Cause for Concern

 When the mask mandate was first introduced in Indiana in July several of my friends and family members were all over Facebook complaining about their civil liberties being taken away.  Shortly after that there were protests around the state mirroring those ongoing in the country.  Since I believed from the start that masks were an important part of slowing the spread of the virus, I didn't really follow any of their posts or join in their complaints.

Fast forward to this past week and for the first time since the pandemic has started I have become concerned.  Although I still strongly believe in masks mandates and wish there was more enforcement of them, the decisions made since the riots at the Capitol building have made me rethink my thought on personal freedoms.  For the past few months Facebook and Twitter had been censoring or removing tweets that they felt were inaccurate.  I could see why they felt the need to do that as there was a lot of misinformation spread through social media. This past week, however, they actually blocked users that they did not politically agree with their posts or tweets.  Google Play, Apple and Amazon in turn removed a new social media app, Parler, from their platforms as they felt it was dominated with right wing Republican users.  The House Speaker also announced that any member of the House that did not properly go through security would be fined $5000.  Even PBS got involved when one of their attorneys stated publicly that "all children of Pro-Trump supporters would have to go through re-education training after his presidency."  

All of these acts scared me a little bit.  I do not want a national government that constantly maintains surveillance over its citizens.  It reminded me of the movie Enemy of the State and the amount of control the United States government had over its people in the film.  The plot seemed a little farfetched at the time, but maybe not quite as much as I thought.  Either way the last lines of the film stuck in my head today.  Congressman Sam Albert : [on TV] "We knew that we had to monitor our enemies. We've also come to realize that we need to monitor the people who are monitoring them.".. Carla Dean : "Well, who's gonna monitor the monitors of the monitors?"  I couldn't have said it better myself.