“i get to have a face.
you do not.”
——————————————
Spring of 2020. Mere months before the Leader began censoring all perspectives that did not align with health department messaging, I wrote a concerned, fact-based letter to the editor challenging the mask campaign we were being bombarded with daily. Along with everything else Covid, I had been researching the effectiveness and dangers of masks intensively, and offered a counterpoint to the dominant narrative which was being parroted by neighbors and friends.
By that point, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the public was being lied to. Anthony Fauci, along with the CDC, had flip-flopped so often — and so much fear and anxiety had been generated around the “killer virus” — people were already falling into the mass delusional psychosis that we did not yet have a name for. (See my two prior articles here and here for an overview of the delusional state psychiatrists and psychologists have also called “mass formation”.)
The coordinated campaign being broadcast à la Orwell’s 1984 was already talking its toll, creating a level of hysteria resulting in the shattering of community bonds. “Generating fear that unmasked people are now a threat is one of the many ways communities are being fractured,” I wrote.
More and more letters were being published engaging in a new phenomenon: mask shaming. All of the letter writers echoed memes being promoted in the mainstream press. There was a carrot-and-stick combination of bogus feel-good soundbites like Your mask protects me, my mask protects you, alongside charges that anyone who didn’t comply was a potential murderer, not doing their part to help save lives.
The finger wagging ratcheted up over the months, with one writer opining that “to not wear [a mask] is selfish, irresponsible and sometimes deadly behavior.” The letter exemplified the kind of blaming and shaming that growing numbers of terrified residents were repeating to vilify those who challenged the narrative.
I had already experienced the schism developing in our community after writing privately to a few friends in an effort to initiate a conversation about the propaganda that was circulating. In response I received… nothing. No interest in discussing the issues, no debates, no response at all. Soon the mass psychosis would sanction removing discussion of any conflicting information from the public square entirely.
My letter to the editor, which focused on actual science, resulted in responses attacking my position for weeks afterwards. Some letters simply repeated media slogans. Some were outraged and angry assaults. One old friend (and a current Board of Health member) tersely dismissed my reference to harms from masks well-established in the medical literature as “ludicrous”. People I didn’t know, as well as decades-old friends, called my perspective “dangerous”.
In nearly half a century here, I’d never been so harshly attacked in this community. The certitude and righteousness were off the charts.
Not a single response addressed the substance of my letter — meta-analysis reviews of research showing that masks do not stop the transmission of viruses, and evidence that, in fact, masks themselves create health risks. Those two aspects of this most fractious divide are incontrovertible and will be examined in future parts of this series.
But this first part is an exploration of an element not addressed in my letter two years ago: the devastating mental, emotional and psychological repercussions of a masked populace.
Not protective, but a good reminder to be afraid of human contact
Concurrent with my letter, a May 2020 perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) regarding universal masking in the Covid-19 era acknowledged: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.” A month earlier, a meta-analysis review of the most relevant studies of laboratory and real-world performance of masks by the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health had come to the same conclusion:
“We do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of COVID-19-like illness to routinely wear cloth or surgical masks… There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
Masks, however, were proving to be a great tool for prompting people to be anxious and fearful. The NEJM authors suggested that even though they didn’t stop the spread of Covid, there was ancillary value in public masking:
“Masks are visible reminders of an otherwise invisible yet widely prevalent pathogen and may remind people of the importance of social distancing and other infection-control measures.”
So masking was really a visual cue to keep the public in a state of anxiety over the invisible virus. Masks reminded us that fellow humans were not safe to be around, that we needed to remember at all times that a deadly virus was in our midst and to fear any contact with one another. While the NEJM authors opined, “one might argue that fear and anxiety are better countered with data and education than with a marginally beneficial mask,” that sensible voice was drowned out by more powerful forces driving the narrative.
The greater the fear and anxiety generated, the more demoralized a population, and the more easily the masses can be manipulated and controlled. For the global “leaders” and institutions calling the shots, the opportunity to further enhance their power was too good to pass up.
