THE GREAT AMERICAN LOCKUP OF 2020-21 / NETFLIX: THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES

Vol. I | Issue. 5 | June 21, 2021

America, you weren't locked down for fifteen months, you were locked up!

The term “lockdown," so widely used during the pandemic, is so much more respectable, benign, and Hollywood than lockup. Lockdowns occur mainly in the movies when nuclear power plants fail and Will Smith gets hit by an asteroid. Those lockdowns are necessary until the impacted city, system or institution becomes functional or rebooted. Movie lockdowns are almost always neutral in their application and devoid of a political agenda.

Not so with the Great American Lockup of 2020-21. During this awful period, America was selectively incarcerated. This selection was made by greedy, arrogant politicians. The sad thing is, those who didn’t get sick and remained employed actually had a pretty good time and didn’t seem to care. It was quite pleasant not dressing for work every morning, ordering out for food, and enjoying other fun stuff throughout the day. Before even realizing it, people were addicted to the opiates of Netflix, Amazon, and any other vehicle that would deliver easy pleasure and painless convenience to their doorstep.

Life and freedom were not so easy for Roger Williams, who was born near London, England in 1602. Intellectually gifted but spiritually strangled by what he saw as the corruption and repression of the Church of England, the young Puritan minister came to America, specifically the Puritan settlement of Boston (part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony), in 1631. He arrived in the New World with credentials and letters of introduction affording him excellent job opportunities right off the boat.

Willams was immediately offered the job of Acting Reverend of the Church of Boston (COB). As an ardent separatist from the Church of England, he quickly determined that COB was too closely aligned with the Church of England and moved on — from job to job to job. Reverend Williams quickly learned that one couldn't buck the establishment in jolly old New England without penalty of heresy. The penalty for his heresy eventuated in banishment, ex-communication, and ultimately what seemed to be his final ruin.

The Puritans of Massachusetts, with their inextricable links to The Church of England and their governance of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had established a 17th century Deep State on the shores of North America.

Roger learned quickly that independent thinking was not an asset, especially as it related to freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. Then he had a brilliant idea: he moved next door to neighboring Providence Plantation (which, despite consistent harassment and attempts at annexation by the powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony, became the colony and eventual state of Rhode Island).

Williams' ideas concerning freedom of religion and the separation of church and state were fundamental to the Charter of Rhode Island. They ultimately made their way to becoming the foundational principles of American tradition and codification through the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Unlike Roger Williams, Karl Marx dedicated his life's work to ensure that the world would not have freedom of religion, but freedom from religion.

In 1843, Marx, the progenitor of the communist scourge that set the world ablaze, wrote "Die Religion ist das Opium of des Volkes,” or “religion is the opiate of the masses.” Just like everything else scribbled by Marx, he was dead wrong. The truth is that 178 years later, Netflix, Amazon, and every other technology service catering to comfort and instant gratification became the opiates that effectively numbed incarcerated Americans, causing them to stop caring about their freedom.

Yet it was the yearning for religious freedom, as expressed by those few Americans courageous enough to assemble in their houses of worship, which finally rang freedom’s bell. 

As we know, even with assurances of reasonable health and safety protocols in place, religious worship services were banned by blue state tyrants, i.e. governors and big-city mayors, who used their law enforcement agencies at every level to stifle religious gatherings. They also used the powers of the state to arrest, harass and financially destroy every business that wasn’t, by their definition, “essential.”  The pot business was golden, and liquor stores got a silver medal. 

These diktats, through the largely unchallenged “executive powers" blue state tyrants claimed and granted unto themselves, kept half of America under lock and key for fifteen months. That half was those whose every trip to Walmart, a church, a synagogue, or a funeral was a "superspreader event.” The other half — who under the banner of “Justice for George Floyd”  rioted, looted, caused mayhem and mass destruction of public and private property — got the all-clear from Pandemic Czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Twenty people at an outdoor funeral was a superspreader event, however, 5,000 masked lunatics burning down Portland, New York City, or Chicago was absolutely allowed.

All of these political mass incarcerators had two things in common:

1. A destructive political agenda.

2. A sickening level of hypocrisy.

In Illinois, while placing draconian restrictions on state residents as well as people traveling to Illinois, the multi-billionaire and morbidly obese Governor JB Pritzker sent his family, via their private jet, to their little $12.5 million Florida farm — to ‘feed and care for the animals.’

Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who won't give interviews to white reporters and is known for her inner and outer beauty, closed all hair salons. When she was caught getting her hair done, she exclaimed, “I gotta look good - I'm the Mayor!”

Governor Andrew Cuomo, patron saint of New York's Covid-infected senior citizens and the destroyer of Thanksgiving for all except his family, shut down religious services — including funerals — with laser-focused efficiency, especially regarding the Jews. His junior partner, Bill de Blasio, the joyful wrecking ball of the Big Apple, took special public joy in personally padlocking a Jewish cemetery. He then salivated at the thought of repeating this act of Jew-hatred whenever he could.

Now, getting back to religion, the opiate of which Marx spoke….

The religious gathering cases initiated by people of faith were essentially the only cases that were taken successfully to the U.S. Supreme Court. On November 25, 2020, the Supreme Court found that the government diktats preventing religious gatherings violated the First Amendment and struck them down. 

Don't worry, communists, progressives, etc. The First Amendment means you have the right to be atheists — it just prevents your and Marx’s cherished goal of forcing everyone else to do the same.

It is critical that freedom-loving Americans understand it is not religion that is the opiate of freedom, it is the easy pleasures that make the deprivation of those freedoms so comfortable that you take your freedom for granted and stop fighting for it.

Be careful, the Chinese are watching closely….

-Emes