Do Your Part
A veiled threat. One of the most predatory and exploitative moralistic slogans uttered by an authority and repeated mindlessly by half-baked ineffectual citizens.
Employed when normal discourse fails to persuade an ordinary citizen to serve the interests of elites, likely because their arguments are not very compelling according to any reasonable standard. When legitimate discourse fails, it is time to deceive and compel by appealing to a sense of duty. It is a collectivist indictment of individual liberties inferring that we are not already doing enough for our country. We need to do more.
These sorts of manipulations have been exemplified in art in an attempt to convey the dangers of such rhetoric to those of us who may be tempted by its dark artifice. In the historical film All Quiet on the Western Front, these tactics are used to convince swaths of young men to trade their lives in service of their country in the first World War. In the futuristic sci-fi film Starship Troopers, this exact slogan is used to brainwash whole generations into forfeiting their lives as part of an ongoing war with a race of allegedly hostile insects. Whether it is portrayed in art or the theatre of war, lives are sacrificed to serve the expansion interests of those who would never set foot on a battlefield. The promises of a worthy outcome are never realized, and those who survive will live the rest of their days as a discarded pawn by the authority to whom they gave everything.
This slogan reemerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when miraculous and hyper-novel experimental medical injections were made available to combat a different enemy: illness and transmissibility. A different war with a different bug. It is worthy to mention that these transfections were intentionally mislabeled as vaccines to disarm our concerns about their novelty due to an admitted desire to simplify and standardize policy. After this was noticed, major medical and pharmaceutical platforms opted to redefine vaccines as a category so that it would include these products, rather than admit they are not vaccines. This is concerning because they do not do anything that vaccines do, and so the category was broken in order to fit these in. The prioritization of familiar and consoling labels beat out consistency and specificity as a matter of strategic policy, which is only a problem if you care about being healthy.
These are not the actions of honest brokers with persuasive arguments.
Despite these manipulations, we lined up to do our part, eager to please our community and country. As per usual, the promises were never realized. These injections did nothing that they initially claimed they would, and did many harmful things that they promised they would not. It turns out that, when we do our part, we never seem to benefit as much as those making the request. Many of us have convinced ourselves that our actions contributed to the safety of loved ones or mitigating the burden on our strained health care systems. Unfortunately, beyond the initial findings that these treatments reduced the likelihood of severe illness in some who received them, the evidence does not support this.
We have told ourselves a story that when our country needed us, we sprang into action. In reality, many of us just wanted our freedoms back so badly that we were willing to do anything to have them returned. Our philosophical and legal oversights rendered us blind to the fact that freedoms cannot fundamentally be taken away - so what exactly is happening here? How is it legal? And if it is, why? Coincidentally, our NEWS MEDIA and governments have been on a crusade against anti-vaccination for years, pitting free citizens against one another due to personal medical choices. Just another issue over which we are encouraged to demonize our neighbours.
People without masks were threatened with fines and incarceration by representatives whom we pay to look after our interests. How quickly it was that only the interests of the obedient were respected. We were told by authorities to take photos and report others to the police for failing to wear a mask, and many did. This is what we are told good citizens do - we would be doing our part. Doing our part in what exactly? The post-hoc rationalizations for our fearful and rodentlike behaviour have been incredible to behold.
We should obviously trust someone in a lab coat wielding a syringe; doing anything to the contrary makes us worse than an irrational luddite or conspiracy theorist. We would be considered an obstacle to progress and a traitor to our nation. Our governments merely framed our obedience as virtuous conduct and that was all we needed to square ourselves with our cowardice and engage in civil conflict with loved ones. The stakes were different than war, but the strategy is identical. Do your part - good boys and girls take their medicine.
The exploitative brilliance of this slogan runs much deeper than whichever crisis is allegedly being addressed: it is an opportunity for absolution.
Many of us feel as though we are inadequate citizens, and that we could be doing more for our communities. This is why we leap at opportunities to showcase our support for whichever social issue is currently trending. We can avoid our anxieties of being an outsider while experiencing the temporary relief of our guilt from failing as a contributing citizen; two birds with one stone. Many of us feel a deep sense of obligation in fulfilling our duties as a citizen, and when we are provided with a pertinent concern as well as the prescription for what we can do about it, we simply cannot pass on the invitation. Doing our part makes us a good person, right? There is no need to examine the legitimacy of any of its constituent parts, that may shatter the illusion.
The brilliance runs deeper still, as it permits the truly selfish and egocentric citizens to employ a game theoretical approach to community interaction and social status. Those of us who have only ever thought of our own interests, comforts, and stability, are given a free pass on a life that benefitted only ourselves and no one else. We did everything that was asked of us by our country in a time of need and have now had a lifetime of inactivity and self-indulgence erased from our conscience. This will cause us to believe that we now occupy the moral high-ground relative to anyone who had the audacity to question the legitimacy of experimental injections and lockdowns as the price for membership in a ‘free’ society.
Apparently, doing our part turns sinners into saints and the doubtful into devils. When we were offered an opportunity at absolution for such a low cost, it is no wonder we hissed and scratched at those who dared to interfere. Some of us crave existential clemency so deeply, we will serve up dissidents as pariahs without hesitation as we praise ourselves and others for our righteous obedience. We shall be invited back into the bosom of normalcy; the rest will get the rod.
If doing our part were that easy, we would have done it already. If we believe otherwise, then we are condemning humanity in the most cynical way possible. Governments do not deserve our unquestioned complicity, and providing it will never work out in our favour. Redefining mindless obedience as righteous and virtuous participation is merely a linguistic and psychological trick. It does not absolve us of anything, it excuses us temporarily for being human until we get our next fix. It could be any one of us who is victimized when the next opportunity for absolution is offered by an authority capable of exploiting our vulnerabilities. We should keep this in mind the next time we reach for our pitchforks.
Do your part to help yourself, your family, community and country, by being a MODEST REBEL.
Do not trust anyone who resorts to moralistic sloganeering in lieu of persuasive argumentation, because upon its utterance, they have immediately classified themselves as unfit and unworthy to follow.
We are worth more than that.
Revised: 11 Jan 2023
