I Aim to Misbehave

This report is maybe 12 years old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried ’til River dug it up.

This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear ’cause  there’s a whole universe of folk who’re gonna know it, too. They’re gonna see it.

Somebody has to speak for these people.

Y‘all got on this boat for different reasons, but y’all come to the same place. So now I’m askin’ more of you than I have before. Maybe all.

As sure as I know anything, I know this: They will try again. Maybe on another world. Maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, 10, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people…better. And I do not hold to that.

So no more runnin’.

I aim to misbehave.

 – Mal Reynolds, Captain, Spaceboat Serenity

Mal made that speech after finding out that experiments were conducted by the Alliance on an unsuspecting population on the planet Miranda. He already knew they were doing horrifying things to individuals with special talents like River. But this was on a whole other level. An entire planet’s population was killed and the cannibalistic, inhuman Reavers were created because the Alliance government thought that it could make humans better.

Early on in the series, we learn what Reavers are, and we learn that Simon, River’s brother and rescuer, raised in the Core, believes that Reavers are a myth. After all, the Parliament of the Alliance has long said that. Even after he sees what the Alliance has done to his little sister, he still doesn’t want to give up all of what he knows to be “true”. Needless to say, Simon finds out otherwise.

At the core of the entire series of Firefly and the follow-on movie Serenity is the statement that governments are really not to be trusted. Which is an interesting twist knowing Joss Whedon’s political leanings are typical Hollywood leftist feminist-supporting womanizer.

This speech by Mal to his crew has always stuck with me. He points out several things in a few short, pithy sentences. First, the government buried the report of the catastrophic, murderous failure of Miranda and the reasoning that led up to it (trying to improve the human race – make them more passive). The experiment killed the majority of the population by making them so passive they did nothing and starved to death. Yet a small portion of the population reacted in the opposite manner. Those people became insanely violent, cannibalistic creatures. In all ways, human life on Miranda was destroyed by its own government. All government action, was justified by a “for the greater good” line of reasoning. Sound familiar?

Yes, yes. Firefly is fiction. But fiction is a reflection of what is, what can be, what could be, and for some, what should be. Firefly and Serenity would not have resonated so strongly with audiences had they not hit on something that those audiences related to. I harbor the suspicion that the show was cancelled because somebody in the Hollywood powers-that-be recognized that a popular TV series extolling the virtues of misbehaving against an ever more controlling government would not be a “good thing.”

On the surface Mal’s crew of misfits and adventurers are just some folks trying to exist below the radar. I mean, after all, they are doing some shady things to make money. But why are they engaging in semi-legal and illegal activities, and always avoiding encounters with Alliance personnel? As we learn, the Alliance government is authoritarian at best, and totalitarian at worst. Life is easier on the edges of civilization, as it is for anyone living under an even mildly repressive government.

Mal’s speech has been running through my head a lot lately. Particularly, the lines “I don’t hold with that” and “I aim to misbehave.” We are living in a world where the US government thinks it’s perfectly fine to force citizens to get vaccinated. Where petty bureaucrats are telling citizens what they can and cannot do in direct contradiction to the Constitution. Seriously – Fauci said that vaccinated kids can go trick-or-treating. The man wants control and he’s got the media and current “presidential” administration supporting him and cheering him on.

Well, like Mal, I don’t hold with that. Persuade, cajole, give prizes for, but do not mandate a vaccine that has no long-term studies, has been rushed to market, and has shown to have a statistically significant number of various adverse effects. Quit telling me which risks I am allowed and not allowed to take. Most especially, requiring a vaccine in order to retain employment, when the virus itself has been shown to have a survivability rate of about 98% for all age groups, is irresponsible, reckless, and authoritarian. The government has no right to tell me how to live my life, nor does it have a right to criminalize ordinary behavior.

Since March 2020, all government (please note the emphasis) response to the WuFlu has amounted to attempts to exert greater control over American citizens. Those attempts at control are succeeding in Australia, New Zealand, and across Europe. We need to stop runnin’ and push back hard against those attempts here in the U.S. If this is not stopped here, now, and by us, it will not stop.

Ask yourself what kind of a world you want your children and grandchildren to inherit. If we keep going the way we are now, they will wind up in the most dystopian nightmare of a totalitarian world you can imagine. And it will be your fault for insisting that the U.S. government is only looking out for your best interests. It. Is. Not. It never has and it never will. Individuals within governing bodies, maybe. But a large, faceless bureaucracy? A political party bent on getting and maintaining an all-powerful position? Not in any way, shape or form.

We must stop this control grab here and now. And we and our descendants must remain alert and vigilant. Because Mal was right about another thing…in a year, or ten, they will swing back around to the belief that they are smarter, better, and more moral than the rest of us, and they will once again try to exert more control.

Stop running and start misbehaving.

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