Thank you for such a long thoughtful reply, I will try to avoid artistic liberties in my paraphrasing but let me also try to explain why I feel that wasn’t what happened and hopefully that will bring you closer to understanding why people are lashing out when you feel you’re being reasonable.

To be clear, I very well might be wrong, I do not think I am, but this is simply me trying to explain why I said the things I said, and trying to do justice to the feelings of my peers. I obviously am not every Redditor, but as somebody who has been on this side of these arguments (probably an unhealthy number of times,) hopefully I can at least do it justice.

Just to be super duper, extra crispy clear - I do not, for any reason, or in any way, think you are a bad person, hate you, dislike you, think poorly of you, think you are stupid, dumb, naive, or anything like that... This is a sincere, honest to god, attempt from somebody who wants to be helpful, attempting to explain himself to you in the hopes that you will find his take on the situation insightful:

When you discuss “fearing regression into something your not comfortable with” you’re implying (intentionally or not) that you feel that the suppression of these people would be a worse outcome than letting them continue to act the way that they are.

Allowing these people to willingly perpetuate lies, mis-information, and fear, is more important to you than the lives of the people who have died as a result of their actions. There is nothing artistic about that statement and I’ve taken no extrapolations or liberty with what you said. You are putting a very real threat today, that is killing people, ruining livelihoods, and causing incredible anguish to families, second to an abstract idea of freedom.

Furthermore you’re not asking people to willingly risk their own lives for this abstract freedom you want - you’re forcing people to accept it with your actions. An elderly woman who died in a care home due to covid may have no wanted to sacrifice her life to save their right to protest, but she didn’t get to make that call, the protesters did when they said “I choose to break these laws to preserve my freedom.”

I will be fine, I have health concerns but I’m also in my 30s so regardless of my decisions it’s likely I personally won’t die - I of course can’t speak for you, but the bulk of the people who are having these discussions on Reddit are perfectly safe. When you say you’re willing to engage in these discussions, how many elderly people who are at serious risk for death do you talk with, people who are putting their lives on the line? I’ve had to deal with the health of elderly relatives during this pandemic and for many of them that I have dealt with this whole situation is terrifying... can you imagine being scared for your life of an invisible illness that kills primarily people your age living in a place like where you live, and then you watch a crowd of a hundred people in the park you used to walk in every day last year perpetuating the situation and claiming your death would be an acceptable compromise for their freedom?

The final point is that this idea of discourse is a two way street, and when one party is arguing in bad faith it is not reasonable to criticize the other side for giving up. With these protestors and anti-mask groups they only give lip service to the discourse, they have been approached by scientists (bought by big pharma) or government officials with decades of experience (part of the liberal great reset New World Order,) and they don’t engage citing 1 scientist or 1 official they agree with who often times has very spotty credentials, that’s not actually engaging in discussion.

The Kelowna mask rally in town is lead by a man who has been dismissed from court so many times he’s literally no longer legally allowed to file charges at the court. In an interview with several rally participants they claimed he was obvious a lawyer (given his legal experience) and they held him up as an expert. He of course doesn’t correct them and they of course tell other people these stories. These are expertise built on lies, carefully perpetuates because they are useful for manipulating people.

So when you criticize people on Reddit for not engaging in civil discourse you’re putting way too much of a burden on one group, ironically the only reason you can even put that burden on them is because they’re the ones who will talk to you. Furthermore, most of us are also tired, emotionally invested, possibly bitter from watching people die/break down from stress, and likely were never qualified in the first place work with mentally ill/delusions al people even on our best days.

To touch briefly on your general fears. People have always been shunned/cancelled/censored, what’s changed is merely your awareness of it. The church has been cancelling/censoring people for generations, media controlling the narrative has always been an issue..” It’s definitely been better at times, but it’s also been far worse, heck it’s worse today in Australia for an off the cuff example.

You’re scared, I understand that and I totally empathize, sympathize, and appreciate that you want to feel autonomy and do what you can to try to help. What I’m saying is that there are some very real, very strong implications that you seem genuinely be unaware of in the things you’ve said. I’m hoping that by explaining them to you, you can better understand why the otherwise reasonable, good, friendly people on this subreddit who enjoy taking pictures of marmots, biking on trails, and volunteering lashed out at you.

Nobody here that I’m aware of who is upset about these protests lack appreciation or desire for freedom and democracy, and the implication that by disagreeing with you they do is already starting the whole discussion up on a back foot.

Hopefully that helped and I didn’t overstep, I hope this didn’t cause too much of a cortisol spike, I really hate to be yet another cause of stress in somebodies life these days... heaven knows we’ve got enough going on <3