When does protection become control?

As society cavorts merrily towards permanent dystopian global enslavement, I’d like to ask the question: when does protection become control?

‘Instantly’ to some extent. You cannot protect someone or something without exerting at least some control over it. The more you protect, the more you control. You can, however, control something or someone without protecting it.

There was a lady on a panel on a political programme on TV recently who said, ‘We all want to protect the vulnerable in society. I think we can all agree on that.’

Immediate red flag is that nobody anywhere can claim to speak for everybody. Even dictators don’t do that. They might cause a bit of a ‘trumpus’ by saying ‘I think this is right so I’m going to do it’ and they may be right or wrong but they never pretend that everyone agrees with them.

So do we really all want to protect the vulnerable in society? The knee-jerk answer is ‘the majority do’. But as with Brexit or GST or whatever, the devil lies in how you do it. There’s not much point in protecting X number of vulnerable people if in so doing you create 10x more vulnerable people. What I see happening or potentially happening is that the nanny state spends so much money in its purported quest to protect a handful, it puts ten handsful below the poverty line: thus making them vulnerable too and thereby deserving of their protection/control. Or worse, takes away their freedoms and fails to uphold their birthrights. Or invests in AI because it’s in protectionist interests even though it takes away jobs.

Then there is the issue of the definition of ‘vulnerable’. Some people seem to have a very peculiar idea as to why they or others are vulnerable and deserving of state protection/control. And we have seen already with money laundering, terrorism, racism, anti-semitism, misogyny perhaps – the legal definitions widen.

I think we’re going to have, and may already have, people seeking ways to be declared vulnerable, and if not of their own free will, being psyched into doing so. Phrases like ‘reach out’, ‘stay safe’ and even ‘embrace change’ annoy me. As does all this stuff about mental frailty. If I want protection I’ll ask for it. It’s natural to be sad, depressed or angry from time to time. Sick too. Yet increasingly and thanks in no small measure to the globalist media, such states of mind or body seem to be being regarded as worthy of state or medical intervention.

Worse still we’ve got bureaucrats earning fortunes in government think tanks tasked with thinking up ways to declare this group or that group most at risk from this or that and calling for more state power or expenditure as a result. And Guernsey is prone to proposing measures ‘drawn from England and Wales’.

I choose not to be 100% risk averse but I’d rather be unprotected and free than controlled by the Guernsey States never mind that lot across the Channel. As the Bon Jovi song goes, ‘It’s my life, it’s now or never, I ain’t gonna live for ever.’

Matt Waterman
St Peter Port