We live in an era of masks, only not the fun kind you might find at Carnivale in Venice, Italy.
Something considerably more sinister is going on.
This era began, as almost all of us realize now, with COVID-19 when all of us were told to put on masks or our friends and relatives might die. We might expire ourselves.
How necessary this was has been the subject of much discussion. My “Spidey sense” says no. Others may differ.
Nevertheless, as with all pandemics—real, imagined, or something in between—the need eventually diminished. People were liberated. Sort of.
Only masks are still around us, startlingly so. In some cases they are more around us than ever.
I think it was on Clay Travis and Buck Sexton’s radio show I first heard the masks referred to, ironically, as a “fashion statement.” True enough—they do often tell us where the wearer stands on a whole raft of things—but that was a few months ago. It almost seems like ancient history.
Now masks are upon us with a vengeance—black ones, miscellaneous scarves, and, of course, keffiyehs. The wearers have various intents—to scare us; to hide their identities from the police, college administrators, or potential employers; or simply, pathetically, to be a faddist, part of what they think of as an “in crowd.”
We have seen this song before during Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Exercise your right of free speech but don’t tell us who you are. We could call this cowardly, because it is, but it is also quite dangerous as it expands.
In some ways it reminds me of internet trolls, especially paid ones, who turn up virtually everywhere under assumed names, some obvious and some not. Does the First Amendment give you permission—legally, or more importantly, morally—to lie about who you are while exercising your right of free speech? Interesting question.
Many of the masked demonstrators on our campuses, we have been told—and considering the numbers who aren’t students, it is almost certainly true—are also paid for their “work,” not to mention transportation, tents, food, etc.