Dehumanizing society
The masking of our faces was arguably the most dehumanizing aspect of the Covid mass hypnosis.
Mental, emotional and psychic damage, especially to our children, has been incalculable. In addition to generating fear of invisible pathogens and fellow humans, masking is known historically to be an effective element of torture programs.
Prisoners at U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
It’s long been recognized that both isolation and masking are tools of sensory deprivation. For decades, CIA “enhanced interrogation” experts have employed the forced wearing of surgical masks to increase discomfort while undergoing torture, to break a prisoner’s will.
The military has learned that if an enemy combatant looks different than a soldier, it’s 40% easier for the soldier not to feel things like fear, compassion, empathy and other human emotions. If the combatant has a face covering, it’s 60% more difficult to connect with that person. That’s just how we are wired.
Long before it was marketed as a talisman of safety and virtue, the mask was a symbol of subservience. It removes individuality, depersonalizes, and denotes submission.
The photo at the top of this article and the quote below it — I get to have a face. You do not. — comes from the piercing, insightful Bad Cattitude post Your Mask Ennobles Me / public health as a pretext for hierarchical validation. While the delighted adults all beam for the camera, you tell me if a single one of those children’s eyes are smiling.
“Masks are signs of subjugation. They dehumanize. They alienate.”
Bad Cattitude examines the hypocrisy we have seen repeatedly throughout this pandemic response. As universal masking was implanted into the mass psyche, a component of class privilege began to emerge.
Rules for thee, not for me: political theater
The ruling class demanded the plebes comply with a set of rules that did not apply to them. We saw politicians, corporate bigwigs and celebrities—thought leaders—put on a show of covering their faces for public displays while gathering in their private enclaves without masks or social distancing. There were the hot mic gaffes of public figures when they thought the cameras weren’t rolling, chuckling about how masking is just “political theater”.
When she thinks she is not being recorded, Pennsylvania state rep. Wendy Ullman tells Gov. Tom Wolf that her mask is just for show: “I’m waiting [to take it off] so we can do a little political theater (laughs)…
So, that it’s on camera.”
“City Council Mask Rituals. Before city council meetings begin, people mingle without masks. When the meeting is called to order, all city councilors… and staff put on masks. But people who testify and attend don’t wear masks. Sometimes the masks come off when staff talks, then go back on. City Councilor Amy Howard wears a mask when alone during Zoom meetings. These are the people in charge of Port Townsend.”
Masks Off / Masks On – Port Townsend City Council Meeting, 3-21-22
Top: City Manager John Mauro chats with attendees before the meeting starts.
Middle: The meeting officially begins; Mauro (seated at left, now distanced) joins the theater.
Bottom: City Councillors protecting the public or virtue signalling?
Bad Cattitude calls this “performative virtue signaling.” And he points out the even more blatant hypocrisy of elites openly dispensing with their own face coverings in staged photo ops while requiring the workers around them, the lower class, to be masked for the camera. He says:
“Masks are not about public health.
Masks are about hierarchy.
They not only represent a high visibility in-group/out-group tribal marker, but they have wonderous potential as a form of separating the powerful from the powerless, the nobles from the commoners, the dictators from the dictated to.
It has become the opiate of the classes.”
This class stratification appears to be in full display in Jefferson County. A friend having dinner at a popular local cafe following the lifting of the mask directive was disturbed to see that while diners had faces, all the staff remained masked. She asked the owner Why?
“It makes the customers more comfortable,” was the reply.
Do some of those customers feel elevated by this “opiate of the classes” as the post suggests? The mass psychosis persists and some folks genuinely remain petrified that an unmasked person can kill them… but then why are all the bare-faced diners around them not dangerous? Is the working class whose livelihoods depend on their patronage the new unclean caste?
