{"id":4983,"date":"2020-12-10T00:22:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T22:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/?p=4983"},"modified":"2021-01-16T14:57:27","modified_gmt":"2021-01-16T12:57:27","slug":"captain-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/10\/captain-america\/","title":{"rendered":"“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” Warned Us About the Lockdown – but No One Listened"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Bored at home, I opened my laptop and decided to watch my favorite MCU movies. I watched four of them in a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lessons I have learned shook me to the core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Continuous Threat to Democracy<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My favorite hero used to be Iron Man. Now, it\u2019s Captain America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captain America is a republican\u200a\u2014\u200aa real one, like those from the 1940s. The type of person that puts personal responsibility, honor, and courage above all else and embraces democracy, freedom, and freedom of speech. As such, the enemies of Captain America are most of the time, political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captain America does not fight aliens or terrorists. That\u2019s Iron Man\u2019s job. He fights political organizations that want to take people\u2019s freedom away. Most of the time, they are dictatorial ideologies like fascism and communism (he ends up a lot in Eastern Europe) but not always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captain America fought the Nazis in the first film, then he fought Loki that wanted to take away Earth\u2019s freedom in the Avengers. He fought Hydra, the Nazi\u2019s science branch in the movie \u201cThe Winter Soldier\u201d, then he fought\u2026the US government when they tried to control his freedom to intervene in \u201cCivil War\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter who takes freedom away. Captain America will fight them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Story of the Winter\u00a0Soldier<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Winter Soldier takes place after Earth was invaded by a bunch of aliens in the Avengers. This event led Nick Fury, director of SHIELD, the organization that protects the planet, to request a defense program in threat analysis called Project Insight. This project consists of three flying ships consistently flying around the planet to surveil the population and eliminate potential threats. Nick Fury\u2019s explanation to the Captain went like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– The satellite can read a terrorist\u2019s DNA before he steps outside his spider whole. We are going to neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– I thought the punishment usually came after the crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– We can\u2019t afford to wait that long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Who is we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– After New York (the alien invasion), I convinced the World Security Council we needed a surge in threat analysis. For once, we are way ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– By holding a gun to everyone on earth and calling it protection\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– You know, I read some SSR files. You did some pretty nasty stuff too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Yeah. We compromised, sometimes in ways that made not us sleep so well, but we did it so people could be free. This isn\u2019t freedom. This is fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– SHIELD takes the world as it is, not as we\u2019d like it to be. This is way past time for you to get with that program, Captain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Don\u2019t hold your breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on, we find out that HYDRA created an algorithm that can analyze people\u2019s information online and predict their future behavior regarding HYDRA. HYDRA plans on using Project Insight to eliminate people that are against the organization instead of eliminating terrorists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the movie, I froze in my seat. I never thought I\u2019d live the day the government would take away my freedom \u201cto protect me\u201d, in a climate of fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lessons of the Winter\u00a0Soldier<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The movie portrays a world consumed by the fear to be attacked again. In order to ensure safety, governments don\u2019t hesitate to sacrifice everyone\u2019s freedom and privacy, \u201cto protect the people\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not difficult to guess where the screenwriters found inspiration. The metaphor is directly related to 9\/11. After the attacks on the WTC, the US government voted on a law that sacrificed privacy on the altar of safety\u200a\u2014\u200athe Patriot Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hooked on information and high on data, the US government started wanting and taking more of it, until all worldwide communications passed by the NSA\u2019s headquarter, as revealed by Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Winter Soldier\u201d only mirrors the reality of our world, governments\u2019 thirst for data, and obsession for security. Shaken by alien (instead of Islamist) terrorist attacks, everyone comes to be considered as a potential threat to others, and must therefore be put under surveillance, \u201cfor the safety of everyone\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the real world, this obsession for safety further migrated to the realm of ideas, where SJWs dictate which is deemed safe to discuss, and which must be cast out because \u201cdangerous\u201d and \u201cunsafe\u201d. As such, freedom of speech has never shrunk as rapidly in democratic societies since\u2026well, ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The virus was the last touch, the pinnacle, the cherry on top of the authoritarian cake. For the first time since WWII, democracies controlled their people\u2019s freedom to move and to dress, under the excuse of \u201csafety\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lockdown, as we were told, served to \u201cprotect\u201d the most vulnerable and the population against the propagation of a virus that doesn\u2019t kill nearly as much as, say, cigarettes, car accidents, or obesity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ignominy was pushed further with the introduction of the tracking apps that promised citizens to alert them if they came to be in contact with someone that was infected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And just like that\u2026The Winter Soldier wasn\u2019t fiction anymore. People got fined for not wearing masks. They were arrested if they did not stay at home. The climate of fear, installed by audience-hungry media pushed the weakest among us to voluntarily sign up for constant government surveillance in their pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To protect us, they said. 68 million got the virus. 1.5 million died from it, despite the lockdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protection is clearly effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bottom\u00a0Line<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Democracy is brittle, fragile, delicate, frail. Throughout history, dictators always promised something <\/em>in exchange for democracy. Some promised prosperity, others promised peace. Some even promised freedom and the worst ones, those that killed the most people, promised the end of poverty (communism).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say that none of what has been promised ever was delivered. This is the case with the COVID lockdown. We were promised safety and health. And yet, so many died. And more even died due to the fear to go to the hospital, due to suicide because of loneliness or mistreatment, and many other reasons we have yet to discover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Captain said, \u201cthis isn\u2019t freedom. This is fear\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will we ever get our freedom back?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In regard to history, it is highly unlikely. If we don\u2019t fight for it at least\u2026extremely unlikely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image by Vinson Tan ( \u694a \u7956 \u6b66 )<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bored at home, I opened my laptop and decided to watch my favorite MCU movies. I watched four of them… Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bornmillennials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/105.jpg?fit=1280%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}