CLICK IT OR TICKET

I'm not stupid, and I don't think you really are either even if I do notice that you do have problems. But lest we cause embarrassment, let's not discuss it. Instead, I'll go this way with it. Years ago, it must have been 1978 soon after my retirement from the Navy, during my first of several annual visits to Australia, one of my new clients, the managing director of a defence industry company, arrived apologetically a few minutes late for our early morning appointment for him to give me a tour of his engineering and manufacturing facility: driving in to work, he had been stopped by traffic police and ticketed for failure to wear his seatbelt. The traffic ticket was going to cost him A$40, forty dollars, an outrage.

And I was indeed outraged. I remember telling him that we had seatbelts but no such draconian laws in America, if you wanted to wear your seatbelt, and anyone who was not stupid would indeed wear it, you wore your seatbelt. If for any reason you didn't want to wear your seatbelt, that was your own gdamn business. But no American would tolerate government telling him he had to wear a seatbelt, no American would put up with making seatbelts a legal requirement, no American would put up with government giving traffic tickets if you didn't wear it your seatbelt; it was your own damn business.

CLICK IT OR TICKET says many a traffic sign on American highways these forty years later, for good reason, and it's taken for granted that if you're too damn stupid to buckle your seatbelt, you're breaking the law, endangering yourself and others, and if you get caught you're going to get a ticket and pay a fine. And if you don't pay the fine, they're going to come collect you and take you to jail.

There's no difference in CLICK IT OR TICKET and covid19 vaccine mandates. I don't like the idea and fact of government trying to tell me what to do. If I don't want to get vaccinated, that's my own damn business. But as I say, I'm not stupid. I got vaccinated because I wanted to help protect my own safety and the safety of loved ones and the public. Seatbelts save lives, but most of us wouldn't wear them had the laws not been put in effect. The covid19 vaccination saves lives too. It's just that no American appreciates government telling her/him what to do.

I'm not going there this morning, but I wonder if it occurs to the anti-vaxxers who pride self on being politically conservative, that some reluctantly pregnant women don't appreciate government trying to tell them what to do either. Conservative is not legally forcing others to do things your way, conservative is insisting that government stay out of people's lives regardless of the issue. So - - seatbelts, vaccination, abortion, gun control, &c, not hot button issues with me, but so for many folks.

Sorry I missed the lunar eclipse this morning. The next one won't be until February 8, 2669. I wonder what will be going on by then? For one, due to ice melt, the continents will be smaller. We may have colonies on the moon and other planetary bodies by then. Maybe by then, political and religious differences won't be people's primary foundations for hating each other, although that's really not enough time for humans to have evolved that much further toward the godly image in which we were created.

RSF&PTL