Deciding Between Employment & Vaccination is not a Choice: It's Coercion

It's bad enough that the people who were coerced into taking a vaccine they didn't want or else lose their employment, education & military service but now we have people who are victim-blaming them and playing Monday morning quarterback about a situation they didn't experience.

The people doing this aren't "COVIDians" who want you to bow at the altar of an experimental drug. They're actually opposed to the vaccine but they see the people who were coerced into taking it as "weak" or "enablers" to a tyrannical environment during the pandemic.

The word coercion means nothing to them because they see it as being associated with free will and so they "chose" to take the vaccine. The only people who had a choice in these scenarios were the people who wanted the vaccine.

Being forced, meaning imposed upon you by authority, to choose between 2 undesirable outcomes is not a choice. Picking which restaurant to eat at is a choice. Choosing by force of an authority to decide between your livelihood or health isn't.

My wife was faced with this choice as the institution she worked at imposed this situation. She had no interest in losing her job or risking her health with an experimental vaccine. With one day left before her termination for not complying, she was forced to choose the vaccine.

But now we have self-aggrandizing individuals who would like to blame people like my wife for taking the vaccine because they see it as enabling a tyrannical institution for complying with their demands. The people were victimized but it must be their fault, right?

We have people who were never faced with that decision but are adamant that they would have rather "lived in a shack" than take the vaccine.

It reminds me of this image of the one man at a Hitler speech who sat while everyone else saluted, August Landmesser. This person thinks they're that guy but they really aren't. You know how I know this?

Because the account that would allegedly "live in a shack" by not complying with a tyrannical decision won't even use their real name. Such bravery doesn't come from someone who lives in anonymity because they're afraid of being canceled or facing consequences in the real world.

I recognize the brave are the few & the necessity of protecting yourself online. This isn't a jab at people who want to use the internet anonymously because it's a decision you're making to protect yourselves. But it takes some gall to show yourself as a brave actor while hiding.

It's incredibly easy to project yourselves as being so sure as to a predicament you didn't face or were at risk of facing. Countless Americans were placed into a coercive position but even amongst people who agree this is wrong, they find a way to place them at fault.

However, let's say you feel strongly about your decision to get terminated from your job: I find that equally unfortunate but you're not better than those who made the opposing decision. Both people in this scenario are victims and they were equally oppressed.

People like my wife aren't weak and didn't ask to be put in this position. She did everything possible to get out of this enforced mandate by her employer. She didn't want to decide her economic fate, she just wanted to do her job like she had been doing throughout the pandemic.

Bad faith actors like to say they "chose money instead of health" but she didn't "choose money" as if she was filled with greed. She was pushed into weighing the economic consequences of termination versus the risks of negative reactions from the vaccine within 24 hours. It’s unfair.