Gerald Brooks: This road being taken doesn't lead to a better life

To The Daily Sun,

I knew a person who never played the game, as it was he didn’t like losing. This person had lived an active life, perhaps even what may be considered amazing but during it all refrained from a simple card game. Telling, in that as the years passed life became less and less; the physical passing went in silence. The game in a general sense is life, just having lived, we’ve played; our focus may be on a particular board or card game, athletic or otherwise.

What game is played on us all, not all of us play but are played? Ref: (https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your- mind/) Many years ago a shocking news item played across the nation, our prisoners of war in Korea were being brainwashed, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War_POWs_detained_in_North_Korea) otherwise referred to as indoctrination. The general population back then were taken aback, being told that such a thing was being done to our soldiers’.

I suppose that a "free" people generally speaking feel they make up their own mind, and to be played in such a way just wasn’t right. Well perhaps, but that is the way of the world and has been and most likely will always be. Especially now, it’s not just party politics. The history of the world is about control of people, Our nation came into existence proclaiming to a king that we were free to govern ourselves.

To safe guard that individual freedom, a document was written up to which a representative majority agreed to, detailed the structure, powers, limits and specifically denied it certain powers. It's worked pretty well since.

Freedom of the press worked pretty good; I don’t have a detailed history on newspapers, etc. In this digital age we enjoy to some degree reading them "in hand" and online. I myself have appreciated The Laconia Daily Sun being available and accessible, have written letters to the editor, some they didn’t publish; enjoyed and disliked the cartoons. This outrage over a cartoon? Why not any of the others. The Daily Sun is no longer posting a cartoon; why, what next, will they be going the way of The Citizen, leaving some to going to CNN et-al. to find something to be outraged about?

Who is playing who, why play at all, just sit back have a beer and watch TV or Youtube or maybe walk the dog.

This road being taken doesn’t lead to a better life; only after the USSR dissolved did the general population of Russia improve. We succumbed to authority to lower the curve of infection staying at home, only to watch civil unrest (still ongoing) occupy the streets of major cities for months on end having nothing to do with the virus. The curve was lowered, recommendations followed yet we are still being played. A free people would be informed, a business could decide who to allow into the establishment without needing permission from the government. Will perhaps continue this next week. 

Gerald Brooks

Meredith