Get Over Yourself
Cover your face, you bastard!
I have on occasion referred to the mask as the new burka. “We want you to wear it,” they say, “because we care about you.”
Uh huh.
Women in some countries are forced to wear certain clothing, we are told, because the men respect them so much. It’s not about control of the patriarchy and treating women like property.
Right.
As an aside, I once referred to the bikini as the new burka because people get so freaked out about nude or topless beaches and breast feeding. But that’s another story.
But a bit of wit I enjoyed today gave me a fun, new perspective on the mask. For over a year and a half I have been calling the wearing of masks a political statement. We all know how useless they are; especially the cloth variety. But we know who you voted for.
So there’s this.
One of my recommendations here on Substack, is The Free Press from Bari Weiss. Today’s piece featured a podcast by Nellie Bowles, a very good writer, interviewing David Sedaris. Now there’s a couple of Lefties for you.
So why would a conservative writer recommend the site? Clearly, if the three of us were having drinks, they’d disagree with me over the color of water.
The answer is the quality of the disagreement and the value of a good read. As little as six years ago I enjoyed the friendship of people whose political or philosophical views weren’t in the same galaxy as mine. We didn’t care. We’d disagree on a lot. But we socialized and laughed and shared pains and joys like any friends do.
I don’t have as many now. Many people have vanished into the polluted ether.
Many blame Trump. I am neither a fan nor enemy of Trump. And I don’t blame him for the present political climate. I blame the crazy, tribal reaction to Trump that started the day he came down that escalator and has continued unabated to this moment.
It’s not his fault. He has consistently been exactly the guy who we all knew him to be; brash, inarticulate, self-promoting. He didn’t get extra Trumpy when he entered politics. But his opponents went over the top on everything, abandoned every tenet of what makes society work, to thwart this unclean person.
I can say with complete confidence, that if Trump entered the race, win or lose, for the Democrats (many of whom assumed Trump was for decades) the Left would have been his stalwart champions and the Right would have been beating him over the head. I know this because the Left elected a broccoli to the US Senate in Pennsylvania. The National Left swallowed the bile and pretended to be happy with it.
So all that leads to this: I like my writers like I like my friends; witty, fun, interesting, considerate.
A parallel perspective
So this morning it was fun to hear Sedaris’ take on the same issues. One take away was, after a years of masks and Trump and Fauci, people scolding others over when and how to wear a mask, and so on, Sedaris turned to a friend and said, “Ya know who I hate?…Everybody.”
The real kicker came when he referred to masks as the Left’s MAGA hat. Now, that’s funny. I don’t care who you are. That kind of own-tribe-depricating humor is what we need more of.
Left and Right, we need to laugh more. Especially at ourselves. This is not to say you should pretend to be something you’re not. You don’t have to set aside principles. Just seek joy where it is to be found, including in the company of someone who [gasp] doesn’t think like you.
Zealots are difficult to put up with. Ask anyone whose heard me argue against windmills or for thorium reactors. Humorless zealots deserve no quarter in a proper American psyche. Those folks will ruin a wet dream.
Giggle a bit.
