What kind of abysmal social and economic conditions would make at least five separate counties of US voters want to flee a state to join the borders of another state? Well, all it takes is a cult of insane Marxists running the entire state into the ground from the safety of their metropolitan communes while demanding that people submit their undying fealty to the draconian medical mandates of an elitist minority. Yeah, things have to get pretty bad to inspire so many people into leaving and taking half the state with them.
Welcome to Oregon…
I used to live right across the state border from Portland, Oregon through the 1990s, and while the place was always considered a bit of a haven for washout hippies, reject grunge bands and limp-wristed wine sipping progressives, there wasn’t enough of them to take the place over completely and the city was still relatively clean and well kept and peaceful. You rarely heard of crime, poverty or unrest; those were problems reserved for places like California.
I can’t recall any moment during that time when people said they felt “unsafe” in Portland, or when they were desperate to leave Oregon for greener pastures. It used to be a decent place to build a life. A lot has changed since then.
As the political left and the Democratic Party has become increasingly militant in its regressive ideology and collectivist underpinnings the states these people control have become increasingly dismal financial and constitutional failures. Perhaps it was always there under the skin, but in the past few years the cancer has grown terminal. I really have no interest in ever going back to Oregon and no one I know has any interest in visiting the place either. When I research the local news, this is what consistently pops up:
Portland is now a homeless tent city with walls of garbage in the streets and riots on a regular basis. The city has reported a 2000% rise in homicides, specifically after taking measures to defund local police precincts. Oregon also has a total debt of around $43 billion, which is dramatically higher than red state neighbors like Idaho and Montana. Data for 2020 to 2021 poverty and homeless rates have not been released yet, partially because cities like Portland sought to stall the federally mandated count back in January. I would not be surprised if the numbers have had an epic spike in the past year; the only question will be, is it because of covid, or is it just because of the bumbling of the lefties?
But it’s not just the economic decline that’s the issue in Oregon, it’s also the rampant suppression of individual rights through medical tyranny, along with the special government treatment of Marxist extremist groups like Antifa and BLM.
Thousands of businesses have closed in the state because of pointless lockdowns which did NOTHING to stop the natural spread of Covid, and the businesses that tried to defy the mandates in order to survive were harassed or threatened with fines by state health officials and OSHA. At the same time, local politicians have barely lifted a finger to stop leftist civil unrest. Some people say they are too weak to take action, but their meekness is more likely a show of support, a virtue signal. They want the riots to continue, at least to a certain extent.
That said, nothing tops the announcement this past week by the Oregon Health Authority, which has just issued a rule that businesses must now demand proof of vaccination before a customer may enter. If they do not have proof, they must be forced to wear a mask or they must be made to leave. This is the first time I have heard of a state actually codifying vaccine passports into their enforcement mandates, but I’m sure other blue states will follow Oregon’s lead in the near future.
Keep in mind that these rules are a threat to Oregon businesses as much as they are a threat to the regular public. As one bureaucrat from the Oregon Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration argued:
“We expect employers to comply, whichever route they take–allowing the vaccination exemption or sticking with current requirements….We will take and investigate complaints alleging employers aren’t requiring face coverings, for example, or checking vaccination status.”
Don’t forget that this guy is not a law maker, he’s a nobody. He was never elected. Most of these mandates across the country have not yet been debated by a legislature or voted on by citizens. None of the mandates are real law, they are simply Color of Law controls enforced unilaterally outside of the constitution. This is unacceptable.
As those of us in the liberty media have been warning since the beginning of the pandemic hype, the end game was always going to be vaccine passports; it was always about control of the citizenry, it was never about saving lives. We told people that vaccine passports were coming and the media called us crazy. Now Oregon is proving us right. Of course, Oregon is not the only blue state setting the standard for tyranny. Most leftist dominated states are pushing similar measures.
For example, Illinois officials have said they will not enforce vaccine passports, while at the exact same time admitting they are considering vaccine passports. Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Lightfoot, a racist who has demanded segregation of white journalists from black journalists in her press interactions, is also using her influence to encourage segregation of vaccinated people from unvaccinated people in local restaurants.
In Virginia, Gov. Northham has stated that vaccine passports are on the table. Most counties in the state are predominantly conservative, but it is run once again from metropolitan areas that are saturated with leftists. This has led many counties to seek nullification of state government controls (including Red Flag gun laws). On top of that, numerous counties of Virginia are considering leaving the state to join West Virginia, just as multiple counties in Eastern Oregon are trying to join with Idaho.
In Blue States across the nation incremental totalitarianism is being implemented, but Oregon is clearly leading the charge in my opinion.
