One of the most telling things that has happened during the pandemic is the shift in tone when it comes to high level government officials, even presidents, and how they speak to their citizens.
We wrote an article recently about how Joe Biden told nearly 100 million Americans that he was “losing patience with them”. It was a shocking and unprecedented move by any sitting president in modern times. Never before has a president openly threatened law abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong or illegal.
But it’s not just Biden. Several western countries are jumping on the trend of threatening and deriding their own law-abiding citizens.
The latest is French President Emmanuel Macron. In a speech that has since gone viral, he stated he wanted to make life difficult for the unvaccinated, and piss them off. He then went even further, referring to them as “non-citizens”.
Once again, an open threat to otherwise law-abiding citizens who have done nothing against the law.
While on the surface these incidents may seem minor, I can’t stress enough how dangerous this trend truly is.
When leaders start openly attacking citizens and threatening them with calls to make their lives intentionally harder, that’s a very dangerous line that’s been crossed. Even third world dictators at least pretend to care about their citizens, even though their actions may speak differently. But western countries have dropped that veneer of compassion and now openly threaten citizens in ways even dictators often avoid.
There must be a strong and swift condemnation of this behavior, both by citizens and by the media. If the media claims to be in the service of the people, then they are obligated to call out these abhorrent examples where leaders who swore to serve the citizens of their countries instead now openly attack and threaten them.
If this is allowed to continue, leaders will only become more brash and more brazen in their attacks on certain citizens they deem to be an obstacle. And soon after, the verbal attacks will quickly turn into real-world punishment.
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