.....not Permitted....

A modern tyranny of virtue... IMO.
All sort of things lately are labelled NOT PERMITTED.

•  Do Not Walk on Grass
•  No Smoking within.. ft of....
•  No Dumping of  Trash
•  No Right Turn on Red
•  No Loitering
•  No Trespassing
•  Click it or Ticket
•  Helmet required
•  No more Sugary Soft Drinks
•  Coffee is not good for you /  then - Coffee is good for you
•  Wine is bad for you  /  Wine IS good for you
•  Eggs are bad  / Eggs are good
•  Olive Oil is good  / recently - Olive is NOT so  good after all
•  Hunting not permitted
•  No touching
•  No this 
•  No that...
•  and on and on it goes.

The List of DO NOTs is becoming endless and added to almost daily.
And what's worse, it is all on YouTube, Media etc  going 'viral'.

Privacy as it was once known and presumably much appreciated is NO longer!
And that NO was surely unintended, or was it?
How much easier to be a bully -ahem - wise guardian - nowadays, when one can be spied upon everywhere, even inside one's own home. No longer the safe castle of privacy it one was.

Count your this or that...
Cash register receipts (received one just recently at the VA snack shop) list the amount of calories, fat, salt, carbs and sugar which came with my egg, strip of bacon and coffee (black).
Just as if I had ordered them up that way :-D!
Ordered: 1 egg poached, 1 strip of bacon-fried, yes, but..., 1 cup of black Coffee
...And got a detailed list of the above cited ingredients!

If I wanted them or not.. there they were in black on white on that wide cash register receipt.
Of course, getting that information after you paid for the stuff is, literally, for the birds.
To toss it away after spending the $$? Wouldn't you?
Although it showed just how bad it is :-) for you to eat all those bad things!
Didn't you all realize that eggs are already salty? Without sprinkling those white crystals on it?

We all know VIRTUE for what it historically has meant:
Wisdom, Justice, Bravery, Moderation.
Plus in these industrial times:
Cleanliness, Timeliness, Diligence.
And further all those created by various religions or fanaticisms -
usually just as the leader of one wants it to be, or needs it to be, to control his/her adherents.

One thing seems to have stayed essentially the same, the (often self appointed) guardians of whichever 'virtues en vogue' do become the 'bullies of the moment'.

Yes, bullies

That horrible 'new' word so frequently in the NEWS!
As if bullies had never been around before now.

Bullies: because they think they are the ONLY ones 'who know what's good for the masses'.
Nonconformists need not apply - better yet they ought to emigrate to ...the moon? where for now anyway, it  may be still possible to do without the DON'Ts.
Self determination be damned.

The masses are just tooo.... whatever, to let them decide for themselves. They so need to be protected from themselves, by the wise "bully" of the flavor of the month!

Of course, they may have had, and have, different titles:
Leader, Sendai, Emperor, Professor, Reverend, Monsignor, Imam, Master, Teacher, Big Brother, Big Sister, Pop. Mom..... and so forth.

But in the end they were, are, and always will be bullies!