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Just plain Rivka's avatar

Living through covid was dystopian. The silencing. The necessity that everyone think the same. The lawn signs. In the real depths of covid- spring 2020- every print ad was paid for by the government, every radio jingle was government sponsored, euphemistic slogans were everywhere. Liberties were curtailed. The spirit of neighbors turning each other in became real to me. I had never been able to imagine it before. People felt that escaping covid was more important than attending religious services, than visiting dying relatives, than properly burying and mourning loved ones, than allowing young people to get married. More important than a woman not laboring alone, laboring without a mask constricting her breath, not having her newborn yanked out of her arms.

Religious and moral beliefs were overturned and disappeared like Sodom and Gemorah. But no one looked back at the destruction. Everyone just pretended that these new values were no break from the Western or monotheistic values humans had lived by for our collective lifetimes.

The worst and most surprising part was that the decision to mourn a loved one at an outdoor funeral was not a personal weighing of risk; it was considered a government decision, and the most dystopian part was that it was one likely to be enforced by some bitter or grumpy person bringing enforcement in.

We now see at the angry ignorant and violent pro Palestinian protests that the dehumanization that mask wearing brings is essential to the new norm of lawlessness, of justifiable violence, of silencing opposition by any means necessary.

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CP Rodge's avatar

I see it too. It breaks my heart.

Thank you for your work Barry. Please keep up the fight.

You, all of yours, and all of your readers are in my prayers now.

Merry CHRISTmas and/or Happy Holidays!

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