Kimberly Steele (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kimberlysteele) wrote2021-09-15 12:06 pm
kimberlysteele) wrote2021-09-15 12:06 pm
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The Art of War by Sun Tzu, Chapter Six: Vacuity and Substance
The scene: Inside Thornton's (gas station) in the suburbs of Chicago.
Her: You need to put on a mask!
Me: I don't do that.
Her: There's a MANDATE! You have to wear a mask!
Me: I know about the mandate. I'm not going to wear a mask. Do you want me to pay for my gas or not?
Her: (blood boiling) YOU... You check out with her... gestures to the young woman behind plexiglass at the register.
A pleasant transaction ensued. I gave the cashier my money, she made change, I thanked her, and I was on my merry way.
Sun Tzu says whoever occupies the battleground first and awaits the enemy will be at ease; whoever occupies the battleground afterward and must race to the conflict will be fatigued.
When I encounter a maskturbator like the gas station manager at Thornton’s, unlike the maskturbator, I am calm and ready. I know the battleground, I understand exactly why I am at war, and I am ready to be hauled off and murdered if necessary because of the courage of my convictions. Death means nothing to me. I am not afraid of it. The gas station manager had no such advantages. She was a terrified, cowed, petty dictator clinging to what little vestiges of power were afforded to her via a mandate. I can almost guarantee she hates her job and everything about it, including customers like me who stand up for their Constitutional rights. She is not ready to die and unlike me, she has made no peace with death, otherwise she would not wear a talismanic binky on her face because the government tells her it will prevent a pathetically non-lethal disease.
The approach outlined above, despite its innocuousness, is a way of forcing the enemy out into the open. We have gotten to a point where showing one’s naked face in a gas station is an act of civil disobedience against the tyrannical State. By demonstrating to the petty tyrant of Thornton’s I would not be moved, she was forced to expose the weakness of her cherished mandate.
I formed a group in early 2021 on Facebook called Speakeasy Illinois to support the owners of businesses and establishments like my own Kimberly Steele Studio that do not force anyone (employees or customers) to be injected with experimental gene modifiers or to wear masks. The group grew from 2 people in February to its current 4400 members today. The army I have amassed is mostly a secret one. The attacks are subtle and quiet. Members send reports from the front lines of which stores, gyms, and offices are face-friendly and which are not. We have our own bits of dialect: “patriot” or “patriotic” means there is zero pressure to mask or vax. FD means face diaper, which is lingo for the mask.
We strike when the enemy least expects us — one of the primary rules of Speakeasy Illinois is to avoid maskturbator/vaxturbator establishments in favor of their patriotic counterparts. Our main weapon against the proto-communists is to ghost their stores and ditch their venues. Nothing scares a maskturbator who complies with government orders (hoping to trade what freedoms they have left) like an empty house. Though many of my soldiers have wanted me to help them create harassment campaigns of going into mask-insistent stores and screaming “you’d better take my money!” it’s not an approach I endorse.
Ghosting their venues works like a charm. There is a theater where I live that puts on live musicals. Their most recent stunt has been to insist that every person walking in the door shows proof of vaccination. Their strategy has gone over like a lead balloon and now they find themselves struggling to put butts in seats. To pretend that it isn’t happening, they have resorted to giving tickets away for free in order to put bodies in chairs. Despite being in a state run by a lunatic leftist emperor-governor, we have put them in a position of either stopping their vaccine nonsense or going out of business. Sadly it looks like they will choose the latter.
This is what maskturbator panic looks like
“If I do not want to engage in combat, even though I merely draw a line on the ground and defend it, he will not be able to engage me in battle because we thwart his movements.”
The line in the sand I draw and encourage my Speakeasy infantry to draw is one of politeness. No matter what the enemy spews, no matter how rabid or stupid they act, we don’t sink to their level. We hold our heads high and proud. If the maskturbator absolutely insists, we loudly say “NO SALE!” and leave the establishment, preferably with a smile. Had the ridiculous Thornton’s manager called the police on me, I would have politely stepped outside the store, waited for the police, and then handed them the cash or card to take inside to the register person. Had the police arrested me and hauled me off to jail, I would let them make an example of me in order to use the outrage to further my cause. I am always ready to strike where they are vulnerable, shifting like water to avoid the substantial and strike the vacuous.
Our members show up in stores constantly without masks, which gives us the advantage of hollowing out the enemy via amorphous psychological warfare. Courage is infectious. My members constantly report others taking off their masks because they see us doing it in public. The enemy only knows how to hate and fear. They destroy and suffer the blowback of destruction; we build and enjoy the effects of construction.
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(Anonymous) 2021-09-16 03:22 pm (UTC)(link)I do still comply and don a mask in some situations that demand it, although I try to avoid those places when I can. For example, I grudgingly mask up at the veterinary and dentist office because I need those services, and don't want to argue with a mandate that in my estimation is stupid but, unlike vax passes, not technically illegal. To my mind, mask mandates, however stupid, still fall within the legally-allowable category of dress codes and religious head coverings that businesses have always been allowed to impose. Vax mandates, on the other hand, violate bodily autonomy and therefore constitutional rights. That's the line in my mind, anyway; others may differ. But I support your choice to fight the mask in your thoughtful way.
That said, I am doing a lot of boycotting and choosing shops with no mask mandates whenever practical, and I will not patronize buisinesses that ask for proof of vaccination or negative tests.
My local theater has also instituted a "show your vax papers" (or negative test papers) policy, and I unsubscribed from their email and will not be going back. Good luck filling seats. A local dance school where I once took some classes has instituted a vaccination or negative test protocol for everyone over 12. My understanding from the scuttlebutt is that they're puzzled as to why they have almost no registration for classes (despite having such strong "safety protocols" to reassure people), but are chalking it up, to, get this, people being "hesitant" about coming back to in-person activities during an "ongoing pandemic". (It assume that it just never occurs to them to check with schools that aren't demanding vax passes and find out if maybe they don't have that problem.)
Anyway, just my thoughts and data points.
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In my group, there are several hearing-impaired people and it's absolutely horrible for them -- not because they can or cannot wear masks, but because they need to read the lips of the people in stores trying to serve them! There is also an entire generation or two of school kids who are being damaged by having to wear masks for 6-8 hours, despite the masks putting them in real danger of oxygen shortages and bacterial infections. The more masks are normalized, the worse the above people will suffer, and that's enough for me to show my naked face to irate gas station managers and deal with the consequences. Nevertheless, you do you, boo. That's the great thing about American values. It's a nation founded upon respecting people to make their own decisions.
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(Anonymous) 2021-09-17 02:27 am (UTC)(link)I may not like business dress codes, or religious venues that demand certain kinds of coverings for entry, but I in the past we've always allowed private businesses and religious organizations to have rules about dress, with the idea that people who don't like it don't have to patronize those businesses or attend those organizations. So if businesses want to mandate muzzle dress codes in the name of Scientism, well, freedom of religious observance and all.
The problem in my mind is when government wants to get into the religious-mandate business. Because that's what these masks are; they're part of the religions of Scientism. We have government mandating religious observance, cloaked as "science" and "public health".
I feel like if left the their own devices, the business sector would sort it out A small minority of businesses would cater to the maskies, and we'd all have to wear masks if we wanted to buy gourmet groceries or attend the gallery opening, while most businesses would be mask optional. Live and let live.
The real problem to me is the government actively promoting religion disguised as science, and imposing this religion in the schools and other public places.
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