Teaching compliance
Most chilling is the imposition of this madness on our children. Bad Cattitude believes it to be another power play by those in control, contending that the subjugation, dehumanizing and alienation caused by masks are “WHY they are so attractive to so many.”
“This is why forcing them on kids to dominate them and force them into compliance with state over self or even parents is such a high priority goal for those that have collectivist plans for their futures. It establishes precisely who is in charge.”
Masks exemplify the number one demand of the Covid era: COMPLIANCE. The plebes have been divided into the compliant (good) and the non-compliant (bad). Children have little choice in the matter.
Kids in Head Start, for example. While authoritarian rulemakers are free to enjoy unmasked lives, the federal government mandates that millions of 2- to 5-year-old children in Head Start programs wear masks. As in the featured photo at top, the privileged think nothing of shamelessly flaunting that they “get to have a face” while the children they tower over do not.
Bad Cattitude unpacks this staged photo op with Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams at an elementary school in Atlanta. Again, how many smiling children’s eyes do you see in this picture?
“Stacey Abrams is pro mask and pro vaxx mandate. And yet here she sits, the only one in the photo with a face… She does not believe a word of her own rules. It did not even occur to her how this might look…
Imagine what these experiences are teaching children about their place in the world and their relationship to authority figures.”
Then there are those situations with children where adults are also masked. That, too, is highly damaging, especially for our youngest in the critical early stages of development. It’s taken two years for the fallout to be so blatantly obvious that even the mainstream press is asking “How long will we continue to torture kids?” In the NY Post’s opinion piece, Making kids wear masks in school is torture, not safety, their Editorial Board writes:
“Doctors and psychologists are just beginning to study the effects of mask-wearing on kids, but the early signs aren’t good. Younger children in particular are missing facial cues and social development…
Democrats have tried to gaslight Americans by saying that masks are not an inconvenience, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a murderer…
Panic has replaced common sense.”
Damaging a generation of kids
Beyond terrorizing kids with fear that if they don’t mask they might kill Grandma, cognitive decline caused by masks has led to normalizing lowered standards for development. Autism specialist and certified speech-language pathologist Maija C. Hahn writes, Instead of Admitting Mask Mandates Harm Kids, CDC Lowers Expectations for Speech Development. Whereas children over the age of two typically have mastered huge vocabularies, she says, the updated CDC guidance states that a 2-and-a-half-year-old child is now expected to say only 50 words.
“I am appalled the CDC would quietly lower long-held pediatric language expectations by normalizing significant language delays as “the new normal.”
Hahn says that special needs kids have been so severely impeded by mask mandates that they could be set back “for a lifetime of therapy.” But all children are suffering from the damage:
“The CDC’s mask mandates have severely affected an entire generation of American children and we are just now beginning to see the long-term consequences. Kids who were born in the era of COVID-19, have no idea what a world without masks is — we should expect to see even greater speech and language deficits in these children in the coming months and years.”
In October of 2020, a German university set up an online registry for parents, doctors, teachers and others to record the side effects of masking children that they observed. In less than a week, data on nearly 26,000 children had been recorded. From the article First results of a Germany-wide registry on mouth and nose covering (mask) in children:
“The average wearing time of the mask was 270 minutes per day. Impairments caused by wearing the mask were reported by 68% of the parents. These included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%) impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).”
Psychiatrist Mark McDonald, M.D., author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis, sent a letter to his patients in February banning child masking in his practice. Forcing kids to mask, he says, is child abuse.
“My first ethical responsibility as a physician is to do no harm to my patients, and allowing children to mask their faces has caused and continues to cause tremendous harm to them physically, emotionally, psychologically and developmentally. Any argument to the contrary is naive and irrational.”
——————————————
——————————————
“Masks… may not leave physical scars (although they often result in painful skin infections that can lead to permanent facial disfigurement),” says Dr. McDonald, “but they do cause significant and possibly permanent damage to a child’s brain, retarding speech and language development, crippling social skills, and inciting a vicious cycle of emotional dysregulation leading to major depression, self-harm, and substance abuse. We would never allow someone to do this to our children directly, so why do we condone it through the vehicle of a facemask?”
