It has become increasingly difficult to process reality. It slides into abstract echoes of fury. Everything has taken an ominous, inflated importance, a concentrated stew of absurd proportions. You almost have to laugh.
In California Carrie Prejean Boller, ex beauty queen, wife of an ex NFL quarterback, Trump loyalist and anti-masker extraordinaire went nuclear at a school board meeting. She was there to protect her son, comparing herself to a “mama bear” looking out for her cub, and one would assume the other cubs in Encinitas schools from the terror of wearing a mask. She claimed the parents, “and doctors” were being ignored. It should be noted that the American Academy of Pediatricians, a large group of doctors, specializing in the care of human cubs, support facemask requirements.
The erstwhile Miss California was kind enough to point out that the chairs the school board members were sitting on and the light fixtures illuminating the whole circus were paid for by Ms. Boller and her jackbooted companions. She neglected to add that most of the board members, other parents, who support the provided safety of wearing facemasks, and people who have no children pitched in as well.
“The pandemic is over.” She said, loud, assured, with all the emphasis of an evangelist called to witness.
It reminded me of Neville Chamberlain, “There will be peace in our time.” Right before things went bad, and 75 million were fed into the machinery of WWII.
Miss Prejean Boller isn’t the only one, either. You can’t swing a sweaty face mask at your local school board meeting without hitting someone positive about the needless overreach of facemask mandates. As Ambrose Bierce said in the Devil’s Dictionary; “Positive, adj.: Being mistaken at the top of one’s voice.”
From Florida, of course, to Utah, of course, activists are taking a stand against the terrors of forcing children into facemasks. The fact facemasks might prevent them from becoming ill, potentially being hospitalized and risking long term health problems and death means nothing. What good is being healthy and alive if you have to suffer the tyranny of the CDC and the WHO?
In many cases protesters have been forcibly expelled from meetings, and many of them are facing civil and criminal charges.
After a school board meeting in Tennessee police had to clear a path for doctors and nurses, who came to speak in favor of wearing facemasks, to reach their parked cars safely, while protestors yelled, “We know where you live. You can’t get away.”
Has it really come to that? Let’s assume that all the threats and implied violence is just confused rhetoric meant to replace civil conversation and a healthy exchange of points of view, these people can’t ignore the possibility, even likelihood that a person unhinged enough to become so enraged over wearing facemasks won’t make good on their threats. These are nothing more than domestic terrorists, using implied violence and destruction (or at least one can hope it is only implied) to achieve an end.
These are facemasks! Nobody is asking these children to wear collars and leashes, or hair shirts. Most school board members only want what’s best for the children, everybody’s children. They listen to the advice of professionals, teachers, administrators, doctors and even lawyers and try to balance the need for safety with the demands of education and the mental health of the students. It can be difficult, the pay is insignificant and the pressure can be intense, even without the pandemic.
I think we should all find a local school district’s social media page and thank them for having the courage to make the correct decision in the face of such unrelenting, unsubstantiated ridicule.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
