A reader sent in a question that many have been asking as they try to maintain their sanity in a world gone crazy over sickness.
He writes:
I’m wondering if you know of any polite and effective way to address, “I [diaper] out of respect for others.” The person I have in mind suffers from TDS, so the cognitive dissonance of “Then why didn’t you [diaper] during flu season last year—or the year before? Did you not respect others then?” will likely just trigger nonsensical rantings. I don’t suspect there’s good answer. At least not a good polite one.
This question is easily answered.
No one is obliged to show respect for lack of respect. You want to wear a “mask” because it makes you feel better? I can respect that – by leaving you free to choose. But will you respect my right to choose?
Of course not.
So spare me the twaddle about “respect” – by which you mean submission.
Must we also wear the proverbial tin-foil hat to show respect for the proverbial conspiracy theorist, simply because he is alarmed by the sight of others who do not seem to share his fear of microwave mind control?
Do we show respect for skinheads wearing armbands?
How did it come to pass that someone else’s emotional angst imposes an obligation upon others to assuage it?
The fact that someone is hobbled by an irrational fear is their problem to cope with, via therapy. It is not your duty to accommodate it.
This does not mean being mean to fearful people – though that is how it is inverted. I came across an unbelievably loathsome expression of this peddled by a psychiatrist who styles a healthy person’s refusal to pretend he might be sick – forever – for the sake of the “emotional rights” of others – as Antisocial Masking Disorder.
You are ill in the head, in other words, if you refuse to pretend you are ill in the body for the sake of people who are ill in the head.
Which is pretty goddamned sick.
It is also dangerous to give in to this emotional blackmail because by doing so, you give it sanction. You concede the reasonableness of it.
You also ask for more.
Wear a mask! It’s a small ask!
Actually, it’s a big tell – as I have written about before. The people who are out of their minds with fear are not “asking” us to don the Holy Rag; asking implies we have the option to decline the wearing without being punished for our choice.
They are telling us we must wear the rag. For the sake of their “emotional rights.” Because they are terrified and their terror obliges us to palliate it by whatever actions or restrictions or impositions they insist are necessary.
And if we must wear the rag for the sake of their “emotional rights” then they can “ask” us to be injected and tracked, too.
If it is accepted that someone else’s fear – merely the fact that they are fearful – obliges you or any other person to act (or not act) in some way to make them feel better means accepting that you have given them reason to feel fearful, even when there isn’t any reason – other than their fear. Their emotional blackmail.
Which means there is no meaningful difference between actually having given cause to fear you and their assertion that they fear you.
This is to give the loonies control of the asylum – and to turn the country into an asylum.
Eric, you took the words right out of my mouth (ok, yours were definitely more eloquent). This world has gone collectively mad. I can count, on one hand, the number of times I’ve worn the muzzle. I felt dirty… physically and spiritually. A grocery store in a nearby college town has its customers wear a laminated medically exempt card if one refuses the mask for medical reasons. I refer to it as my scarlet letter and wear it proudly. It really bewilders and pisses people off. Sigh… is it terrible that I enjoy that? I’ve absolutely lost patience with the maskerade.
Merry Christmas to all!!!!!
Thanks, Diana!
I love hearing about these “cases” of resistance – of sanity. I look outside my window at the snow-covered bleakness and feel warm inside 🙂
Some of this reminds me of the absurdity we are enduring over trans rights. We have to pretend another person’s mental abnormality obligates me to respond in some way.
A guy can put on a dress and call himself Nancy. I don’t care. I’m in no position to tell someone else how to live. But when he insists that I call him a “her” and agree that it’s fine that his penis is in my ladies restroom, then I have an issue. I refuse to go along with that.
And that should be my choice, what I am willing to accept or go along with. Except now the media and various government critters are insisting that I am the one with the problem. Sadly, it’s working. People are afraid to speak up for fear of being labeled “transphobic.”
And since that tactic worked so well, it is not being employed for mandatory mask wearing. Question it and you are labeled an “anti-masker,” and informed that you are selfish, don’t care about old people and likely a racist and a baby killer.
Well-said, Amy –
Principles matter. If one accepts being emotionally blackmailed to pretend a biological male is female because he says he “identifies” as female and that to deny this is mean and selfish then of course it is mean and selfish to not kowtow to the reality inversion of people who insist the healthy pretend they are sick.
