Unmask Yourself - The World Needs You
An Allegory About an Allegory
I have rarely worn a mask in the past two years. I know that admission will make some people very angry and I’m prepared for that but I hope those who find that confession distasteful will read on.
I live in Oregon and recently the county that I live in re-imposed a mask “mandate” that I haven’t followed because, not only is it not an actual mandate with force of law, the science that I’ve read on the matter has concluded that there isn’t much evidence that masks are effective in preventing respiratory diseases from spreading to others. Well, that and the fact I haven’t gone out while sick. I wouldn’t do that.
After the most recent “mandate” was announced, I went shopping, maskless, in a local grocery store. When I arrived at the register, the woman checking me out (not that kind of checking out you freaks) had the sparkliest shining eyes surrounded by smile lines I’ve encountered this year and said, “I am so happy to see your face.”
We had a bit of a discussion and I found that our views on masking were in almost perfect agreement. “If I wouldn’t get fired, I’d rip this mask off right now,” she confided under her cloth-obstructed breath. “I hate it. I get headaches, it gives me a rash, and it’s useless.”
And it got me to thinking about how all of us have helped to oppress our neighbors by following, well-intentioned or not, so called mandates, issued by politicians who claim that our subservience is required to save the world. And, they argue, our compliance can be tied to Christian charity and other such grand ideals. By being compliant, we’re showing love to our neighbors and protecting them from a deadly pandemic. Refusal is proof that we’re not the sort of human beings who deserve to live. We’re murderers whose lot is ostracization and maybe even death.
Argue a different perspective, based on science or not, and you’ll probably be asked to do penance. Either you’ll be locked in social media jail, or tormented by a crowd of shrieking monkey-like entities who have been programmed to attack any opinion foreign to them, meaning, an opinion not cultivated by the government and its storytellers.
Abhorrence to contrary thought is not new to humans. Especially those who consider themselves “enlightened.” As a person who reads the bible often, I point out when given the opportunity, that the vast majority of prophets in that book were killed for speaking the truth to the societies they lived in, societies filled with people who prided themselves on being God’s chosen, obedient to the God they worshiped. When prophets spoke publicly to them saying, “Not. So. Much.,” they usually reacted by stoning them to death. “That’ll. Teach. You.”
It’s tempting to say, ironically, that we live in interesting times and that what we see going on around us is proof that the world has gone mad. People are afraid for a myriad of reasons but the most disheartening is fear of being persecuted for holding and speaking an alternative view.
Parents can witness forced mask compliance in school-aged children, and see that those who are asked to make children from toddlers to teenagers comply, are unwittingly abusing the same children they are entrusted to protect and teach. In some cases it’s the parents themselves doing this. It wouldn’t be fair to say that the majority of these people intend to abuse children. Most are probably genuine and think they are helping to eradicate a pandemic. Yet they are acting out of fear and if we who don’t agree with this don’t treat them with compassion, we’re part of the problem.
The most misused tactic to convince people that they’re participating in a program developed to abuse all of us is to quote science. Scientific papers and consensus can be used on both sides of any argument and this never seems to convince anyone that what they’ve already decided, long before any of the contrary science might have been uncovered, is error.
My thinking on this mask thing now moves into the allegory of masks.
It has become apparent watching the government, mandate, remove mandates, and then return to them again, that none of this has managed to slow the spread of Covid-19. But often the language used to justify mandates telegraph the real intentions of those proclaiming them.
They want us distanced, silent and distrustful of one another. They’re intentionally, literally, dividing us, even if the division is not generated by stirring up arguments, but instead by commands which keep us apart from one another. Distanced, masked people cannot truly gauge the attitudes of those around them. According to the ruling class, not only could the foreign person be politically opposed to your views, you could die by talking to them.
In certain circles, this would be called an “unmasking.”
That these anti-social remedies cause depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts (and actions) is not even in question. I’m going to spare you the data on this because this screed isn’t about that. It wouldn’t convince you that this is the case. But please do tap into your common sense.
The best way to help a person who is convinced they are alone, is to smile and show some kindness to them. You can’t do that effectively wearing a mask, figuratively or literally.
I have seen more cries for help on Twitter from lonely, depressed people in 2021 than I have in the entire time I’ve used the platform. Yet the remedy to this, real social interaction, is exactly not the advice that our trusted experts, who once told us this was effective, would tell us now.
Stay indoors, don’t trust anyone, cover your face so nobody can guess your motives or character, hiss and scream at anyone who doesn’t comply. Want interaction? Get on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram (where social cues are nearly impossible to convey) and stick to the approved narrative. You’re doing God’s work.
