Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

Can I be so bold as to say I may have figured something out? It is probably something all of you already know, as I can be a bit slow on the uptake. I keep hearing from the sheep-types that they really don’t care if we lose all of our freedoms. They don’t care about losing privacy because they don’t have anything to hide, they don’t care about losing free speech because people should be punished for saying bad and/or dangerous things (and they have nothing to say that would be considered bad and/or dangerous).

They have no fear of the government getting too much control because there will never be a reason the government would want or need to control them.

They don’t fear communism or fascism primarily because they don’t know what those two ideologies clearly mean, and besides, that would never happen in a free society—which they are ready to give up anyway.

Of course, to all of us shrew-types, we practically lose our cookies thinking about living in a society where basic freedoms have been stripped away, or where the government, or any other authority, has power over our movements, our money, and our fundamental existence.

When we hear someone say, “I don’t care how much control the authorities have, I have nothing to hide, and I do nothing wrong, therefore it is not something to worry about for me,” we blow a gasket.

Don’t they know?

Don’t they know that when the control over the masses surely does take effect it won’t matter a tinker’s damn if they “have nothing to hide” or “don’t do anything bad.” Oppression comes in many flavours, and its primary purpose is not to punish wrongdoing, but rather to keep people, in a very general way, compliant and under control.

Control sets the tone of the behaviour of a society. A good example of this came about during the Canadian Trucker’s Convoy. People who donated to that cause ran the risk of having their bank accounts frozen. (I was one that this happened to.) Was donating to a “cause” such as the Trucker’s Convoy a “bad thing”—was it against the law, was it criminal? In a free society, protesting (peacefully) and standing up against any sort of injustice an individual finds abhorrent is one of our fundamental rights as citizens of a free country.

However, punishing people who do something the government does not approve of sets a bar that indicates what is acceptable and what is not. People seeing friends and family being punished for contributing to a cause such as the truckers convoy, will categorize their activity as the activity of “a bad person”—whereas before the punishment was laid upon them (the freezing of their bank accounts) these same people would have had no trouble wearing a pussy hat and marching against Donald Trump.

They find what the government did (freezing accounts) as “reasonable” and they tell themselves that whoever contributed was a “bad person” and deserves to be reprimanded.

There is no better word for this than indoctrination: people are being taught what is right and wrong, and being taught what the punishment is for being wrong. It is much like training a dog, but not with positive reinforcement (although there is a lot of that going on as well) but with negative reinforcement.

Needless to say this negative punishment starts out mildly. And this is the thing I figured out—people don’t know yet what the real punishment is going to be for wrongdoing, and for straying away from the desires of the agenda. They have never experienced real suffering at the hands of their captives, so they don’t know what is in store for them. None of them have lived in North Korea, or Soviet Russia, or Nazi Germany, or Mao’s China. None of them know what it means to live a life in any of these environments where you don’t have to be a criminal to be seriously persecuted and physically punished for just being.

Well, neither have the shrews (more than likely anyone reading this is a shrew). So, what gives? This is the part I have not yet figured out. I have a few theories, but most of them are rather lame. One theory is that shrews are more aware of history and world events than their sheep brethren. I can’t imagine that this is as true as it would need to be to have any sort of impact. But I have noticed that the shrews I have met are very well informed about totalitarian regimes—current ones and past ones. Shrews seem to be more well-read than the sheep-types—history (as mentioned), philosophy, psychology, biography, classic literature, etc. Maybe there are a few Nora Roberts romances in there, but not many.

I am sure there are lots of shrews who haven’t read a book since High School, but that doesn’t seem to be the truth. It isn’t book reading altogether either, it is just information, awareness, and understanding that seems to be prevalent. Combine that with common sense and critical thinking, and you may have a viable formula there for shrew-ness.

Like I said, I don’t think I have that one figured out yet. But I do think there is some viability to the idea that the sheeple don’t really know what they are handing over to the agenda. They don’t know what politically inflicted pain feels like. And they are rather certain that this sort of pain is not down the pike.

Of course, there are always strange anomalies to these theories.

Why are the same people obsessed and terrified that Trump is going to make this oppressive, fascist, totalitarian world for them, where they will all, if they are lucky, writhe in pain on the streets, deprived of food, water, and any sort of decency in life?

This is strange, for sure, as it makes no sense that if they are so terrified of this happening with Trump, they can’t see it with Carney in Canada, Merz in Germany, Macron in France, Xi Jinping in China, and Starmer in the UK. Of course, they have no problem seeing it in Putin of Russia. But Zelenskyy of Ukraine is the hero of all time. Go figure.

So, I guess I was wrong. I haven’t figured this out at all. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Todd’s new book The View of the Shrew launches later this month, and is available for pre-order, or you can enter a draw to win a free copy by signing up to his mailing list here.