Let he who is without sin cast the first stone
or anyone who thinks the unvaxxed have it coming.
What should we do with the unvaccinated is a question occupying the fevered brains of many of our now free, vaccinated citizens. We have a duty to do as members of a society and the unvaxxed won’t do it.
Vaccination is not only a passport to the things we once did without asking permission like travel, shop, go to the movies, visit friends and family; it also invites the injected to employ their new and superior powers of judgement.
This is of more than passing interest to me. I am unvaccinated.
What follows is from a New South Wales perspective but broadly reflects the experience of Australians across the country.
Just how should we unvaxxed be judged, other than harshly? Today, we have been weighed as unworthy of leaving our homes to join the 11th October freedom march. Yet, joining this pilgrimage and its undefined destination is only delayed by 7 weeks.
Is this what former Premier, Gladys Berijiklian, meant when she said things would be tough for the unvaccinated and that they would be left behind? Surely, she had worse penalties in mind than that but with Gladys facing her own judgement, we’ll never know.
The instruments of torture have now been handed to a Roman Catholic with strong Opus Dei connections; an organisation that has self-mortification as a hobby. Dominic should knock any smugness out of the vaccine hesitant and their more steadfast allies.
It’s not all beer and skittles for the vaccinated
Yet, contrary to popular opinion, being unvaccinated is only rarely a time for beer and skittles. Until December, we can only get takeaway beer then retreat to our bunkers to drink alone.
There are many other daily struggles. It is almost impossible to find a tinfoil hat that fits. Many are too loose and festooned with big christian logos. The websites and YouTube pages that carry orders from our loopy right wing masters are frequently closed down or relegated to the internet slow lane. There is the growing fear of home invasion – from the police. And shaky hands make resetting those skittles dreadfully difficult.
Then there are the demands for retribution from sections of an increasingly jittery vaccinated public. Will their desire for appeasement be followed by calls for corporal or even capital punishment? We lie awake at night in fear of just such a future.
Is talk of capital punishment too extreme? Maybe but you have to admit many of our vaccinated friends are jittery. Our ever-reliable press offers up vaxxed people terrified of open public space and others terrified by the prospect of the crowds that freedom will bring. In this context, we unvaxxed appear to them as one of Stephen King’s more macabre creations.
Having taken one of the “safe vaccines” you would think the vaccinated would now be living happy in their choice but it’s not so. The love that media, politicians and starlet medics have shown them is not enough. They appear to want vengeance for the existence of an alternate perspective.
Even lynch mobs organised by celebrities like Mike Carlton, Peter Fitzsimons, Lisa Wilkinson, Jane Caro and Dave Hughes haven’t provided them with the comfort that someone is taking action.
It is in this heightened climate of alarm that I decided to study how past societies have addressed similar problems. I do so for two main reasons. Firstly, to help shape future debate and secondly in the hope of rounding off some of its sharper edges. Let’s start with stoning.
Let’s start with stoning.
In doing so, I am drawing on a particularly interesting source:
“Notes on Stoning among the Greeks and Romans” by Dr Arthur Stanley Pease, Harvard University, 1907.
The paper was published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This organisation has played a very active role throughout the Covid-19 era with close links to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and other US government bodies. See Coronavirus Resource Center.
For the remainder of this article, I will attempt to adopt the position of my gentle persecutors. I do this in order to understand more clearly their current inclinations and to predict their future actions. I also hope to ingratiate myself to their better nature so that when judgement comes they may recall my helpful nature.
Get yourself a coffee or if vaccinateed, a chamomile tea, come sit down and let me make my case.
In history, stoning appears to have been employed in any of three circumstances described below:
1. Matters threatening the existence of the state or that expose it to external threat. See treason or military insurrection;
2. Crimes perceived as injurious to the internal life of the state, its worship, its laws, or the rights of its citizens. This covers blasphemy, adultery, debauchery and more.
3. Personal or political antagonisms, and the desire to attain private or partisan ends.
Can everyone participate? To that I say an emphatic YES. Those who watched Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” may have been misled to believe that this is only for men. Not even in more patriachal times was this the case. We have readily found two examples from history of women engaging in stoning.
In 479 BC, an Athenian Councillor, Cyrsilus, proposed making terms with the Persian King, Xerxes. The suggestion was so unwelcome as to lead to his stoning. When the wives of the aggrieved heard about this they decided to stone Cyrsilus’s wife too. This seems to match two of our acceptable reasons for stoning. 1 for treason and 3 because you feel like a stoning. This appears to be less of rule than an inclination.
A second example of female participation suggests a wonderful opportunity if you have an pretentiously pretty, unvaccinated neighbour. About 100 years after Cyrsilus wife came to grief, Lais of Hyccara fell in love with a Thessalian fellow named Hippolochus. She was so beautiful that the women of Thessaly lured her to the Temple of Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love, where Lais was stoned to death.
Evidently, she had a pretty sharp tongue too and carried the nickname “Axehead”. That might not have helped in negotiations.
Lastly, children won’t need a second invitation. Throwing stones uninvited at any object that presents a challenge is part of childhood. In short, this is the perfect family and community activity.
The Unvaccinated Are Guilty As Charged
Now, let’s look at the evidence of these behaviours in our current context? Can a reasonable case be made that the unvaccinated are treasonous? Some think it has already been made. To describe the unvaxxed as unpatriotic seems fair.
