Dodging the Herd

Atlanta, GA

January 15, 2022

I often diverge from conventional opinion, and rarely see a line I am eager to get in. Whether it’s my advocacy of gold, my aversion to voting, my affinity for the Latin Mass, or my insistence that there are only two sexes, I’m used to weird glances and rolling eyes. 

That’s OK. In a free society, there’s room for the fringe. People can differ without being destroyed. There’s a reason you can buy an Islamic Koran in Kansas, but not a Roman Missal in Mecca. 

But politics corrodes this peaceful co-existence under a liberal order. Throughout this century, civility has been perverted as politics has become pervasive. As often as not, the “fringe” or “extremists” are merely derogatory references to a silent majority of millions of dissidents who think they’re alone. 

Making them feel that way is a time-tested tactic of those who wish to subjugate and oppress. To make the people feel isolated and “different” is to make them feel hopeless, and helpless.

It’s also why the ubiquitous phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” infuriates those trying to perpetuate the psychosis. That simple slogan is an obstinate signal among the opposition that they are not alone, and to the powers-that-be that they’ve been unable to insulate them.

But many divisions remain real. The quest for perspective regarding the Covid hysteria has prompted Kafkaesque levels of contempt, and novel depths of disdain. The mere attempt among some of us to acknowledge trade-offs and collateral damage associated with draconian responses to a respiratory virus has fractured friendships and severed families.

Yet for the scorched-earth true believers, it’s not enough. It’s insufficient that our self-righteous moral arbiters abandon long-standing relationships. They must also ruin those they leave behind. 

Heretics must be branded with epithets, cast from their careers, cut loose from society, and perhaps confined to quarters or hauled into camps. Despite no scientific basis for such outrages (not that any could be justified), many major cities have implemented new “Jim Crovid” laws…creating pharmaceutical castes, imposing medical apartheid, and reviving state-sponsored segregation. 

I’ve felt for many years that I’ve been running against the herd. But only in the last twenty-two months have I been sure it’s headed for an abyss…or the abattoir. I‘m just trying not to get crushed in the stampede. 

I’ve tried occasionally to raise my arms and slow the charge. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t better to just get out of the way. 

Yesterday, I did. 

At work I failed a test for drugs…by not injecting one. Several months ago, my employer announced that employees must consume a couple doses of designated drugs if they wished to keep working for the company. Some of us found the demand a demeaning and appalling violation of our bodily integrity and natural rights. 

We considered our personal medical preferences and individual health information to be no one else’s business…and certainly not that of a bunch of science-inverting, hypochondriac shills in a C-suite. And given that the stipulated potions don’t inhibit those who take them from spreading the ailment they‘re designed to thwart (with recent data indicating the shots may make infection even more likely), the directive was also useless on its own ostensible terms.

But it’s their company and their choice. If the corporation wants to placate influential suppliers by coercing its employees to consume their products, that’s its prerogative, unethical as it may be. 

And as has been reinforced over the course of several months, I certainly don’t want to be where I’m not wanted. So yesterday, I cleaned my desk, packed my boxes, and returned my badge. I bid fond adieu to good people I’ve worked with the last couple years, and good riddance to those who impelled the separation.

I won’t miss the work. I’ve been doing some version of it for two decades. It’s become routine, uninspiring, and dull. The last couple years, the atmosphere has also become overtly political. And not just in the normal corporate sense of ambitious boot-lickers clamoring for crumbs and compliments from the corner office. 

Employees at many corporations are now expected to not only hold the culturally-approved opinions they’ve all been assigned, but to overtly advocate for them. They are implored not merely to accept perspectives they might consider abhorrent, but to explicitly espouse them. Inverting centuries of legal tradition, silence regarding even the most repugnant conventional fads is now assumed to imply not consent, but contempt. 

In fairness, that assumption is often correct. In my case, it most certainly is. But contrary opinions, even silent ones, are no longer permitted. Those who hold them must be converted…either into a zealot, or a hypocrite. Regardless, only the clichéd creed is to be chanted, and every voice must join the chorus. These are tunes I simply can’t sing.

It is no longer enough to tend our own garden. We must now fertilize all the fashionable fields, while letting those bearing traditional beliefs lie fallow.

For the last couple years…to accommodate and advocate prevailing political agendas…employers claimed they wanted employees to feel comfortable “bringing their whole selves to work.” Apparently, my whole self wasn’t enough. To be sufficient, additional ingredients and different opinions had to be injected. 

Being happy with myself the way I am, I declined the ultimatum, and was shown the door. Tho’ I work from home, have never visited a customer, and live hundreds of miles from the nearest office, my request for relief was rejected because my position “requires business travel”, and the company now prohibits that among those who they consider unclean. 

Perhaps it’s just as well. Even those granted special accommodations must consent to degrade themselves and be treated like lepers. They can’t eat with others, must keep distant in common areas, and on company property are required to indulge the ridiculous ritual of wearing a mask. 

To preserve my dignity and not accommodate anti-science stupidity, I’m not going to take a shot I don’t need or wear a disgusting fabric that doesn’t work, particularly when I’m incapable of spreading a disease I don’t have. 

And since we know neither face fabrics nor vaccine injections prevent transmission anyway, the mask charade is merely about punishing dissidents and making a point rather than “slowing spread” and protecting health. 

If an employer chooses to part ways because I refuse to make my medical records conform to their specifications, that’s their choice. Yet I didn’t quit to make my point; they let me go to make theirs.

I hope they’re happy with their decision. I know I am.

JD