Dead Fascist Horses

Not to beat a dead horse to death or anything, but... (well I guess you can't beat a dead horse to death, can you? It already being dead and all... unlike the nipping pony in the Verizon wireless commercial, who apparently has a taste for dog houses...)

What the hell is wrong with New England? Are they planning to break off and form a fascist state or what? First Maryland with its "Vaccinate Or Go to Jail" policy, and now New Jersey's "Preschoolers Must Have Flu Shots" mandate? What's next, Big Brother?

Not to pick on New England or anything. Really, all of America seems to be either passionately embracing or just laissez-faire accepting all the tenets of fascism that currently exist in our country without any more than a casual, indifferent shrug. Even those outraged by the personal freedoms and liberties being taken away from Americans at every turn feel pretty powerless to stop it.

Not to beat another dead horse... but those foul Star Wars movies have stuck like Exxon on a duck in my brain, and all I can think of is Amidala's line in Star Wars episode-something-or-other: "So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause."

Do you think I'm crazy? An alarmist? Sometimes I feel a little like Mel Gibson spinning Conspiracy Theories but while I learned what I did within the public education system in spite of itself, my tenth grade history teacher, Mr. Tymrak, would be appalled if I simply herded myself along like the rest of the sheeple in the pen.

Here are the basic tenets of fascism:

* The truth is revealed once and only once.
* Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.
* Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.
* Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.
* The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.
* Argument is tantamount to treason.
* Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of "the people" in the grand opera that is the state.

Is it just me, or does this sound eerily familiar?

We're fiddling.

Rome's burning.

No one cares.

Pass me a heaping helping of Oprah's Favorite Things and a double dose of Reality TV so I can ignore the terrible reality right in front of me, would you?

Vaccinate or Jail?

Parents in Maryland were threatened with jail time on Saturday if they didn't vaccinate their children. On the spot. That's right, nurses with needles were lined up and waiting... and so were police officers.

No, I'm not kidding.

I know I've already made my views on vaccinations pretty clear, but this just really goes too far. Last time I checked, personal freedom was a liberty we still enjoyed in America. Or... we're supposed to. Did someone invent time travel when I wasn't looking? Is this American 2007? Or Big Brother 1984? Perhaps Moscow 1930?

Apparently, immunization paperwork is more important to the police state of Maryland than the paper the Bill of Rights or the Constitution are printed on. Because that's what this is about. Paperwork. A bureacracy gone mad.

Maryland schools claim they've "sent notices" to parents, mostly of middle-schoolers who haven't received their hepatitis-B and chicken pox boosters (two of the most questionably mandated shots in the entire vaccine schedule, I might add) who haven't turned in their paperwork saying that 1) their child has been vaccinated or 2) they wish to waive the vaccination.

Come to find out that many of these parents had turned in their paperwork. Several times. The school, however, "misplaced" it. Oops. Sorry about that. Off to jail with you, school officials--do not pass go, do not collect $200. What? You're not sending them to jail for their paperwork error? Oh, but you're willing to threaten parents with jail time for not turning in paperwork they actually did turn in?

Filing that under "things that make you go hmmmmm..."

Oh, and get this. I love this. Many of these kids waited in line on Saturday to get a chicken pox booster so their parents wouldn't go to jail. Chicken pox--a vaccine that has such dubious effectiveness and value that the federal Immunization Advisory Committee could only rationalize making it mandatory in the first place by arguing that it would prevent parents from losing about a week's worth of time from work. In other words, it was an economic argument, not a medical one.

Now, the police state of Maryland is threatening to throw parents in jail for ten days because their children haven't received a vaccine mandated solely on the grounds that it would keep parents from missing work in the first place...

Filing that under "things that make you go 'DUH!'"...

It reminds me of the same logic vaccination proponents use when they argue that non-vaccinated children are putting other children and the public health at risk.

Um... hello!? If the vaccines WORK as well as the government says they do - then your vaccinated child is perfectly safe around my non-vaccinated one. Unless you went to the G.W. Bush backwards school of logic, that's the only conclusion you can come to.

And if you're going to accuse me of getting a free ride on the system, because a majority of people still vaccinate - I can tell you right now, I'm willing to live in an America that doesn't vaccinate. At all.

So call me a skeptic, call me a crunchy, granola fruitcake because I follow not only the hard evidence and research, but my intuition. Go ahead. But I do have a sixth sense about this issue. I don't see dead people... I see dumb sheeple.