Vaccine passports. What will they think of next?
Perhaps “Age Passports” that you have to show before you buy alcohol or go into a movie that’s been rated naughty by the conservative MPAA.
Maybe “Driving Passports” that you have to get in order to drive a car — with extra qualifiers on it for driving a big rig or a bus.
Or even “Travel Passports” which is like a passport that you have to show to get in and out of countries.
My point is that conservatives only care about invasive bureaucracy when they think it somehow hurts them relative to their perceived enemies. Nothing illustrates this more than the authoritarian nightmare that is the modern workplace. Conservatives helped create this horror because they thought they owned all the workplaces, and so there was no danger to them if workplaces were authoritarian. They actively worked against unions to make sure that labor had as little power as possible.
Workplaces are starting to require proof of vaccination against COVID-19, which sounds strangely similar to a “vaccine passport” except that the only thing it lets you enter is your job, so you are free to infect other people with your various diseases in other places. Much like the social media brouhaha over free speech that started during the Trump era, conservatives have discovered that capitalists are much more interested in maximizing profit than the personal freedom (to harm others) of conservatives.
Here in Columbia, the overlords of MU Health Care have announced that everyone who works in the medical sciences complex will have to be vaccinated by October 1. I’m very excited to see how conservatives will deal with this. Will they sue? Will they quit? Will they forge vaccine documentation? Or will they just go get vaccinated like they should have way back in April? And yes, I guess they could go try to make their own medical school and hospital based on conservative principles, like not having insurance, excluding gay people, the healing power of prayer, ignoring science-based medicine, and faking it until you make it, which I guess means doctors that haven’t been to medical school. Oh, but look — they’re allowing for a religious exemption.