This is political correctness on steroids; all the wimpy snowflakes are triggered by my actual sanity. Well boohoo and cry me a river, I don’t give a rat’s ass for your emotional state if it impinges on mine. Our dictator/governor just issued a new fatwa decreeing face diapers everywhere all the time along with a 10 pm curfew for bars and restaurants. I don’t go out much at night being an old fart but I’m definitely going to walk around more with my bare face hanging out.
All this due to the increase in “the cases, the cases!” which of course increase along with the testing increasing. I bet if they could test the entire population in a day there would be tens of millions of cases, which we know doesn’t mean squat because only a tiny portion of them are actually sick.
Stop the world, I want to get off.
Yeah, I love life, and don’t want to die, but in times like these, sometimes I’m glad I’m in the second half of my projected lifespan.
Same here, Mike –
I will defy this to my last breath. I expect it will soon be a crime to post Diaper Reports and so on. As it already is in places like Australia. Let them come. As Myles said, I’m on the other half of my projected lifespan and while I want to live it, I will not live like this.
Tyranny is not created by tyrants, it’s created by submission.
Masters do not create slavery, slaves do.
I believe it was Frederick Douglass who said, and I paraphrase since I don’t have the quote at hand, “What tyranny you will accept is exactly how much you will get”. There are, and always have been tyrants, or gangs of them, anxiously awaiting an opportunity to tyrannize people. Give them any crack and they will crawl through it. Feed them in any manner and they will consume, grow, and flourish.
What a pity that the general population has grown so ignorant, unaware, weak, unprincipled, and compliant. What a brilliant success public education is. How sad it has zero ethical, benevolent, moral, even human motivation.
I think the only appropriate response is unrelenting anger with all that it entails. Strike back in whatever fashion is needed. I am not advocating violence, though in self defense violence is ok. Be rude. Be obnoxious, hit back. Let the ones who are reluctantly diapering know that others are agin it.
Virginia just “tightened” coronavirus restrictions.
New rules:
1. Gatherings cannot be a maximum of more than 25 people (originally it was 250). Good thing my Thanksgiving table is only set for 22. Whew!
2. Children over the age of 5 must wear a mask at public indoor settings (old rule kids over 10). I think I will continue to ignore this one.
3. Restaurants cannot serve alcohol past 10 pm and all restaurants must close by midnight. I am not sure what this has to do with the spread of Covid, but fortunately, I have a fully stocked bar and a working blender at home.
4. There will be greater patrolling of grocery stores and pharmacies, for what I have no idea.
As Biden said, it is going to be a long dark winter. 🙁
I’m losing patience with trying to reason with these idiots. When facing the Gestapo, you don’t act like a debate team.
As to the emotional blackmail- with the virtue signaling subtext that “we’re better than you- we care and you’re a racistsexistbigot who cannot possibly have an honest objection to us good people”, the proper response is,” You idiots are propagating a panic and as of this moment causing millions to be destroyed and damaged in this country and hundreds of millions to starve to death in poorer countries.”
Because that’s the real truth of the matter.
That response is a bit longwinded and nuanced. Perhaps it’s best to use simple, unambiguous visuals.
https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/johnny-cash-flipping-bird.jpg
Ouch. But agreed on the visual. Don’t really know how to shorten up “Wake up, you’re killing people” though.
Indeed. TV programming has given everyone mush brains so thoughts are nothing more than screaming in 140 characters and memes, forget rational and logical conversation.
I have that pic on a t-shirt !
We are no longer on a slippery slope, but a slippery cliff. The bottom will hurt, but at least we know that there is one.
Sadly, we’re in mid air like Wile E. Coyote. Without the comedy.
Is the use of the word “sad” and its derivatives some kind of reflex these days, like using the word “issue” when one means “problem?”
Don’t be sad. Sadness is not an honorable emotion. Be angry.
Emotional rights, like the virus, seem to be unidirectional. I know the virus does this, because the arrows on the floor of stores tells me which direction the virus moves. Also, that my mask protects you (not me) and your mask protects me (not you). It stands to reason, then, that emotional rights also only flow in one direction – the emotional rights of the undiapered are subservient to those who diaper up. Christ, there’s no end to the bullshit these freakazoids won’t conjure up to bring us all down.
BAC,
Thank you for the laugh. I almost spit out my Annie’s ice cream sandwich. 🙂