In his post, Masking Children is Child Abuse, psychiatrist McDonald adds:
“Since children began wearing masks at school, on the athletic field, in airplanes—essentially everywhere outside the home—I have seen a significant decline in their ability to make eye contact, speak clearly, and initiate face-to-face communication with other human beings. Emotional resilience has dramatically declined. Children have become dull and slow in their thinking.”
In Port Townsend, the irrational masking of children continues in our schools. The lifting of mandates created a mix of the masked and unmasked, leading to teachers at the high school talking of segregating the two groups and even of arbitrarily forcing students to remain masked. On March 11th, a group of Port Townsend parents wrote an urgent letter to the district’s superintendent, principal and board after learning about this from their kids.
“Many students said their teachers stated they ‘can make students wear masks if they choose to.’ Also stated was if there was a shortage of desks [unmasked] kids would be forced to sit on the floor.” (Parents Appeal to PT Schools: Are Students Facing Mask Segregation?, PTPF 3-12-22)
The mask theater, penalizing those who do not comply, also extends to school staff. There is pressure being applied to require unvaxxed teachers to continue masking, a source told us: “Despite the mandate being lifted, the PT School District is trying to bully non-vaxxed teachers into wearing masks still.” It is undisputed that the shots are a dismal failure in stopping Covid’s transmission, yet we see another message to students (and teachers) that the non-compliant will be persecuted.
Mask measures are not and have never been about public health. This is an exercise in social engineering — rewarding compliance, punishing outliers, and conditioning the masses to obey authority.
And “with the advent of the mask craze, mental illness is no longer invisible in the public space,” says Dr. McDonald. “What was once reserved for only a psychiatrist’s ears is now on flagrant display to any citizen with eyes to see it.”
Dealing with No-Mask Anxiety
After two years of this insanity, we are really in a bind. Not only has the disastrous global response to Covid traumatized a generation of children, but now a significant portion of the public have anxiety about being UNmasked.
The mental health team at Good Therapy tells us this psyop has been so successful that according to the American Psychological Association, “nearly half of Americans admit they have concerns about resuming in-person interactions.” They are afraid to bare their faces again. They have a newly-coined mental issue, “no-mask anxiety”:
“No-mask anxiety is a condition where people are scared about the prospect of taking off their masks in public.”
They “feel uneasy when they themselves don’t wear a face covering, and they can also be uncomfortable around others who are not wearing masks.” These are the folks who were so successfully brainwashed by the narrative, the mask is now their security blanket. Believing that masks protect against viruses, they remain in a state of fear and anxiety over the invisible threat.
Dr. McDonald notes that many adults in his psychiatric practice are beyond anxious, they are literally addicted to hiding behind face coverings:
“In my adult patient population, many have developed a fear addiction. I strongly encourage them to remove facemasks whenever possible, including when visiting my office, as a necessary first step in overcoming this fear addiction.”
In a post just this week — Masking the problem / once the needle goes in, it never comes out — Bad Cattitude discusses a segment of maskers so dependent on this fetish, they are equivalent to alcoholics or drug addicts. Those with untreated “social anxiety disorder” have gotten hooked on covering their faces.
“The anxious, agoraphobic, neurotic, and OCD have always been with us and always been among us… They hate being out in public and interacting with people.” Or they fear “disease or dirt” to such an extent, they engage in “extreme hygiene.”
Conditioning the public to believe masks represent safety, virtue, and societal duty provided a socially sanctioned way to alleviate some of that anxiety. “They could do what they wanted but had always feared to do because what had been low status behavior was suddenly elevated to high status.” Continuing the drug addiction analogy Bad Cattitude warns, “The needle went in. Getting it back out will not be easy for these folks.”
