Please consult social media should you experience prickliness.
In case of emergency consult your local newspaper and hope your bitching becomes breaking news.
Never mind freedom of speech, which is proving costly these days, I want to talk about freedom of choice — another right that is slowly being sucked from us by vampires who insist we validate and vote for their way of thinking.
Slowly but surely many have become nameless, faceless conformers, too exhausted by PC and bureaucratic bullsh*t to fight back. Or if we do, deemed "a hater" and hastily silenced. Can you click "like" on a hater?
We've become so sensitive that we're looking for a reason to take offence; we're accentuating the negative, rather than the positive.
It's one thing to expect a modicum of tolerance and civility from your fellow human being, but it's quite another to demand they conform to your belief system.
Yet this is what we are being asked to do — every week there seems to be a new cause that demands our attention and compliance, lest we are labelled a bigot, racist, sexist, homophobe (the ever-growing list is already longer than the Great Wall of China).
NA no longer means not applicable, it stands for non-acceptor, a future hate crime no doubt.
We are constantly being asked to surrender or adjust our beliefs and opinions to appease those who would be offended if we required the same consideration from them.
I can think of several glaring examples but the mere whisper of them would be perceived as "hate speech", rendering freedom of speech as little more than a non-racist joke.
Hate speech, hate crimes, dubious PC legislation surrounding religion imposed upon us whether we like it or not — because that's democracy for you.
Incidentally, if your nanny goat has gone missing, it's probably fallen asleep in the Beehive. Or it has made its escape on the $100,000 flight to Nauru with our prime minister, whose motherhood would never interfere with her job.
Perhaps our nanny state needs better and cheaper childcare; and how lovely to have the freedom of choice that you don't allow others.
Come on social justice fighters, stop bagging Trump for every little thing that goes wrong in the world, including handshakes, and start focusing on what's right in front of you.
Too blind, too scared, too busy booking tickets to emigrate ... which is it?
We're conforming too easily. No one person's cause or beliefs should come at the expense of our own. But under the guise of "acceptable force" we eventually succumb to the pressure.
If we carry on eagerly adopting every new social cause, it won't be long before a fart is deemed a hate crime against the environment.
We're always telling others to be tolerant, accepting, non-judgmental and to not criticise those who hold beliefs that differ from our own, yet we judge, label and criticise them if their views don't align with ours.
We've become so blinded by own bandwagons that we can't or don't want to see anybody else's. The metaphorical road toll will be worse than the literal one — personally, I'm predicting carnage.
Email Kate at investik8@gmail.com
