When Pink Floyd’s song “Another Brick in the Wall” was popular, I did not like it. The grammatical construction of the lyrics was aggressively wrong, and the whole thing struck me as a dangerous paean to ignorance. I never liked those kids who were “too cool for school.” In general, the song came across to me as a sign of cultural rot.
These days, I have a different view. The song was written in reference to primary school but these days, it is a suitable anthem for college students.
In the Northeast of the United States, most elite colleges and universities have reimposed a mask mandate on all kids and teachers. True, compliance is spotty but that has become an occasion for controversy. The presumption is that if you are not wearing your mask, you might be a dangerous political dissident or maybe even a dreaded anti-vaxxer, even a Trump supporter!
That’s how it goes these days: all symbols, no substance.
Of course that’s not the stated reason for the mandate. The supposed reason is to control the spread of COVID-19. Just the phrase makes me want to pull my hair out. It’s nuts. There is no controlling the spread. Obviously. It’s been almost three years now. COVID was already spreading everywhere long before ridiculous and evil governments decided to lock us all down.
Then they did this preposterous “track and trace” routine for another couple of years, as if anyone can really know for sure precisely from whom or what a respiratory virus is contracted. And even if you could know, what are you going to do then? It’s all just a big phony baloney excuse to control people’s lives.
The truth from the beginning: everyone will get COVID, in seasonal waves, probably forever, developing immunity along the way, and that’s the end of the story. Period. There is no point whatsoever in slowing the spread, flattening the curve, tracking and tracing, or anything else. It’s a germ. We live with them as endemic viruses.
And we all pretty much know that now. Except of course the Ivy League! All over New England now, fancy and expensive colleges have their classrooms masked up in order to continue the charade.
