-mask wearing people. We get “Americans” on “American” airlines applauding the removal of their fellow passengers who decline a pouch or, if wearing one, for having it below their noses too long according to Flight Attendant Ratched. Stripped of power, Dr. Wolf?
Yet I did it. My husband did it. Peggy Hall did it. Her husband did it. Lots of people did. In circumstances where the lawbreakers clearly had the upper hand — like the airlines — we absolutely refused to fly. Does anyone think that if the majority had acted over the mask “mandate” as regard for freedom demanded that a forced needle containing experimental, gene-altering junk with complete liability immunity for the manufacturers would have had a chance in hell??? When have forced medical interventions (and that’s what forced mask wearing is) ever had a happy ending, hmmm? Where did those husbands think their cooperation with these illegal orders to mask up would lead? Did those husbands actually think?
Clearly, “Americans” were like the Russians Solzhenitsyn described — “unaware of the real situation.” I’ll say, and shame on them.
What would have happened in this country if hundreds of millions of completely justifiable acts of defiance had been the order of the day? What would have happened if it had been an overwhelming minority who chose to strap on snot pouches, keep their businesses closed, hide in the basement, abstain from flying, deny visitation from “dangerous” relatives and friends, and on and on? Who knows, but I’m betting a happier outcome than the one we’re all still enduring.
As for the craven and venal ones in the medical profession (with notable exceptions) who agreed no treatment worked against the early symptoms of this respiratory infection, what can be said about them? The same profession that tossed overnight their maxim of “early treatment saves lives” for “Stay home until you turn blue…” The English language lacks sufficient words and ones sufficiently disparaging to describe the conduct and character of this cohort.1
What would have been the impact on the world if America had acted like “the shining city on a hill?” Well, for one thing, Dr. Wolf would not be writing about how “we were all ‘made’ helpless…”
Courage
Plenty of Americans in this country knew that no authority existed to shutdown commerce for a respiratory infection — even if it turned out that it did have a 10% IFR, which, of course, it did not! Too few, but many of us, also knew that “15 days to flatten the curve” was not only unlawful, it was a ruse — a ruse within a stunning, in-your-face crime.
Yet somehow those carrying out this crime knew that they could count on a couple of things. Most important, of course, was the cowardice of the American people that would guarantee the wreckage of their economy and their fundamental liberties while enlarging the power of the criminal administrative state (Channeling the Soviet Union…) to smash the remaining semblance of self-governance in this country:
“Oh, you mean I could die from this? Well, then of course we smash everything. TheExperts™ tell us that will protect us (Read: Protect me and that’s all that matters.) from this “novel” virus. Individual choice, individual rights — including the right to earn a living2 — be damned."
You thought you had a right to earn your living? Read Desrosiers v. Baker and have it confirmed that you don’t.
Running a close, enraging second was their sanctimony. The appeal to Americans’ vanity worked so well with millions only too happy to surface their insufferably smug and vain little selves to admonish those whom, they declared, put profit over Grandma. Because. Respiratory infection.
You know where so much of this came through? From the “professional” class that spewed their repulsive crap on LinkedIn. This site caters to those who can so easily “work from home” while people who actually “do stuff” were told they were “non-essential.” No heartless bigotry there. No disconnect from the actual men and women who do the actual work in this economy. No. None.
So What’s My Point?
My point — at a minimum — is to reject in the strongest possible, but still polite, terms that Dr. Wolf is dead wrong.
The time to take a stand was Mar 2020 — or even Apr 2020 after the 15-day deadlines had passed. If not then, then certainly when corner office doofuses issued their orders for everyone to undergo a medical intervention — “You will slap on a snot pouch, everyone — or else.” There would have been no “or else” if people had the courage to stand up for themselves and have the simple decency to afford others their right to say “No,” a right fundamental to human freedom. Imagine that the majority had done this and not what they actually did.
Witnessing the almost 100% cooperation with this insult coupled with the absence of any attempt to defy such egregious violations (There’s one for you, Dr. Wolf.) of law and decency, I knew then that this failure to defend freedom would only worsen conditions for all of us. If people agree with this, I said at the time, the next thing will be a mandatory needle…
To say now as does Dr. Wolf that “we were all made helpless” is egregiously untrue and so insulting. Sounds too close to Oster’s “We didn’t know.”3 Oh, yes we did, Little Emily, and "we" were not made helpless, Dr. Wolf. Those who chose and acted poorly aided and abetted a crime -- the irony of which is that they helped commit this crime against themselves! They should be ashamed unlike the women in Dr. Wolf's example, for example.
