If you think our current nanny state is there to look out for you and make sure you are safe, you've got a problem.  The actual message of our helicoptering elite is that we are not to be trusted; we are unreliable and discountable, and our "nannies" know better.  We're simply naïve children who must be led, watched over, and protected — from ourselves.  We must cede self-determination, and everything's gonna be okay.  We may not have anything anymore if we give up things like our self-respect, a way to earn a living, and our sovereign country, but it'll be worth it because they'll take care of us all.

There are many ways this warped relationship manifests.  All cancel culture would come under the umbrella that the nanny (in this case a combo of state, media, and tech oligarchy) knows best.  Our delicate eyes and ears can't be trusted to assess what we see and hear and come to the "correct" conclusions; they must do it for us, leading us by the nose ring, as it were.

Where we were once taught to say, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me," and to think for ourselves and defend our positions, we now are treated as a bunch of delicate blooms who must be shielded from damage by the mis-think of others — specifically, others who don't uphold the progressive ethos.  We must be shielded from our own bad thoughts (presumably "conservative" ones) and shielded from any opinion that's not congruent with the state groupthink.

Mask mandates, and many other COVID safeguards too, fit the definition.  The State knows better than you whether you need to protect others from your germs.

You aren't even trusted to know when you're sick.  You must have your temperature taken every time you enter a restaurant, or any office, just to be sure you're not (unbeknownst to yourself) running a fever.

You must mask — nay, double-mask — to protect those around you, even if you're healthy and have no virus to pass around.  You must remain masked, even if you've been fully vaccinated.

You must be vaccinated, with an experimental drug, because Nanny knows best — and so what if it kills a certain number of you?  It's better than the alternative of maybe getting COVID and having to be treated for it.

Once upon a time, we were a people with free will.  Once upon a time, we could run our own businesses if we followed basic rules, paid our taxes and our rent, and treated our employees fairly.  Once upon a time, we knew when we were sick, and we isolated ourselves so we didn't get others sick.  Once upon a time, we could evaluate life using logic taught to us by our parents, by ethical teachers, by people who didn't presuppose they had our best interest in mind whether we wanted them to or not.  Those days seem to have passed.

By ceding our free will to the nanny state, we tacitly acknowledge that bureaucrats know best and always have our best interests in mind, despite obvious evidence to the contrary.  That contrary evidence is routinely shoved under the rug, thanks to a complicit media.  Illogical logic rules the roost.

We are told to ignore any reminders that anarchists were, and still are, committing horrible violence around the country.  Antifa members get released from jail and melt back into the mass, without comment.  Yet the FBI hunts down every last person who happened to demonstrate in front of the Capitol, regardless of whether he participated in any violence.

A fence surrounds our congresspeople, keeping them safe from us, but nobody keeps us safe from people from foreign lands carrying COVID and other diseases who are pouring over our southern border and dispersing through the land.  We listen to the "great" news that a "COVID" relief bill has been passed, and the newsreaders never mention that only 9% of it has anything to do with COVID.  The rest is just pork for the Democrat-favored few.  We are asked to swallow whole all the nanny states dictums.  Never mind that they are mostly lies.

The nanny state's relationship with us is predicated on the theory that we are helpless, and Nanny will care for us.  The opposite is true.  First, the nanny state does not have our best interest at heart, and, given the chance, we can perfectly well care for ourselves.  Second, of late, the nanny state thinks half of us are bad actors and demands that we be seriously disciplined.

Image: Vintage photograph; public domain.