He addresses the current conversation about how to respond to people who demand that for their peace of mind others around them also wear masks. Is perpetuating paranoia or mental instability a kindness? Some provocative thoughts regarding the mask addicted:
“No one would feel like they were being respectful if an alcoholic asked them to ‘just get drunk with me, it makes me feel comfortable.’
Doing so would have bad outcomes.
Well, so does ‘just mask up with me, it makes me feel comfortable.’
People try to spin this as ‘being respectful of the needs of others’ and ‘just be considerate, just be kind’ but it’s not. It’s giving tequila to a drunk…
Imposing peer pressure to drink upon an alcoholic is abhorrent. But that is exactly what the mask enablers and alleged allies here are doing to the mask addicted.
I know it sounds cruel, but really, the best thing you can do for these people is to help them keep their sobriety.”
Are local businesses who require their staff to remain faceless because it makes even unmasked customers “more comfortable” sanctioning abuse and discrimination of the working class? Does indulging irrational patrons’ fears help them… or just reinforce the mass psychosis?
Whether out of fear of lost business or out of perceived kindness, those enabling this madness are giving power to a perverse lie.
At what cost, kindness? Architects of this insanity like Fauci and Gates promise us the next virus is just around the corner. By indulging paranoia, mask anxiety/dependence/addiction, or any other form of mask-related mental illness today, the pump is primed for even greater mania the next go-round.
This has been a psyop—”a psychological operation,” in military parlance, “designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups, and foreign governments.” In this case, the psyop has been worldwide, using relentless information warfare to undermine the morale and will of humanity, local to global.
Arriving in Port Townsend in 1975 in Sherpa, her Ford van, Ana Wolpin has watched a sweetly funky, diverse and tolerant community increasingly gentrify, polarize and lose its soul. After almost half a century engaged in local business, city politics, county organizations and community projects, she joined with fellow editors to revive the Free Press and bear witness to extraordinary times. For a short sketch of Ana's history in Jefferson County, see “About the Free Press."
Ana,,, had I been one of the people you reached out to for meaningful dialogue, not only would I have reached right back but I would have suggested tea in my garden! Very strange
This is a well-researched and presented article. Thank you.
Sadly, I fear it’s another example of “preaching to the choir”. We can expect the damage done to mental health to persist until the next generation comes along that has not experienced this psy-op.
“Sadly”? The choir may be all we have left. At this late/dark hour, i’ll take what we can get.
What’s more, apparently missed the entire point of the article — the next generation is already profoundly toxified, adulterated, traumatized & reprogrammed. The PTB show no signs of changing that strategy.
Much needed affirmation and confirmation for the people who have known this atrocity for what it was all along, refused to comply, resisted and were vilified. Should be required reading for everyone else. Port Townsend started out on the wrong side of history and, in many ways, still is. Words cannot express how deplorably ignorant, shameful, disgraceful and criminal the behavior of the local perpetrators and blind followers has been. A select group of people and institutions have made and are continuing to make an enormous amount of money off the corona hoax while expanding their power, control and status. Tragic. The PT Free Press and contributors like Ana and Jim are a ray of light and hope.
Appreciate your gratitude and kudos to Ana for her article, Don, and your ‘preaching to the choir’ concern, which I share.
I understood your last sentence to be referring to generations yet to be born. Perhaps those arriving decades from now will be learning about us, and how we did what we could to avert this unfolding disaster.
Thanks for engaging in this space.
Thank you for this article. Very thoroughly examines all the angles, and shows the truth about the abusive masking policies; that they have nothing to do with health. I’m very disturbed that employees and children are still being forced to wear masks. I’m going to share this article with family and friends, and far and wide, because it’s such a comprehensive analysis.
Thanks Ana — another sane & sage vantage on the madness, right here at PTFP, home of the sovereign minded. A gift, given the circumstances out there.
If anyone still pursues the details & contexts of “history”, therein are plentiful mirror images reflecting mass psychosis, and how easily humans are conned & shaped for myriad purposes, particularly mass movements — whether via governments and/or religions.
