The police involved in this, following orders is no excuse. Those issuing the orders, how long before you are responsible for someones death. Step by step you are getting closer to WW11 Germany.

I wonder if my progressive Australian friends are still proud of how much more enlightened they were than the USA. I suspect most still feel they are on the right track and the USA is full of ignorant red necks.

The most difficult discussion I have had with them is over guns. If you accept their premise that in the modern world armed citizens cannot overthrow a tyrannical government that doesn't end the conversation. My question for them is if you can't trust your citizens with guns where does the slippery slope end. By Australian logic you certainly can trust them to make their own healthcare decisions. Assume that you can't trust them with health care decisions, can you trust them to drive an automobile, can you trust them to raise children, can you trust them to vote?

There is no doubt that 20 percent of the population is intellectually or emotionally unable to care for themselves. The question is based on the performance of the Biden Administration how many people in government are competent to manage the affairs of state. Would anyone seriously allow AOC to make decisions for them. 50 years of socialism hasn't solved the problem of minority underperformance scholastically or economically, nor has it solved violence and drug abuse. Programs such as Head Start have failed continuously for decades. Medicare and social security are on the verge of collapse and every country with a single payer healthcare system was proven by Covid to be understaffed, under equipped, and incompetent.

One of the best examples of government incompetence has been the pandemic. It does not take a lot of smarts to understand you can't stop a Corona Virus with vaccines. If you could we would have cured the common cold and a pharmaceutical company would have made billions. I'm not against the vaccines. They really helped keep health care system from failing like they did in Italy. They just are not the solution. Trump was right again. Quickly roll out vaccines and take the risk they are not safe and use the time it buys you to work on therapy. The idiots in the globalist governments put all their eggs in the vaccine basket knowing that vaccines would likely not cure a Corona Virus pandemic. Now they are doubling down on continuous vaccinations while the inventor of mRNA technology tells them it will encourage mutated strains because the vaccines were never meant to be "sterilizing". They are definitely not following the science but rather a political agenda.

Governments are by definition force. If you apply force you will get an equal but opposite reaction or you will break something. In this case they have broken economies, healthcare systems, trust, representative government, and the agency and dignity people need to find meaning.

looks like oppressive and socialist governance is not exclusive to 3rd world banana republic nations after all - huh. go figure.
A given populace does not have to be ignorant, uneducated...to find itself in the living hell of despotic governance. I mean look at what's going on now in Australia and New Zealand. A generally educated, sophisticated, productive population is systematically being cowed into submission to despotic rule...and to think that after all, in the end we know that they invited this - at the ballot box and in their militant activism demanding more gov't control over their lives in the name of service to fairness, equality and safety. No, I humbly submit that the wounds suffered upon the populations of "Western Nations" are self inflicted and I resent being dragged into that kind of existence against my own will.