A Man and a Line in the Sand

A man has to draw a line in the sand somewhere.

We all choose the hill on which we are willing to metaphorically die.

More importantly, a man has to be permitted to do so.

The most hated men in the world?

It makes people uncomfortable when I speak of “dying” for something, but in this case, the obvious hyperbole matters. No, I don’t plan on actually dying over the fight against Covid-19 mandates and government overreach, but I do think each person decides on a lesser level when and where to draw the line and take a stand against perceived injustice.

What irritates me today is that people have become comfortable in ridiculing others for where they choose to draw their line in the sand. Not only that, but the ridicule has become more and more toxic, with people often throwing rationale thinking to the wind and simply jumping on the hate bandwagon.

I’m certain there are many things I don’t agree with Aaron Rodgers on. Kyrie Irving is a heck of a basketball player, but I’m not calling him for advice on how to live my life. Emelio Estevez? I liked him in a number of films, but I’m guessing we’d have all sorts of disagreements if we sat down and discussed life.

Even though I don’t know these guys or care to seek their input on the way I live my life, I also don’t think they should have any obligation or desire to seek my input about their lives either. Which is why it is so frustrating to me to see how quickly the ravenous wolves of the media are willing to jump on a celebrity for a simple personal choice.

Let me rephrase that: For a CERTAIN, SPECIFIC personal choice the leftist media doesn’t like.

You see, there are all kinds of negative personal decisions celebrities make that directly harm other people all the time. If you look for it, you’ll find a lengthy list of celebrities who are seemingly immune to the critical eye of the media while consistently being awful people.

Over the years, the media has let countless stars make devastatingly harmful decisions which affect countless other people in far worse ways than Covid-19 ever has. In many of these cases the media remained willingly silent and complicit until the situation became so serious they no longer could. Physical abuses, sexual abuses, drug addictions, alcohol addictions, business improprieties, personal improprieties, the list is endless, and yet, many of these celebrities avoided and continue to avoid the scrutinizing eye of the cancel culture mob.

Dear Media: Anything negative on Cosby for 40 years? No? Okay, thanks.

But get this. Refuse, as a fully healthy person, to take a “vaccine” which neither prevents the transmission or contraction of the virus it alleges to protect against, a virus that to the vast majority of people presents as a cold and has no lingering effects after a few days, and what happens?

You’re crucified.

Look, I get it. Aaron Rodgers didn't do himself any favors with the misdirection he used when asked about his vaccination status. But to me, the bigger issue here is the reason he felt such a strong need to hide his own personal health choice.

He knew the cancel culture society he lived in. He knew that he would be villainized to an absurd degree for his personal health choice. He knew what would happen if he simply stated the truth. This doesn't make his media sidestep admirable, but it does make it clear that he did what he did because he wanted to avoid the exact unjustified uproar he is now enduring.

Seriously, do it right now, go to Google and type in Kyrie Irving, Aaron Rodgers, or Emilio Estevez. Click on news. Read the articles.

Nearly unlimited hatred all because these people don’t think the government should be able to mandate the personal health decisions of fully healthy individuals under the guise of a misrepresented and fear driven “pandemic”.

With the amount of vitriol being spewed about them, you’d think these guys were caught punching babies to death, poisoning the carcasses, and then feeding them to endangered whales.

Why does the media act like this? Why go to such extremes about something that, at its core, is absolutely a non-story by any interpretation of credible journalism?

It’s simple. That’s what the media has to do to maintain the fabricated narrative they have created.

Face it, what’s going to happen to Aaron Rodgers or Kyrie Irving if they don’t take the vaccine and just continue living their daily lives? Statistically speaking, in terms of tangible consequences, the answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Statistically speaking, they aren’t going to get Covid symptoms, and if they do, they will be fine in a few days and continue their lives. And even if they do get the vaccine, they can still pass the illness onto others.

And that’s the problem. The more people who don’t get vaccinated and continue to live completely normal lives, the more absurd the fear narrative begins to look.

Furthermore, these people are famous, so they have a much larger platform, and the media knows that spells trouble for their narrative. Thousands and thousands of fans might start to think twice about how Aaron Rodgers didn’t get vaccinated yet the universe didn’t implode, or Kyrie Irving didn’t get vaccinated but he’s still crossing people up and averaging 27 and 7 against the highest level of competition in the world in his field.

So the media does what it has to in order to protect its narrative. It attacks. It berates. It lampoons. It tries to make anyone who even considers not falling in line and taking the vaccine look like a childish fool. “Aaron Rodgers! He’s a liar! Kyrie Irving, he’s uneducated! How selfish!”

And that brings me back to what I mean about drawing a line in the sand.

You might be fine with the government force mandating vaccines of questionable effectiveness and destroying the livelihoods of anyone who refuses to take them, but some people aren’t.

People disagree. Get over it.

It’s like anything. Some people draw the line at medicinal drug usage, some draw it at recreational drug usage, some think all drugs should be legal. Some say life begins at conception, some say it begins at a heartbeat, some say it begins at birth. Some say guns are evil, some say certain guns are too powerful, some say we should be able to own tanks.

But if the government or the media is going to actively destroy the livelihood of someone over a personal choice, they better have undeniable and overwhelming evidence that the person’s choice is actively harming others in a directly provable manner. They also better be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the freedom they are going to restrict or the government mandate they are going to impose will unquestionably solve the problem entirely.

When it comes to Covid-19, those attempting to suppress individual freedoms can’t meet either metric. And in that case, an ethical government must defer to individual freedom.

At the end of the day, I don’t care what you believe, but if we’ve fallen so far that the government and the media now actively work together to destroy people based on where they draw their own line in the sand about deeply held personal convictions, then we’re no longer the America the Founding Fathers envisioned.

A man has to draw a line in the sand somewhere. But more importantly, a free country has to do everything it can to ensure the government and the media don’t infringe upon his right to do so.