a talk (and I'll have to be vague)

I met with a friend and former coworker today. Without giving away any specific details about his personal situation, it suffices to say he's become rather antsy about the encroaching oppressiveness of the South Korean government, and he's forced me to think about certain contingencies should the government finally cross a line it shouldn't cross (e.g., actually coercing me to get vaccinated*). My friend wanted to know my stance on vaccine mandates and the vaccines themselves; he mentioned that he knows some people in Korea who have done vaccine-related studies, and these people aren't inclined to get jabbed. I should note that my friend is, more or less, on the opposite side of the political aisle from me (I'd call myself, at this point, a centrist who's drifting rightward), and yet, through his own studies and research, he's finding himself increasingly red-pilled as media and government rhetoric continue to fail to match up with reality.

My friend was curious to know why I hadn't gotten vaccinated, and I told him that, at least initially, I wasn't particularly against getting jabbed; I simply wasn't in any hurry. Now, though, I can feel my stance hardening as more and more information suggests the vaccine is (1) ineffective at protecting you from infection, and (2) ineffective at preventing you from spreading infection. What's the damn point of getting jabbed, then? And then there's the fact that the world is now mostly vaccinated, yet countries are reporting both record numbers of new infections and a higher death toll compared to last year. To me, that means the vaccine is likely worthless, especially with "experts" now insisting on several booster shots—a set of goalposts that will just keep moving.

But what would I do should the ROK government cross the line and become truly repressive? My friend posed me the question, and I had to think for a bit because, up to now, I've been fairly comfortable with South Korea's handling of the pandemic compared to say, blue-state America's handling of same. It just hasn't occurred to me that South Korea could become the next Australia (with its COVID camps) or Germany (with its draconian vaccine mandates). But now, the ROK vaccine-pass policy has been cranked up a notch, and I can no longer go to the cinema unless I'm vaccinated. How many freedoms must I lose before I decide the time has come to act? And what form would that action take? I honestly don't know. The best answer I could give my friend was that I'd probably go back to the States, specifically to a red state (I've mentioned Wyoming before). For reasons I can't disclose, that option isn't open to my friend.

Anyway, running away from the problem will do nothing to solve it, but how does a person fight something as big and amorphous as a government? I could probably resist in my own way, but in the end, I'd be crushed. Moving to Wyoming might be a good solution for me, but there's no guarantee that Wyoming would remain friendly to my worldview; wokeism continues to spread like a cancer. Meanwhile, my moving to Wyoming would help no one else.

My friend said he'd studied a bunch of social metrics, and according to him, what we're seeing these days is what we'd normally see among populations engaged in a war. So, my friend concluded, we may be in a war and not even know it yet. I merely nodded, but I mentally noted how conservative my friend was sounding in that moment.

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*I'll be using the misnomers vaccine and vaccinated throughout this piece even though the shot isn't a true vaccine. Some suggest that inoculation might be a better term; others say we should stick with a neutral term like injection.