"The
Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,
MfS) or State Security Service (Staatssicherheitsdienst, SSD), commonly
known as the Stasi, was the official state security service of the
German Democratic Republic (East Germany). One of the Stasi's main tasks
was spying on the population, primarily through a vast network of
citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and
covert measures, including hidden psychological destruction of
dissidents (Zersetzung, literally meaning "decomposition"). It arrested
250,000 people as political prisoners during its existence."
Let’s
focus for a second on that "vast network of citizens turned
informants." First, those people could hardly be accurately described as
citizens, as they were more like subjects, vassals, serfs and comrades
in the communist system set up under the supervision of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Stasi had a reputation as
seemingly having been everywhere and knowing virtually everything.
Nonetheless, there were nowhere near enough actual members of the Stasi
itself to have been that effective in controlling the population.
Rather, as the paragraph above makes clear, the Stasi used the people of
East Germany against themselves to help them keep dissension
suppressed, political opposition crushed and, most dreadfully, the
population intimidated. In other words, the Stasi didn't need to be
everywhere all the time because it had effectively made the people of
East Germany their own enemies! Fear was the most useful and effective
tool that the Stasi employed.
Any
transgression of behavior would be reported to the Stasi and the
alleged transgressor(s) would be confronted, most likely arrested,
possibly beaten or tortured and even imprisoned. And as we all know,
anyone attempting to leave the Utopian society of East Germany or East
Berlin for the west were most likely stopped violently or killed
outright.
Anyway,
try to imagine living in a society like that where everything you said
or did was subject to oversight not only by the repressive government
but also by your neighbors, your coworkers, passers-by in the street, or
even your family. Such a society is completely alien to our American
way of life. Or at least it used to be.
In
the wake of the pandemic currently wreaking havoc on our society and
cultural norms, we have our federal government scrambling for the right
response and the various states and territories doing the same. Right
now, here in the United States of America in the year 2020, we have
governors and other elected officials (I will never refer to them
as leaders!) encouraging and even urging the citizenry to spy on itself
and report to the state those who transgress the various orders,
mandates, edicts and requirements handed down by them. To call the
police if there are too many people in the same place at the same time,
in the eyes of the person making the dreaded call. To be, in effect,
tattletales and snitches for "the state."
Folks,
whatever the rationale behind those orders may be and whatever
reasoning you or they might employ to justify them, actions like that by
our political office holders smacks of state overbearing. Of
repression. Of intimidation and fear. Of tyranny. I chose that word
deliberately, and I did not do so lightl
The
resemblance to the tactics used by the Stasi, however cleverly
camouflaged here and couched in whatever innocent sounding terms they
like to use, justified by whatever seemingly compassionate motivations
those officials tout, is inherently and incredibly dangerous. Far more
dangerous than any germ, virus or microbe.
This
American urges you to do what you think and believe is right for
yourself, your family and loved ones. Be responsible and be careful. But
mind your own business. Leave other people to do what they do, whether
or not you think it is in their best interests - or yours.
Don't become
part of the state, no matter how righteously indignant you become. I
will never report anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason, for
what I perceive to be a violation of an executive order. Our law
enforcement professional friends and neighbors already have enough to do
without such nuisances and annoyances taking up even more of their time
and our resources.