Vaccine passport? A hard 'no' from one Wandering Jew

by George GrosmanI assume we all have a red line. The vax pass is mine. It's my hill to die on. My barricade. Czech friends tell me: "Get yourself vaccinated so you can visit." Are you crazy? Have Starbucks coffee and McDonalds burgers clouded your mind? 40 years of Communism forgotten?Does your new-found freedom mean nothing to you? And they say: "That's your American hysteria talking. You must be a Trump voter." (Yes, even Czech friends are TDS infected.) "It's just a shot, you get your passport and we can go down a few beers in cozy Prague taverns."And I say: "The fact that they've stolen your freedom and now they're selling it back to you piecemeal (until the next scary variant comes along) doesn't alarm you?" And they say: "No, we're not alarmed. We're in our late 60's now, not about to march to change the world.""Aha!" I say. "I understand. What I'm now hearing from you is what you used to tell me in the 80's - when the Comrades still ruled from the castle - was the most despicable quality in your fellow Czechs: Indifference."As long as the beer flowed and mushrooms sprouted in the woods, who cares about the stupid Commies? You HATED that. You backed Vaclav Havel when he lead the Velvet Revolution that restored your freedom. But now...'it's just a shot' and we can get on with our life, travel to Vienna, and forget about COVID."The trouble, my friends, is that COVID (meaning the government's handling of the crisis) does not forget about you! Old Comrade Trotsky was correct: "You may not want war - but war wants you." You give your finger for a beer, your hand for a promotion, and your arm for the new, emboldened apparatchiks to know what you had for dinner, who your friends are, who you're meeting, and before you know it, it'll be like 1989 never happened.Well, you may not want to learn the lesson - but I have. It's no border guard's business to stick his nose into my vaccination status.It pains me that I can't travel - not even to Canada to visit my daughters and grandkids - but sometimes you must put your foot down and not let the gaping maw of the medical fascism swallow you. Vax pass? It's a HARD NO from this Wandering Jew.[embed]https://twitter.com/MordechaiSones/status/1404088729766182916?s=20[/embed][embed]https://twitter.com/george_jazzcat/status/1403911341015027715?s=20[/embed]George Grosman is a jazz musician and writer living in Florida.