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B Meyer's avatar

In the "Gulag Archipelago," Alexander Solzhenitsyn recounts with remorse and amazement how meekly the hapless targets of Stalin's KGB thugs accompanied their captors to prison. He postulates that if they had only fought and screamed for help, attracted others' attention, perhaps a crowd, who would harangue the thugs, block their way, puncture their tires, they would've made it too difficult, too embarrassing, even too dangerous for the agents to do their jobs, and the machine would've ground to a halt.

Similar observations have been made about the way the Jews in Nazi Germany and the countries they overran allowed themselves to be rounded up by and herded like sheep onto trains to their deaths. The Jews learned an important lesson from that, which they have never forgotten, encapsulated in the defiant cry, "Never Again!"

In both cases, the fatal psychological weakness, which the tyrants understood and exploited, was the hope that if one could just explain things properly and behaved civilly, the authorities would understand their arrest was all a big mistake, that they were loyal citizens, that the authorities would understand, and all would be well.

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P. Kelley's avatar

Sometime after my husband was hospitalized for a stroke in Feb 2022 (1 1/2 weeks after recovering from his first case of COVID BTW), I learned that on admission, they did drug and alcohol testing on him. Which infuriated me. Back when I worked as a nurse in a hospital, you needed either the patient's permission - or a warrant to do that particular blood test. And they had neither. I communicated with an ER nurse friend in Mississippi, and she said this blood test was standard "because everyone lies," and there were potential life-threatening medical consequences if they lied. So apparently we "help" everyone by assuming everyone lies, and spend their health care dollars by doing drug and alcohol tests without their knowledge or consent.

Well, about 15 years before my husband's hospitalization, those consequences were just as dire, but if our patients chose to lie, the consequences were on THEM, and we, their health care providers, did our best to keep them alive. Additionally, as in one case I recall with a man in severe DT's from withdrawal from a (denied) alcohol problem - there were times we also had to do our best to keep ourselves from being harmed. This particular individual was in full restraints, and was still managing to jump his bed midway across the room. We eventually found a sedative that worked for him, and were at last able to safely bathe him and change his linens. Fortunately he survived.

Despite my experience of caring for this violent patient, I still believe that there should be consent required for drug and alcohol testing. It was one step toward what we experienced during COVID. Masks "for your own good." Social distancing "for your own good." Experimental vaccines "for your own good," AND to protect "Granny!" (For good measure) As well as all the other idiotic, tyrannical decisions forced upon us. These sort of things don't begin as a huge, incredulous take-over (well, not unless it was the COVID pandemic); they begin with small steps. Thus my outrage over the drug and alcohol test on my dear hubby who has never taken a drug that wasn't prescribed for him (and he never took ANY of the prescribed pain meds once he was home after having his sternum cracked open and heart operated on. I was impressed!), and only occasionally drinks one craft beer during the evening. As you pointed out in your wonderful article, it's a slippery slope. I did a little brainstorming (it's late, so it's not overly creative or brilliant), and here's a potential next "little"step of a slippery slope: What if they begin drawing/storiing our DNA samples "for our own good?" And, like with my husband, not only do they not ask for our consent, but what if we're not told about it until we read the itemized hospital bill? It might be more invasive and have more privacy implications than any DOGE nerds looking at education records.

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