During America’s revolutionary war, the population might have been as divided on the question of secession as we are now on the question of health and safety. And one man, Thomas Paine, changed all of that with a little pamphlet he wrote called Common Sense.
Common Sense became the most popular writing in the colonies, just behind the Bible. And many historians argue that it was the most important thing published during that period. Within a short time of its publication, a majority of the population became favorable to revolution. This because one person dared to stand up and preach what many of them were already thinking - yet were afraid to say lest British loyalists and spies outed them for treason.
PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor. A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. - Thomas Paine
People who read Common Sense realized that they were not alone because one man had the audacity to put what many of them were secretly thinking to paper.
But if you say you can still pass the violations [of the British] over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have? But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant.
Paine didn’t mince words. The rest is history. But aren’t his words eerily apropos right this minute?
In my lifetime, I witnessed something similar to the effect that Common Sense had in the colonies. Something that so excited and moved me I felt as if my beliefs had a home. And why did I previously feel so alone? Because the thoughts I had were called ‘crazy,’ ‘dangerous,’ and ‘naive.’ I felt alone because people in my close or outer circle dared not utter thoughts like mine in public or entertain mine.
A danger to your sanity is thinking that those calling you crazy are right when common sense tells you they’re speaking from fear. Fear of change, fear of being called names, fear of being cast out. Would you also succumb to that same fear?
The late, great Alan Stang wrote about Ron Paul’s very first Republican primary debate performance back in 2007:
Then, suddenly, without warning, there was an Incredible Hulk transformation. Godzilla was onstage, biting off heads, tearing off limbs and chewing on the bones. Who was he? Where had he come from? Who let him in? The reptilian media scumbags couldn’t very well drag him off the dais. The cameras were live. They had to sit there and listen while Dr. Ron assured them that his first official act as President would be to dismantle the IRS.
And across the country, from the west bank of the Hudson to the California line, a roar erupted, as millions of astounded Americans who pay the taxes, fight the wars and go to work (unless their jobs have been deported), realized that Dr. Ron was saying in plain English what they believe in private. Most of the other candidates spoke boilerplate. They saw they were not alone and not crazy. "Imagine! A candidate for President who thinks like me."
Stang captured exactly what happened. Paul’s first debate performance was like the spark to a wildfire, exactly as Common Sense was to the American revolution. The country soon exploded in Ron Paul mania.
Many of the Ron Paul videos that were produced after that debate have been shoved down the memory hole because they were put to music produced by major recording artists. If you were around then, you remember that a large number of these had millions of views. If you search YouTube today, you won’t find many that survived. At least one of the most popular from that time does still survive.
The point?
It just takes one person to speak what others are afraid to speak, to set a fire that can’t be extinguished.
Lost in our discussions about pandemics is any sense of proportion. What danger dwarfs that of any pathogen we can name in recent historical memory?
Totalitarianism.
In the 20th century, the worst pandemic recorded was Spanish flu, estimated to have killed 50 to 100 million people world wide. Its survival rate, based on estimates of 500 million infections, was about 85-87%. Yet totalitarianism in China and Russia alone killed, by many estimates, 100 million and this communicable disease produces no herd immunity. Instead it thrives on herd mentality.
Totalitarianism seems to be catching on again. In the US we have a diseased justice system that can target anyone for any reason, guilty or not. This is what happens when your government writes so many laws that there’s not enough paper to print them on. Our governments can lock away people for years pre-trial. The notion of a speedy trial has been utterly erased from our minds and we have accepted this travesty in the name of safety and security. Friend, this devotion to safety in sacrifice of personal liberty may soon come home to roost in your own life and probably already has. With 80 million people returned from prison into our society, and 2 million right now locked away, you likely live next door to, or are related to, a formerly or currently incarcerated person, a significant number of which may be innocent.
Furthermore, we now live in a society where speaking up about some of these prosecutions causes both sides of the political spectrum to attack the whistleblower. Either the accused is so heinous as to not warrant a defense, or, even if it’s pretty plain there’s not enough hard evidence to convict him or her, the sensitivity of the accuser must be considered at all costs. We must never question the accuser.
But, and I write this as a kid in English class feebly raising his hand to answer a question unsure of how the answer will be received, “People are still speaking out in defense of liberty, fairness and humanity.”
Edward Snowden is in exile, Julian Assange is locked up in prison, neither having actually committed crimes but targeted because they exposed the crimes of government. Yes, speaking out can be dangerous. But not speaking out is the most dangerous.
One person can make a difference. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote Gulag Archipelago while in the belly of the Soviet beast. The manuscript that he managed to sneak out when he was finally released brought down his former government.
Are you a Thomas Paine or an Alexander Solzhenitsyn? You’ll never know unless you take off your literal and figurative mask so that others can understand you.