Like anyone reading this, I continue to see people driving alone (windows up) with masks on. I see them walking outside with masks on. I see couples, who presumably live together, walking outside together with masks on.
I was looking at one the other day, and it occurred to me there is a much deeper psychological symbolism involved. Self evidently, it is not REALLY to keep from scratching their noses and faces. Most likely, they do it more.
No, it feels like EMOTIONAL protection to me. That is how it seems to me. They are protecting themselves from PSYCHOLOGICAL contagion.
This whole thing is madness. It is so obviously madness, that I think by now everyone has to sense it on some level. They will have all run into people like me saying “IT’S NOT REAL, TRUMAN!!!”
But they put that mask on, and all is right with the world.
“Our Governor loves us and cares about us, and we can trust him to do the right thing.
I love you, Big Brother. No really: you keep me safe from this terrible illness, and I don’t know what I would do without you.”
And if you wear that mask, that evil creature Donald Trump can’t get you. HA HA HA: you are beyond his foul reach. Nice try, Orange Man.
No, calm, calm, calm with the mask. You can’t breath as well, but by now that is a desirable feature. You are used to it. Not having the mask on feels weird, scary, unsafe. So WHY NOT wear it in a car, even though no science or scientist anywhere EVER said it made sense? It has become a security blanket, and people who violate this tacit code have become enemies and terrors.
I think this is close to the truth. And if that looks like madness, you are right. It has become serious mental illness. But what else animates ANY anti-Liberal regime? You have to be sane to manage freedom. Thus a key goal of aspiring totalitarians–who themselves are nuts–is to pull everyone over the edge into the void with them, where power relations become the only reality, and everything else fades away into black. Darkness within darkness within darkness. That is one too many.