Three ‘What Ifs’ We’re Not Supposed to Ask

Counterfactuals, like “conspiracy theories,” are frowned upon by those who look guilty when they are posed.  Here are three to chew on during the holidays:

(1) What if it turns out that the gene therapies marketed as “vaccines” by pharmaceutical companies end up causing more harm than good?  What if it becomes obvious that more children die from government-ordered injections than would have ever succumbed to the virus itself?  What if the long-term effects of any of these experimental treatments condemn the “vaccinated” to suffer from lifetime health complications created by compromised immune systems, making them more vulnerable to the very diseases the “vaccines” were mandated to prevent?

If these counterfactuals become proven reality down the road, will it then become the duty of the non-“vaccinated” to round up the “vaccinated” for their own protection?  Should great concentration camps the size of cities be constructed to quarantine the immuno-compromised?  Should employers lay off “vaccinated” workers for their own good?

Should children who were forcibly injected by their schools be tracked for the rest of their lives through digital passports implanted under their skin in order to ensure they remain six feet away from others at all times?  Should the “vaccinated” be forced to wear masks and other symbols so that the un-“vaccinated” know to keep their distance from the unhealthy?

Will it become necessary for the un-“vaccinated” to create laws mandating punishments for the “vaccinated” when they don’t comply?  Will the un-“vaccinated” be forced to confiscate the money, property, and possessions of any “vaccinated” who stubbornly refuse to listen to reason?  Will the un-“vaccinated” mock their fellow citizens’ staunch refusals to submit to their imprisonment by condescendingly informing them that they are “science deniers” deserving of their fate?

(2) What if it had been President Bush’s CIA and FBI that had spied on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign because of his personal ties to known communists and subversives?  What if the FBI had repeatedly filed false affidavits with the national security FISA Court alleging that Obama was an agent of a foreign power intent on subverting America’s founding traditions?

What if, instead of fessing up to its illicit spying on his presidential campaign once he was nonetheless elected, the former directors of both the FBI and CIA, along with numerous other high-ranking individuals from the Intelligence Community, had spent the next three years pushing disinformation on cable news shows while insisting, without evidence, that the American president was a Manchurian stooge and national security threat?

What if it were discovered later that John McCain’s campaign had used the cutouts of law firms and private intelligence agencies to launder fraudulent information about Obama to the FBI in order to set off an explosive criminal investigation that would rock the presidential race just before the 2008 general election?

After years of punitive witch hunts targeting Obama, thousands of articles and television reports produced by partisan reporters peddling unverified propaganda, and repeated attempts by Congress to push for his impeachment and removal from office, would everything have just gone back to normal once the reality of the underhanded conspiracy against him was revealed?

Would his voters have been expected just to chalk it up to “one of the dirtiest tricks in politics” and pretend an organized plot by the Intelligence Community and a political party to frame an American leader as a foreign spy is no big deal?  Would they have not seen the outrageous set of events as nothing short of a “high-tech lynching”?

Could the increased tensions between America and her adversaries caused by conspirators’ fraudulent allegations that a foreign power had stolen an American election have been excused and dismissed without punishing the guilty for recklessly antagonizing nuclear power nation-states for no other reason than partisan political gain?  Would Obama’s supporters have been ridiculed for calling for heads to roll?

(3) What if, instead of Black Lives Matter and Antifa burning down cities these last few years in response to perceived “injustices,” Republican voters had continuously shown up in the streets to seek vengeance for court decisions or police actions they did not like?  What if they had responded to the unconstitutional imposition of Obamacare or the federal government’s refusal to enforce immigration law or the FBI’s decision to classify conservatives as “domestic extremists” by taking over highways, looting stores, and threatening innocent bystanders?

Would mayors and governors have sat back and said stoically, “Give them some space to destroy“?  Would the director of the FBI have testified that all these “mostly peaceful protests” organized by conservatives were really about some abstract idea of freedom, rather than anything that should be targeted by law enforcement?  Would pro-liberty Tea Partiers have been featured on the front pages of fashion mags and had their political slogans emblazoned on chic clothing lines just as BLM’s are regularly today?

If Democrats had spent years watching Republicans commit violent crimes in the streets while police forces sat back and watched (per orders from their commanders and civilian political leaders), and newspapers and news shows celebrated their actions as part of the storied fight for civil rights, would Republicans have then been surprised when Democrats decided to follow in their footsteps by showing up en masse at the U.S. Capitol to protest what they saw as a fraudulent presidential election that should not be certified by Congress?

Wouldn’t Democrats have found it inexplicable if they were immediately labeled as “insurrectionists” and “traitors,” when their Republican opponents had been treated as heroes for engaging in destructive civil disobedience for years?  Wouldn’t they have felt betrayed by the federal government for arresting and punishing them stringently for doing nothing more than what Republicans had been doing successfully across the country with few, if any, repercussions?

Had a white Capitol Police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black Lives Matter protester on January 6, instead of a black officer having shot an unarmed white Ashli Babbitt for protesting the numerous irregularities surrounding the 2020 election, would the officer have been treated as a hero and celebrated by corporate news?

Would Congress and the White House have applauded law enforcement’s killing of an unarmed black woman waving an American flag?  Would a congressional committee have been formed to torment the families of those killed and those imprisoned to hype the incident as somehow far worse than the U.S. Civil War that took nearly a million lives?  Would courts have gone out of their way to punish black Americans for trespassing in the “people’s house” because judges believed that it was important to intimidate them into compliance?

Would military generals have written editorials encouraging the Pentagon to purge all Black Lives Matter–supporters from the armed forces because they represented an inherent threat to the national security of the United States?  Would the FBI have called Black Lives Matter members the single greatest threat to the country?

Some people despise “what if” hypotheticals.  What if those people are the same ones who can’t face the overwhelming evidence for their own hypocrisy?

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.