The latin basis of both words holds relevance. Religion’s root is “religare” — to bind back. Government has two roots: “gubernare” — to rule or control; while “mens” translates as mind. Pick either poison = binding & control of mass minds.
Interestingly, “heresy” actually means having one’s own ideas & opinions. Oh-oh…. can’t be having that.
To put it bluntly & historically, if not mildly — ideologies are mass psychoses.
What’s most notable locally is what’s most notably ramping up on the globalist stage — psycho-criminality & idiocy on vast parade. Apparently all is not well. Titanically going down at warped speed & stasis — going nowhere fast. Observable & felt.
Directly relavent to the current stasis of affairs is “the 2nd law of thermodynamics” — entropy, aka dissolution. Its literal symptomolgy is the devolution we see everywhere. A case in point being this town & environs. Overall, what remains of combustible resources & fumes are getting vacuumed out by the PTB — a poisoned planet on its lips, scarcity running on empty. Not much left besides idiocracy.
Summing up: mass idiocracy meets bureaucratic techno-tyranny meets entropy. The BIG wind-up is winding down in the “heat death” throes of our localized universe. Over millennia, the parasitic “elites” have been pumping & dumping towards inevitable planetary endpoints. In other words, a soulless black hole sucking up everything while remaining empty. Rather borg-like in its singularity-mindedness.
There’s hardly anything to relate to anymore. Zeroing in on zilch. That’s how rare & rarified everything’s become. Even “time” has entered the racing whirligigging insanity. Taken in aggregate, these are significant signposts. The rubber band is stretched taut towards a final bifurcation point. A lot of energy soon to be released.
From endings arise beginnings. May we relearn the lesson, and remember — truly creative, free perceptual & energy systems cannot coexist for long within the blinds, binds & criminal machinations of indoctrination & institutionalization.
Meanwhile, locally, Port Townsend’s become an epicenter of idiocratic nothingness… with a rare few very honorable exceptions. All in all, someone else’s really baad movie.
“Reality” is just a bad habit. Seems time for a consciousness reboot, eh?
The real solution is to vote out the people that allowed the mandates and edicts. Until that happens, we are wasting our time.
Seems this is a similar post from a while ago. I suggested that you don’t stop a freight train on a dime. Someone suggested that my character of being a money-oriented person was revealed. Had a nice conversation regarding that. Yes, I do like a roof over my head and food to eat.
I am a deeply flawed person in that regard.
We started greeting at the door a while ago, and that has made for a better bonding with folks coming in, even with masks. This week I changed to flex mask when I worked the weekend. If folks at my door don’t want to wear masks and they are the only group or others of the same mind are in we ditch the masks. If others are in that need the binky security blanket then others can wait for them to leave or mask up and vice versa.
Its a start.
Today Sunday I had some regulars in who had guests. I offered to ditch masks if they liked. The couple with them wore masks inside and outside. We had a nice visit with the “regular” husband keeping his on in deference to his guests. His wife had hers off. It was a Rodney King kind of moment. Can’t we all just get along? Its not perfect Ana. There was some progress with lots of real time research on my part. Hopefully the all the time maskers will grow more comfortable with time. This will take time. Took time to get into. Will take time to get out of.
You have to start somewhere. For some cold turkey only works the day after Thanksgiving.
I know Ana. Enabling. Reality is no one is going to change any belief in a few seconds at my door. I can drive myself out of business, the one I am trying to sell and get away from, by not adjusting to individuals.
The benefit is having real time discussions with varied folk. I continue to do that as I have done for 46 years at my businesses.
I do meet some fascinating folks.
Also had a discussion with a couple about Dr. Berry and Joe Rogan. Husband was in the moment and took issue with Joe getting slammed. He thought Joe wanting all sides aired was good. Wife said she stood at a roadside with a sign supporting Berry recently. Told her about Malone, and McCullogh protocol. I said Berry had a job to keep and McCullogh had everything to lose by speaking out. It didn’t end well with her. Of course she is vaxed so pretty committed to her mind set. Husband probably was too but wired a little differently.
