Mined from the notebooks, Wednesday, May 13, 2020. Posted Monday afternoon, July 13.
“YOUR HEALTH is NOT More important than MY Liberties!!”: An SUV in the anti-lockdown protest parade in Hartford, Connecticut in April with a hand painted message in what looks like neon pink poster paint on the rear window. Photo by Brad Horrigan, the Hartford Courant, via Snopes. Yes, Snopes, they checked it out, because even though the photo appeared in the Courant, the message was so egregious that many people believed it had to have been faked. Snopes confirmed it was real. Note the little KEEP KIDS SAFE slogan on the plate.
Another note from the Department of In Search of Lost Time, Wednesday, May 13, 2020:
Today on his Daily Faith Sharing video chat on Facebook, Father Martin reproved the tough guys refusing to wear masks. Normally genial and mild-mannered almost to a fault, you could hear the steel enter his voice as he said you don’t wear a mask to protect you. You wear one to protect others.
Taking John 15:1-4 as the text for his impromptu sermon--- “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.--he said, ‘What do we have to do? We have to prune that part of ourselves, to help us grow, and to help the vine grow, the whole vine.”
“I wear a mask,” he continued, “I don’t wear them for me. It protects me a little bit...I wear them for the other person...because maybe I’m infected, maybe I have coronavirus, maybe I’ve been infected and I don’t know about it, I’m asymptomatic. It’s an act of charity. The other day someone said it’s a sign of cowardice. No. Masks equal love for the other person. So we need to prune ourselves of the desire to do whatever you want. It’s something that needs to be pruned so that the whole vine can flourish.”
With gently smiling approval, he read a couple of viewer comments scrolling on his screen: “‘We wear a mask out of a consideration for others.’ ‘Masks equal love.’”
This puts in context those videos from China where you would see the Covid checkpoint and then a guy would jump out of his car to make a run for it when the security team staff would converge on him, take him down, clamp a hoodlike device from out of "Brasil" onto his head and then drag him off to a forced isolation ward.
Tyranny does have its moments.
Posted by: bt | Tuesday, July 14, 2020 at 11:00 AM