https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-mask-is-an-outward-sign-of-inward-things/
The masks are a wonderful symbolic statement of being a pious follower of Scientism, so don't expect them to exit quickly. Expect other symbols of being part of the "illuminati" to follow in their wake.
Secularists have been lacking in iconography for their faith, and as humans, that is important -- no matter how pointy your head may be. The Darwin Fish tended to indicate an evolution focus rather than general materialist/scientist faith. The rainbow is too gay, Che Guevara tees can just confuse people, and body piercings, tats, etc don't really invoke "science", but rather paganism.
The KKK liked hoods, but while a rainbow hood might catch on and be even more materially effective than masks (especially if it had a respirator included), it would be unwieldy, and as the linked column points out, it was never about "effectiveness".
The use of masks as a social signifier is hardly new to the COVID-19 era. Face-coverings and head-coverings have featured in the social and religious life of Muslims (hijabs and kufis), Christians (mantillas, wimples, zuchettos), Jews (tichels, kippahs), Hindus (ghoonghats), and many others for centuries. The head-covering and face-covering impulse is partly rooted in modesty (both sexual modesty and modesty before God), but it also has a community-building aspect. When the Sikh spiritual master Guru Gobind Singh ordered his male followers to forgo cutting their hair and to wear turbans, he did so in order that, as he put it, his “disciples will be recognized among millions.” Outward signs of community and solidarity inevitably take on, to some degree, a depersonalizing role, as with the military uniform, which makes soldiers exactly what the adjective promises.
The Covid mask primarily screamed "I'm a follower".
While the media worked overtime to claim that MAGA hats indicated the person was a brainless sheep, they were uncommon enough in most quarters to take some level of backbone to put one on. Like a Trump sticker on your bumper, there was a not insignificant chance wearing one could get your car keyed, or even physically attacked. Nobody keys a car for a Darwin or rainbow bumper sticker -- primarily for the same reason you see very few demonstrations by the "deplorables" (they are working). In the nearly unique case of the Capitol "riot" -- which was not a "riot" since the only person killed was an unarmed white woman veteran, nobody got a free tv, and nothing was burned, Democrats had to label the demonstration as an "insurrection".
A worthy and thought provoking column. Do I need to start wearing a cross?
This column also does a good (and simpler) job of explaining mask "virtue".
But masking while fully vaccinated entails a baffling contradiction. We’re simultaneously to believe: 1) everyone must get vaccinated; 2) vaccines don’t work. Wrap your head round that. Because if your vaccination overwhelmingly prevents both transmission and disease (meaning it works), even unvaccinated people present no danger to you. So you don’t socially distance. You go to restaurants. You see your friends. And you don’t wear a mask. Yet, bizarrely, in surveys vaccinated Americans express far less willingness than the unvaccinated to resume once-normal activities like hopping on a bus, often by a factor of two. Calling that ‘cognitive dissonance’ may be too generous. Let’s go for ‘state-induced mass hysteria’ instead.
It is a delusional age on so many fronts that sanity is abnormal. From wind and solar are going to replace fossil fuels, printing trillions won't cause inflation, voter id suppresses voting, the Russian hoax, to Jeffrey Epstein himself, it is truly a mad mad world.
