I shouldn’t have waited so long. When I was a much younger man, I was made aware of some opportunities for extremely lucrative contract work. This led to serious soul-searching, introspective moral self-evaluation. What I found was that I would be unable to look at myself in the mirror if I were to do such work on someone else’s behalf. It certainly wasn’t that the beneficiaries of my efforts wouldn’t have been deserving, they were. In the end, despite millennia of humanity following rules akin to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, it wasn’t my eyes or teeth at stake. Without a stake, I had no business being dealt into the game. 

Now It’s far too late. You see, my line in the sand was personal; It had to be personal. I’m a little old-fashioned, both the provider for and the protector of my family,  blood and chosen. If you come for me or mine, that’s personal and you’d better come heavy. I will expend every iota of my remaining mortal energy to exact a cost from you equal to or higher than that which you try to extract from me. I have no qualms with this. I can easily square this with my system of morals and beliefs, and will lay it bare before 12 of my peers, and whatever higher power I may meet for judgement when the time comes. This seems like such a simple clearly defined line, and on the surface it is. But only on the surface. No one came for me, not actively, not directly. Sure, there were threats made and pressure applied, but I was able to adapt my ways, and carry on without significant costs. I stuck to these lines in the sand, believing them to be morally sound, for too long.

I thought I had time. There were threats to me and mine, those I protect. Those I support, those in my household. Those threats didn’t seem to be growing to fruition.

 But what about my adult children? Or their children? They no longer live with me. I neither actively protect them nor support them, and I don’t believe those actions would be welcome if I offered. 

What about my parents? A decade into retirement, they’re still healthy, strong both mentally and physically. I neither care for nor stand watch over them, and again I don’t think it would be welcome If I tried. 

Instead, now I’ve allowed, or at least failed to prevent, irreparable harm to befall those  that I care about.  

I spoke out at times. I counselled caution, education, wisdom. I set myself as an example, spoke of what sacrifices I was prepared to make to protect myself and to avoid confrontation. 

I even spoke quietly about how far I was prepared to go in actively protecting myself as I saw threats to my well being closing in. I selected what I believed was the high ground, and I prepared myself to defend it. As I’ve seen written elsewhere, it’s not ‘the hill I’m willing to die on’, rather, ‘This is my hill, and I will die defending it if necessary.’ Were my attackers willing to stand behind their demands to take my hill with the same ferocity? I hoped not, but suspected that they were. 

Now it’s of no consequence. I can sit atop my hill, watching as the attackers seem to back away, leaving the hordes that they whipped to a frenzy adrift and confused. I think that they’ll come again, or maybe just re-animate the mob. I am sequestered, just the barest of me and mine left. But we make no difference. We started with allies. Over time, some slunk away into the mob out of a need to conform. Others found a justification sufficient to betray their own principles. A few even managed to confound their principles badly enough to righteously take the other side midway through the siege. Now, the remnant here is strong, but small, and still waiting.  What have we waited for?

It doesn’t matter, because we’ve waited too long. Sure, I sit atop this little peak unharmed. But on each peak below me, I’ve watched those I care about be “vaccinated” with an experimental treatment which has never before been safely used, to protect themselves from a virus against which no effective vaccine has ever been created that did not cause more harm than help. Through misplaced loyalties, cognitive dissonances, ignorance of risks and failures to self-educate, these people have gambled with their health and it seems to me that they have cast a weighted die. One after another, people I see are rolling natural ones. 

I justified my failure to act. They were adults, I’d tried to convince them, they were entitled to make their own choices. It seemed true. But I had more information. I had better information. I had the time and ability to discern the risk vs reward balance, and see that the scale was almost certain to cascade to the wrong side in the long run. I could have acted sooner. The costs in my personal relationships would almost certainly have been higher, as I alienated even more people, sooner. However, those people have now joined the hordes anyway, and I live with knowing that I could have done more to directly save them. I could have acted more loudly and publicly. Yes, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, but I have been prepared to meet the hammer since this began. I didn’t see that it was time yet, so I did not stand as tall as I might have. Now, people who might have seen and joined, or at least had more information to make sound decisions, have ‘voluntarily’ made irrevocable decisions to participate in grand medical experiments that I fear could be the end of my culture, and of my country, and possibly even of my civilization as I know it. I fear that the current litigation to force the release of phase one and two vaccine study results in only 5 years instead of 75 years is completely moot, because the harm done to the hundreds of millions ,if not billions, of people who  effectively participated in the phase three study will be obvious before either of those dates. 