Calls to “do it for the country” have left them unmoved. Similar calls to do it for their family, community and workmates have failed. Can that disobedience be relabelled treason? As Brad Hazzard told us: “We are at war”. So the answer is, yes, it can. It’s a small leap from unpatriotic to treasonous. Let’s make it.
The unvaccinated are guilty on point 1.
Is their crime injurious to the life of the state, its laws, worship or rights as a citizen? I think we can safely say YES for a multitude of reasons. The fact that the laws these people are breaking are more demands, poorly framed, arbitrary, whimsical, nonsensical and often stupid does not excuse the fact that many, some yet to be identified, have been broken.
The unvaccinated’s attitude isn’t all that flash either. When they are not breaking rules, they are often dismissive of authority, of science and of their betters. Media, politicians and carefully elevated medics have been subjected to ridicule, insubordination and insult.
The best efforts to shield the public from misinformation have resulted in the packaging of a sifted, simplified, sanitised narrative. Much anxiety and effort has been directed at ensuring we only get “trusted” news. Still, it is not good enough for them.
This is the age of science and technology. Any challenge to state science MUST be recognised for what it is. Blasphemy.
The unvaccinated are guilty on point 2.
Here is a compelling Christian justification for stoning.
So why are the unvaccinated resisting what is good for the country? Cue the Labor and Liberal Parties’ Greek chorus.
“JUST GET THE JAB”.
Strangely, the Labor party members sing louder and know the words to the lesser known verses better than their erstwhile enemies.
Point 3 argues personal animosities and grievances are reason enough for condemnation. Nothing characterises our political class more perfectly than their capacity to hold a self-serving grudge. Someone beating them to the buffet table or an investment property will be reason enough.
In short, this will be a chance to settle scores with anyone silly enough to disagree or challenge them. We can be sure that the unvaccinated’s resistance to their authority has them seething.
In addition, you might have an annoying unvaccinated neighbour. If you do, you might take up NSW Deputy Police Commissioner, Gary “Dobber” Worboys’ invitation to dob them in for breaking one of the rules defined here.
There doesn’t really need to be a reason but…
The unvaccinated are guilty on point 3.
With guilt established, let’s move on to the fun part.
Stoning – an event for the whole family
Is stoning justified? The rule breaking described above more than makes the case but there are many other excellent reasons. I figure some of the edginess our injected friends are experiencing comes from being locked up for months. A good stoning will give them the chance for some much needed exercise.
Another boon from stoning is that it is a communal activity. You can bring the whole family. To which you say, you can do the same at a lynching but this option provides an opportunity for group participation. While anyone with a sure arm is still certain to be recognised and celebrated, the sense of achievement will be shared.
At this late stage, it can also be used to aid the vaccination effort. Once the first few are stoned there will be a clamouring for those vaccines. A vaccine shortage, real or imagined, will need to be fabricated to create the ideal state of panic. I am an amateur at this but some of the behavioural scientists from places like Sydney University are certain to offer excellent professional advice.
Any residual stone sharpening skills that our indigenous community retains could be invaluable for impromptu stoning but heavy industry should be engaged to supply stone of appropriate weight, pummelling and lancinating qualities. Once supplied, local councils could install skips in appropriate public spaces at the centre of our towns and suburbs.
With 20% of the population subjected to this policy in its early stages, regular public stonings will also fill the troublesome vacuum, caused by the football off-season, with a similar violence and excitement.
One last story is offered as part of a personal plea. According to Pausanias in 492BC:
[6.9.7] “At the Festival previous to this it is said that Cleomedes of Astypalaea killed Iccus of Epidaurus during a boxing-match. On being convicted by the umpires of foul play and being deprived of the prize he became mad through grief and returned to Astypalaea. Attacking a school there of about sixty children he pulled down the pillar which held up the roof.
[6.9.7] This fell upon the children, and Cleomedes, pelted with stones by the citizens, took refuge in the sanctuary of Athena. He entered a chest standing in the sanctuary and drew down the lid. The Astypalaeans toiled in vain in their attempts to open the chest. At last, however, they broke open the boards of the chest, but found no Cleomedes, either alive or dead. So they sent envoys to Delphi to ask what had happened to Cleomedes”.
In short, he escaped.
How creative has the last 18 months of destruction been?
Let me return to sanity momentarily. Regardless of the policies and penalties that are deemed necessary to force society into some new shape, we must demand our right to be part of that shaping. This is too important to be left to the current crop of politicians. They have failed us.
The impact on our children of the last 18 months will demand a great deal of sober reflection in coming years. Has it been worth it? Has it been necessary? I doubt it. I greatly doubt it.
In a startling way, our leaders have brought a creative destruction not to a school, as Cleomedes did, but to our whole education system. In recent years, and particularly the last 18 months, they have invited companies like Google and Apple to take an ever expanding role in the educating of our children. At the same time, they have closed down schools and forced children to embrace this new world.
This has been done in the complete absence of public debate. These Big Tech companies have very ambitious plans and we would be wise to study them.
Perhaps, the vaccinated, imbued with the greater wisdom that vaccination bestows can tell us what this is about and where it is leading. They might explain to us how the public response to this ubiquitous, invisible enemy has been proportionate to the danger it posed.
In the meantime, if you see me on the wrong end of one of these public stonings, please remember my desire to help and if you have a spare chest I can hide in, it would be greatly appreciated.
I am ready to climb in now.
Let’s finish with a song.
"Well, you can tease me and try to break me and still I'll spit at you., You'll never break spirit even when my body's black and blue"
Warren Ross
email: katwlr@protonmail.com