Who’s to judge? Seriously.
Hopefully everyone everywhere keeps talking and understands the PTSD many are dealing with. In my little world the train slowed down a bit this weekend. Don’t know how far up the track the station is. Maybe there isn’t one. Not perfect. Like always, go ahead and judge me. I sure do.
Will be talking with my manager tomorrow on how she wants to run things her days. She wants to see if things spike again with masks off. I would ask according to whose set of stats.
Discussions. Slow changes. Real world out there. Keep talking folks. Thanks Ana once again for the hard work.
God, I hate what this town has become. Sorry, I mean gee I dislike that some among us are so….. fill in the blank your way. No hate.
Except for WordPress that made me have to re write this and I don’t even know if this will send.
Thank you for the article. Yes, we are all being forced against our wills to do something stupid and dangerous, whether we recognize it or not. On a job this last Saturday at a production facility, I was asked after not wearing a mask most of the day, to please put one on. The supervisor knew it was a bunch of B.S., but he said that he would get in BIG trouble if he did not make everyone comply with the company mandate Remember, in this and most facilities, you are under video surveillance all the time..I am almost 65 years old, and I’ll tell you, this is almost pushing me into retirement early.
Thanks Ana for a comprehensive article on masks, mandates, virtue signaling and harm to our children.
“Be obedient. Study. Work. Get married. Have children. Get a mortgage. Watch the TV. Ask for loans. Buy many things. And, above all, do not ever question what they have told you that you have to do,” said George Carlin.
Freedom means nothing unless we can be authentic and what covers over our authenticity more than anything else, is hiding. Conforming to state issued mandates, without question, is hiding. As George Carlin said, in essence, obey but do not question. Masking is hiding. It is symbolic of us doing what we are told and then sending a signal to all that see my masked face that I am obedient and am part of the homogeneous masses.
Let’s make it a movement for each of us to come out of hiding, do what we know in our hearts is correct, never comply just to belong, and put our fear of nonconforming away with our masks. Again, Freedom means nothing unless we can be authentic and authenticity means questioning everything. Let’s take off our masks both literally and symbolically, step into the light, breathe, smile and vow to ourselves, Never Again. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
George Carlin is rolling in his grave. What I wouldn’t give to have him with us today.
A fine and informed article. I recently resigned from a position over the requirement that staff and volunteers mask, while patrons were no longer required to. I shared your earlier article on masking with my supervisor, hoping to stimulate a fact-based discussion of why I could no longer COMPLY. Her response was to thank me for “sharing [my] truth.” In this post-modern morass, we must constantly find ways to remind ourselves that it IS possible to get to the truth. This article has done that. Keep up this excellent journalistic work!
Masks are pure psychological warfare–I understood that from the beginning and that has been for me the truly disheartening aspect of this psyop. But there have been others. Following Sept. 11th, I watched in horror as everyone lined up at the airport and went through several layers of pure psyop to board a flight. I refused to go through the body scanner–and I paid a high price for that refusal. I had to travel a lot back then and I couldn’t believe how quickly everyone surrendered their 4th amendment rights in service of perceived ‘safety.’ I flew so often that the security staff knew me and asked why I would never go through the scanner. I said I am preserving my 4th Amendment rights. Things were so ludicrous. I refused to remove my sandals because it was stupid. So they pulled me over and wanded my naked foot. I said why are you wanding my bare foot? Do you think something has been surgically implanted with no visible marks to the skin? She said, haven’t you heard about the shoe bomber? Meanwhile, I had a friend who accidentally boarded a flight with a revolver. Undetected. Thankfully, I no longer have to fly, and I won’t. I cannot wear a mask. Each time I have had to don one–forcibly–I felt as though I betrayed myself and I immediately feel suffocated. Unfortunately, I had a real illness during the outbreak and was forced to go to the hospital for treatment. I also had to go to my library and good luck getting in that door without a mask. While at the library I printed up articles about why masks don’t work and placed them strategically about with pertinent sections highlighted. Librarians are still hysterically afraid–all but one of them are still in masks. The last 22 years has been a full on psyop on the American people. The problem is that its working.