The choice the majority freely chose to make early on was one without a gun to their heads, but one which was sure to bring one. The words of warning to this effect more than two years ago fell on deaf, sanctimonious, and cowardly ears. Now people cry?? Now people have a “blanket” of “shame and fear?” Where were those feelings more than two years ago as a counterweight to their obvious lack of courage and what that cowardice could bring to the world? Did that “calculus” ever enter their minds? Of course not. They didn’t even connect with their cowardice. Their egos called it something else.
A free people who “paled with terror” over the possibility of a serious respiratory infection who willingly tossed away their freedoms with demands that everyone do so should be ashamed. They should be, Dr. Wolf. They have earned their discomfort.
To learn the lessons of the cost of cooperating with this crime against humanity and all the real violations of U.S. Constitutional and civil rights, the failure must be acknowledged and addressed. Isn’t that what we always hear? To fix a problem, it must be faced, right? How does it help to cover over with passive language conduct that ensured a disaster? A disaster not for just one or a few, but for an entire nation. That bled out into the entire world.
If the “blanket” of “shame and fear” has resulted from the recognition of ignoble conduct and a wish to repair/rebuild, then perhaps I am being too harsh. If that can be shown to be the case, then I’ll happily soften my criticism.
Until then, I will hold to my position that the people in “the cradle of liberty” and the “Live Free or Die” state and so many others across this country have disgraced themselves. Not only failing to defend, but celebrating the destruction of freedom all while proudly ignorant of what they were helping to usher in. If it is too late for these now gulag states and conditions continue to worsen (as I’m hearing), they, as Solzhenitsyn’s fellow Russians, “purely and simply deserve everything” that comes after.
The legal profession is giving the medical profession a run for its money in this regard.
https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/2020/sjc-12983.html In Desrosiers v. Baker, a super duper person — obviously — who wears a black robe and lives off the taxpayer (Oh, the irony!) declared in his written decision that “the right to work is not a fundamental right that receives strict scrutiny.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/
YES!! I agree. "We" are the failure. I knew, as soon as the masks became "mandatory" every where, that it was a sign. It showed them how eager and stupid people were, freely giving up this small yet vital freedom to breathe without masked fear. Killing our immune systems with hand sanitizer everywhere. I left businesses when they asked me to mask. They don't care. The ones that did care were the mom and pop stores that were forced to shutter their hard work...they cared about our business and getting our money. Wal-Mart and Home Depot don't give two effs because they are giant corporations. So, all our power as a consumer to NOT patronize such establishments who required masks and vaccine passports went out the window with the freedom. We lost more freedom in April of 2020 than any other time in history. The time to stand up is long gone. So, let them stand there in their houses or drive in their cars in a mask, wondering why everyone is dropping dead around them. We see "them" and we know we probably shouldn't be breathing the same air as they are because God knows what kind of concoction their air output is spewing. Masks are the clear outward signal that they have been crapping their pants for 3 years and fear is the motivator. So, I find myself undeniably altered in my approach to humans now. Tentative questioning. I just can't, in all good conscience, MY good conscience, be amiable friends with those who have NOT stood up and said NO. When I find someone who is like me, it is like finding a treasure. Because "we" are few and far between. Now, I am not talking about Substack world...here it is wonderful. But, in real life, people are stupid and they suck.
Well said and excellent honing in on essential point. I relate so much - as a New Englander - who also found herself often as the only maskless person. When someone would say "Put a mask on!" I would smile and say, "No." When someone called me an asshole or selfish, I would say, "Your welcome." After the manager at my most-often shopped grocery store pulled me aside to say I could no longer come in without a mask, I said, "Great. I'll let my lawyer know." He instantly relented.
You are so right - if we said no to the masking, "they" would have known the jabs wouldn't have worked. We are paying a dear price for cowardice and the desire to simply, go along.
Yes, lots of propaganda, lots of gaslighting, lots of threats - but all of that doesn't change the simple fact that we each had a choice. The fact that so many people I knew, didn't want me to exercise mine, is something I'm still not over.
Thank you. Well done.