Many states are claiming that they will not enforce vaccine passports while subversively supporting corporations that do the enforcing of the passports for them (by the way, no company has the right to demand access to your private medical history before allowing you to enter their establishment). But this is all a farce – Eventually all leftist governments are going to demand vaccine passports as a rule. Oregon simply leap-frogged ahead of everyone else and went straight to the Orwellian end game.
So, of course we have to ask an obvious medical question here first:
If the experimental mRNA vaccines actually work, then why do we need vaccine passports at all?
The people who are vaccinated would be protected, and the people who are not vaccinated would be taking a “risk”, as is their right. The unvaccinated are no threat whatsoever to the vaccinated if the vaccines do what Big Pharma claims they do.
Of course, being unvaccinated is not much of a risk considering the death rate of Covid is only 0.26% outside of nursing homes according to independent medical studies. And for those that claim “mutations” are a concern, viruses mutate with or without mass vaccination. Just as there are seasonal strains of the flu, there will now be seasonal strains of covid. That’s the beauty of it for those in power; there will have to be new vaccinations every year, and you will have to renew your vaccine passport every year. The controls will NEVER end.
If you want to see what our future will be in America if we allow this totalitarian march to continue just take a look at Australia. Regional lockdowns of millions of people are now a regular occurrence there despite the proliferation of vaccines within the country. All it takes is a handful of covid positive tests and the government has all the excuse it needs to erase people’s rights.
In my recent article ‘Vaccine Virtue Signaling And The Cult Of Woke’, I outlined in detail why it makes little sense to become a guinea pig for an experimental “vaccine” (which is really a form of gene therapy) when 99.7% of people will survive the virus without difficulty. On top of that, why submit to a vaccine today that will probably be declared useless next year anyway?
The future implications of vaccine passports and economic decline are disturbing, but this is the inevitable result when leftists and collectivists are allowed to gather political and social power. As I have noted many times this year, leftists are the ONLY subset of the population seeking and supporting government dominion over American lives. Not only that, but they have consistently partnered with global corporations that they supposedly despise in order to leverage more power.
They are the only people supporting mass censorship, mob intimidation of those with different political views, mass violence against innocent people and businesses, they supported government lockdowns and extensive violations of the Bill of Rights, and now they are supporting vaccine passports which would destroy all personal liberty in this country for all time.
Am I falling into a “left/right” paradigm trap here? Are things just as bad in conservative red states? Why not take a look at a red state like my home of Montana? In Montana, the state government has passed multiple laws and set multiple precedents which now protect the public against covid restrictions. These include:
Court orders which prevent local health departments from forcing businesses to require that customers wear masks. (5 businesses took a stand in Flathead County and the courts sided with them).
The Montana Legislature has passed a law banning employers from requiring that their employees get vaccinated in order to keep their jobs.
A law has been passed which prevents any establishment including schools, colleges and medical facilities from demanding proof of vaccination before offering services. Vaccine passports will not be allowed in Montana.
A law has been passed which protects businesses from lawsuits related to covid if a business does not enforce mandates. A similar law is being forwarded which also protects government buildings and healthcare facilities.
Executive orders by Governor Gianforte are being established which stop city governments from enforcing mandates while the state government has lifted them.
Montana has also passed legislation which prevents any new federal gun law from being enforced in the state.
Montana has seen a rush of people relocating to the state and seeking to escape the suffocating restrictions. I have spoken with many of the people that have moved to my area and most of them are conservatives that can no longer tolerate the path of Marxism that their original states are following.
As it stands right now, Montana is one of the MOST free states in the US. Many other red states are considering or have already passed similar measures to protect the rights of their citizens. So, who are the real fascists? Who are the real power mongers? Leftists or conservatives?
The fact of the matter is, the left/right paradigm is a reality. The political elites at the top of the pyramid have no loyalties to either side, but regular people at the bottom of the pyramid are indelibly separated. The proof is in the actions of blue states vs red states.
Perhaps there are many Democrats out there who do not necessarily agree with the cultism of social justice warriors. Maybe they don’t support the unhinged thirst for vicarious control that vaccine virtue signalers display. But if they don’t support it they are not saying much about it out loud. This is indeed about sides, and “moderation” at this point is a joke. One side is supported by real science, the other side is ignoring the science for the convenience of their ideology. One side is clearly right, and the other side is clearly wrong.
Conservatives want to be left alone, and leftists want to dictate the lives of others. Conservatives are for freedom, and leftists are not. There is no debating this any longer. The question is, which side are you on?