“…discusses a segment of maskers so dependent on this fetish, they are equivalent to alcoholics or drug addicts. Those with untreated ‘social anxiety disorder’ have gotten hooked on covering their faces.”
You can’t be serious. Heroin addiction and pro-masking are not remotely on the same level.
Y’all are deadset on “othering” those “others.”
If observing and making comparisons between addictive behaviors with potential to harm is “othering,” the fields of psychiatry and psychology need to be binned, along with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
From the start I didn’t like the masking. It seemed stupid to me that if you went to a bar or eatery that you had to wear a mask until seated. After seating, you didn’t have to wear it anymore. This must mean that the powers to be thought that the virus could only come down to about 6′ off the floor. I would assume a short person wouldn’t need a mask at all. Something there just didn’t seem right.
At the start in 2019 and later I would only wear one if requested by the business as I figured it was a good way for the powers to get more money and I’ve only washed it twice. They wouldn’t be after me, because I don’t have a lot of money to start, but the business would be the one fined. They never did fine the businesses. They just drove them out of business and raised the cost of them for the next buyer. I belong to a private club and was very vocal that I wouldn’t get the jab. Due to this, I was not allowed to enter and socialize. I could only go to meetings in the meeting room. I played the game and knew that others who hadn’t been Jabbed but didn’t say anything could come in to socialize. It wasn’t that big of a problem as I was raised a single child and know how to entertain myself.
What now bothers me about this masking of young children is what will be the problems and how will they cure them. The other thought that comes to mind that they will be trained to follow orders without thought. They will make great soldiers, not worrying about being killed and following orders given to them and not ask questions to right or wrong. Hitler’s SS comes to mind.
To the parents of small children, I will say this, under no conditions let your children be masked. If you have to, home school them or get together with other parents with the same concerns and share the burden of teaching. I firmly believe this is a more far-reaching plan than what we think it will do to the children.
Wonderful post! Thanks for being one, among several, who are speaking truth to power. It’s time to step up and step out.
Ideas that surfaced while reading your article were simple things like, thanking the librarians who have unmasked (while their colleagues continue to wear them): asking waiters (and perhaps others) to kindly remove their masks when waiting on me. Putting a little encouragement out to those who might want to unmask, but are reluctant to do so in the face of controversy.
It just hit me about the opening picture. Don’t those adults know they should be wearing masks and showing their VAX Card. The kids are closer to the ground so they’re safe. Maybe they should be sitting too so they’re as far away from the maskless people behind them.
Wow Harvey !! thank you for your insight, my life like so many others have been truly affected in a negative way by the covid but at the end of the day there has to be reconciliation, grace, mercy and forgiveness among us.
Lineman Adrift-
The PUD mandates are very serious. A real lapse of judgement. If you are a PUD lineman hope you and others are able to be made whole again. In every way. For my part, just trying to survive and learning daily. Talking always to folks to know what is really going on with everyone. Mixed bag. Lots of frightened folk and different ways to express it.
We will never get out of this without bravery, and one cannot be brave without risking something. Thank you to Ana and the PTFP, for your continued bravery.
It seems to me that everyone, by now, should know that masks make no difference as far as the disease goes, and the vaccines neither prevent contagion nor spread, yet carry a significant health risk. If anyone doesn’t know this, get your head out of the sand or CNN– it’s widely known info. I have a collection of 167 studies that show masks to not work. This is NOT about health, but about control and compliance. “Shut up and do as you’re told.” And it will continue unless we resist it en masse.