That’s why it’s too late now. My adult children joined the hordes, for various reasons. I suffered at the thought, and quietly cried at the ramifications of their choices. I lost them, one by one. Then, they turned on their children. My innocent grandchildren were poisoned at their parents’ hand. How am I to rectify that? 

My children are now my enemies, but I didn’t see the betrayal coming, and I failed to stop them before they dragged my grandchildren into the quagmire of some uncertain future of weakened immune responses, overactive inflammatory responses, and heart or circulatory failures. How do I exact that cost from my own children?  Even if I could bring myself to do so, it’s too late, the harm is done. Now it’s just retribution, not valiant protection. There may be honour saved in retaliation, but only inasmuch as it was first lost in failure. 

I still have time to consider that failure. It’s not too late to plan for a future in which only the three or four people closest to me are left unharmed, or without the fear of future issues cropping up to decimate their families, and their futures. I’m using this time to decide if I want that future; if I can stand to live through the tragedy of seeing my grandchildren lose their parents, or develop devastating disabilities of their own; If I can suffer through a future of my children battling potential reproductive challenges or unknown effects on the next generations. These seem far fetched, but there are quiet reports of it happening already, and if they are proven out in time, I suspect that they shall be more widespread than most people’s nightmares. I’m considering the societal challenges of losing the productive contributions of even a very small percentage of our broad population, and I’m considering the demographic uptake of the vaccines, and how that skew might affect society’s productive drive in the future. I’ve defended myself, and those closest to me, but what future have I consigned us to? I have spent much of the recent weeks considering this question, and I don’t like the answer. I failed to defend my family’s future, our way of life, and our community. I am now an outcast, detached from my community at their behest. I may be welcomed back in the future, or I may be further vilified for having the foresight not to participate. Will some find a way to blame me for not screaming loudly enough to be heard through the cacophony of media they followed, and through the hands over their ears?  I suspect so. I find our culture to be drastically short of personal responsibility, and see many situations where the method of averting acceptance of responsibility includes claiming victimhood and attributing blame to others, often those who spoke out. 

It’s not too late for me take take responsibility for my own failures. 

I failed to imagine the influence the media campaigns could have on a scared populace. 

I failed to embrace the confrontations that could possibly have influenced the choices of those close to me, or at least forced them to put more effort into educating themselves. 

Most of all, I failed to stand up and call out those in power and those in the media who pushed forth an agenda of fear. 

I failed to counter their allegations with the available data. I failed to force them to defend their untenable arguments that the only logical response to the perceived threat was to participate in a medical trial of an unproven therapy with no historical success, and long records of toxicity.

Then I failed to confront the local business owners who mandated that their staff participate, at the cost of their livelihood, even when I had before me clear indictations that the risks of participating in the experimental trials far exceeded the perceived benefits, and did not provide the protection of others that would be claimed as justification. 

I failed to confront the administrator who decreed that one of us who thought the risks of the vaccine might outweigh the rewards could not comfort or support their dying family member until they had knuckled under and accepted their place in the experiment. 

Now the public data set grows with the progression of time, time that should have been dedicated to further study to prove safety, exposing an ever increasing degree of harm. The forced release of early trial data prove that these were at least indicated as possibilities prior to the onset of public participation, which I had seen evidence of more than a year ago. My failures are hammered home with each new report. Recent data sets suggest that total numbers for people having severe adverse effects, which include death and short or long term incapacitation, are as high as 3% of all recipients at the third shot/booster level.

It’s too late to save my children, and my grandchildren. They may never suffer ill effects, but even so they’ll likely spend their lives wondering when those consequences might pop up for them, or those they’re close to. 

It’s too late to save my way of life. Transferring even 1% of our under fifty workforce from the healthy, educated, productive category to disabled, or caregiving for disabled, will create a drag that is inconceivable to many even before the inclusion of the financial costs of required medical care.

It’s too late to claim that I took the honourable path. I did little to nothing to defend those who didn’t know better, or couldn’t speak up on their own. 

And so I continue to wait. Not out of fear to act, but lack of opportunity. Now I use this time to continue to lay away what protection and preparation I can for that remnant who remained with me. I have come to accept that I’ll almost certainly expand that umbrella back to include those who betrayed themselves, or us, rather than watch those I once valued suffer without our support. My grandchildren are innocent in this, and I cannot punish them for the actions of their parents. And mostly I wait, not very patiently, for the opportunity to regain my honour, knowing that when that time comes it will almost certainly cost me everything. Let there be fire in my eyes, and may the scoreboard tilt strongly in my favour.