People Who Like to Boss Other People

Guest Post by Eric Peters

People who like to tell other people what to do (aka, Clovers) are an interesting study.

Well, they’re odd at any rate.

Perhaps disjointed is the better word.

They will, for example, talk sententiously about “choice”… provided it’s a choice they approve of, such as abortion. Or forcing people to associate.

But only with certain people.

You know – the people they demand others associate with.

Ask them about whether you (an already born actual human being) have the right to choose whether to buckle up for safety. Or buy an air bag. See what sort of response you get.

I’ve written before about the way they deny all of us the right to choose the type of car that meets our needs and wants rather than what they insist we need and must have. We are not allowed, for example, to buy serviceable, inexpensive A to B transportation like the Renault Kwid (see here for more about that) that sells for less than $5,000 brand-new in Asia and India, or even the very high-mileage diesel-powered cars available in Western European countries such as Germany – because the people who like to tell others what to do (and buy) cannot abide such freely made choices.

It is why America is coming unglued.

There is next-to-nothing in this world more enraging than to be micromanaged by other people – usually personally very unappealing people (Hillary Clinton, for instance; but also George Bush and – lately – America’s take on Mussolini, Donald Trump) who believe they know better than you do how to live your life. And are determined to tell you.

Orwell might have titled his book, Big Bully.

Only, plural.

In a democracy, we are bullied by… everyone. There is no leaving you alone –  but no specific individual such as a King or a fuhrer to hate. Well, there are (see above in re Hillary, et al) but in a democracy, they are fungible. Whack-a-mole. Get rid of one, another pops up. It’s not really them that’s the problem.

It’s everyone around you. The neighbor, the guy down the road. They will not leave you alone.

Not personally, perhaps. That would take some courage. Few of these people who enjoy bossing other people would have the guts to try bossing anyone on their own. So, they vote for an Il Duce (Trump) or a frigid termagant (you know who) to do it for them.

But there used to be limits. And so, it was tolerable. You were still able, more or less, to do what you liked. You went to work, did your thing. The people who like to boss were a presence, but not an omnipresence.

There is now no limit to their presence in our lives. The dam has broken.

The sphere of free action available to use continues to grow smaller with each passing year – with each passed law.

The seatbelt and air bag stuff was just for openers, a kind of clearing of the throat before the main opera begins.

People don’t see it, chiefly because they – in the main – are blinkered and cannot think. It does not necessarily take a genius IQ, but it does take a learned capacity to reason. Which has been systematically and deliberately suppressed and crippled by government schools – and for a damned good reason (from the government’s point of view).

It’s not an unreasonable search, you see. It is just about “getting dangerous drunks off the road.” Seatbelt laws are not in principle an immoral usurpation of a free man’s right to make decisions about his personal welfare; they are there to “keep us safe.”

Much more such inevitably follows.

It is no accident that we must now submit to being fondled in order to be allowed to fly. This could never have happened had the populace not already been conditioned to random “safety” checkpoints on the road.

But the manufactured dullards cannot grasp it and so are helpless against it.

Many of them welcome it.

Most just shrug and accept it – because what choice have they got? We’re all boxed in. But occasionally – and lately, more frequently – there is lashing out. Often it involves what seems to be disproportionate berserker rage.

The case of the recent “road rage” killing (incidentally) of a four-year-old girl who had the bad luck to be riding in a truck with a dad who got into a dispute at 60 MPH with another guy over one or the other’s driving skills. Much more was at issue than slow driving or cutting someone off.

People cut people off, or tailgated or slow-poked 30 years ago. Gunfire did not happen. It was literally unheard of.

The difference 30 years later is that people are aerosol cans in the microwave, set on High.

By a system (by other people, acting under its auspices) who will not leave them alone, ever. Not in their cars, not in their homes. Not when they travel, not when they go to work. Not in their recreations. Even their family lives are no longer private. Other people intrude, everywhere. 

One day, there is an eruption. The pressurizing hate for them explodes. All it requires is an object, something to focus on.

Typically, it is over something trivial – or at least, something that, 30 years ago, might have ended in a few flipped birds and some well-chosen adjectives about the other person’s parentage.

It is getting out of hand because the system is out of hand.

People did not shoot up schools 30 years ago and there were just as many guns in private hands. No one asks why this is. Instead, they blame the guns. Which is like blaming forks for fatness.

And the ride is only just beginning to pick up speed.

This health care stuff (that is, being forced by people who like to boss other people to buy an insurance policy) is going to light the afterburners and then we’ll really see.

People who like to tell other people what to do now have weaponized anthrax at their disposal. Because there is absolutely no facet of our existence that cannot be said to in some way “affect” our health. Which is now the business of other people. The people who like to boss other people around.

Whether actually or just possibly is irrelevant. The mere assertion that doing “x” (or failing to “y”) might affect our health is more than sufficient.

That precedent was set decades ago with the seat belt law (and also the probable cause-free random stopping of motorists to dragnet search for drivers who may have been drinking).

Take note of the fact that doctors now inquire as to whether you own a gun.

Hint, hint.

If you can’t see it coming, you’re intellectually glaucomic.

A nation of fear-addled sissies, busybodies and bullies that genuflects (or orgasms) whenever “safety” is mentioned and who cannot grok the idea of leaving other people alone (and minding their own business) deserves what’s coming.

It’s just a shame that not all of us do.