The Red Flag Act

Guest Post by Eric Peters

It can be hard to push back against Sickness Psychosis.

People who know it is a psychosis are social-pressured to comply with such outrages as being expected (and increasingly required) to dress up as if it were Halloween every day for reasons that are exactly the same in principle as driving their car no faster than 5 MPH with the flashers on at all times because someone fears “speeding” cars. That they might get run over – or run into – if cars were allowed to go any faster.

Such neurotics temporarily got their way more than 100 years ago, when the first cars appeared and threatened the delicate nerves of the velocity averse.

The Red Flag Acts (including the Highways and Locomotive Act of 1878) imposed a 4 MPH maximum speed limit in the country – 2 MPH in the city –   and required that the vehicle be preceded by a man walking at least 60 yards ahead of it waving a red flag to warn all in the path of the vehicle that it was coming . . . very slowly.

They got their way again in the early ‘70s, when the maximum lawful highway speed – which had risen to an alarming (to the velocity-averse) 70-75 MPH – was temporarily throttled back to 55 MPH. This was initially presented to a public terrorized by propaganda about artificial fuel scarcity as a necessary fuel conservation measure that oleaginously morphed into a saaaaaaaaaafety measure . . . very much as “flattening the curve” greasily morphed into “stopping the spread,” the latter having no end.

The common denominator being the weaponization of fear.

The difference being that the velocity averse were overruled by those who wanted to get places in hours rather than days and minutes rather than hours and – the key thing – rejected the neurotics’ assertion that their fear of movement gave them the moral right to restrict it so absurdly or even at all.

But the wheel turns and there are more neurotics today – chiefly because they have been manufactured by the institutionalization of perpetual terror, especially since Nahhnlevven (say it like The Chimp used to, over and over and over again . . . like the cases! the cases! today) and also because neurosis is now presented by the corporate “mainstream” media as the apotheosis of virtue. Which must be signaled.

As by the wearing of the Face Diaper. As by shaming others to wear it.

American culture has changed.

One of the greatest movie hits of all time was the 1977 Burt Reynolds classic, Smokey & The Bandit – 90 minutes of mocking the velocity averse.

And Americans loved it.

If a film like that were made today, Americans would protest it. It would probably get pulled from theaters. Burt would get cancelled.

The culture today – or rather, the one that has been manufactured – is embodied in the How Dare You! of the terrorized (and terrifying) sickness psychotic, the shrieking child of climate change, Greta Thunberg.

But she wasn’t selling the right thing.

The sickies in upper management who brought us Greta finally discovered what will sell: Sickness, itself. Not the actuality but the assertion – plus the heavy hand of guilt.

The same principle embodied in “speed kills!” and the How Dare You! shriek of the adolescent termagant – but this time, personalized.

You are going to kill granny! You are going to kill me! You are going to kill us all!

That works much better than speed kills! – which is a harder sell because it so obviously doesn’t. You “speed” and nothing happens. But a bug you can’t see? That could be  . . . anywhere? One you might not even know you’ve got it?

Ring that one up.

And put on “your” Diaper.  Then put out your arm – for the Needle that’s coming and which if you don’t will result in Red Flag Laws being applied to you.

If you allow yourself to be browbeaten by it.

Greta and the How Dare You! may well have been a kind of testing-of-the-waters, very much in the manner of the first and local “lock down” of an American city after the Boston Marathon bombing. Will people accept it?

They did.

Will people dare to contradict this hysterical child?

And they didn’t.

The instinct is not to. After all, she is a child and most people are protectively inclined toward children. Greta’s How Dare You’s! were thus endured without correction and duly noted by upper management.

The same technique, adjusted, is at work now and working because of the same basic reason: Most people instinctively recoil from j’ accuse! and just want the shrieking to cease, especially if it emanates from a child.

But what about adults shrieking like deranged children? Are they owed deference? Or is there an obligation to correct them before they destroy the world? The question answers itself, of course.

If anyone dares to ask it – and then act on it.

Americans of 1977 laughed at the velocity averse – and not just at the theater. They acted accordingly, when out on the road. Almost no one obeyed the Red Flag Law of the ’70s – the 55 MPH National Maximum Speed Limit – unless a Smokey happened to be in the vicinity.

But even the Smokeys understood it was silly; that they were playing a part in Safety Kabuki by issuing you a ticket and your role was to pretend it was reasonable, in the hope that Smokey might reduce the charge a little so that you’d be forced to pay a little less.

The tide eventually turned against the neurotics; the 55 MPH National Maximum Speed Limit was repealed.

But the neurosis never went away.

Their sickness percolates, always, below the surface.

Enter The Virus – which has imposed Red Flags Laws on us all. Without any actual laws having been passed. Instead, “guidelines” are decreed and obeyed. Because people are afraid – and not only of getting sick. They are afraid of challenging the keening of the neurotic about the possibility of getting sick, which they are expected to treat as a kind of blank check that entitles the person who presents it to name any amount and it must be paid . . . because granny might otherwise die.

The antidote to this malady is initially bitter but goes down easily and begins to taste sweeter once you have the nerve to try it.

Don’t accept guilt for what you haven’t done. Don’t accept restrictions – or punishments – based on harms you haven’t caused. Do not allow other people’s neurotic fears to dictate the terms and conditions of your life.

Anyone might haver fleas – and fleas can carry Bubonic plague. Does that oblige everyone to wear a fear collar?

People who are terrified out of reason may deserve sympathy. But it is sick to endow their fear with legitimacy – to weaponize it – by giving in to it. We have an obligation to be civil and decent toward others, certainly. But there is no obligation to cringe and comply with the demands of the deranged.

Whether these be a 4 MPH speed limit or a 55 MPH speed limit or a Face Diaper mandate.

Say no to all of it. Laugh at it, if need be.

But whatever you do, never give fear the respect it doesn’t deserve.

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