Masks--Everybody is missing the point about anti-m
Post# of 123730
TV pundits talk about saving lives, sciency stuff, whether they really work, freedumb, tyranny, the heavy hand of government. That's all a useless discussion.
Fifty years ago they all said all the same things about seatbelts but nobody back then beat up bus drivers, nobody assaulted car salespeople, nobody had screaming finger-pumping swastika-brandishing fits, nobody tried to unfasten your seatbelt if you wore one, nobody murdered anyone, nobody waved military weaponry around about seatbelts.
So what's different? Why are they so enraged about a fucking mask?
Their very reality, their universe, their way of perceiving and relating to reality, their very existence is threatened.
50 years ago 40% of the population didn't live in Fantasyland. They weren't fervently committed to belief in Faux News Fantasyland. They didn't claim that nobody died in traffic accidents or that traffic accidents didn't actually exist or that being in a traffic accident was no different than stubbing your toe.
They didn't think that the standard of determining truth vs. falsehood was to simply believe whatever they wanted to believe. All your sciency stuff is meaningless to dumbfucks who tremble in terror at the very sight of an equation.
You can talk until Doomsday about virus transmission and all sorts of what normal people consider "evidence," but that has no meaning whatsoever to them.
The only "evidence" they accept is what wingnut media says, what Donald Trump says, and what they want to believe. That's how they can "know" instantly that something is fake news--they don't want to believe it, so therefore it's fake news.
If they want to believe something, then it's true; if they don't want to believe something, then it's fake news. If they don't want to believe it, then it's just nonsense that smarty-pants educated people who know how to use equal signs say.
The virus is a hoax because that's what they want to believe. And when actual reality starts to impinge on their Faux Fantasyland, it's obvious to them that the entire universe is conspiring to promulgate a fake universe: all those deaths are lies, all those nurses in overrun ICUs are faking it, all those pictures of people being treated in hallways are staged by the Soros-Hillary-Satan conspiracy, four billion people have all gotten together to conspire against them, their Dear Leader, and their cult. They know that all that crazy-ass shit is true based on the one piece of evidence they accept as real: they want to believe it.
Their entire Faux Fantasyland universe is under existential threat. If the virus is real, then their Faux Fantasyland universe is not real. If the virus is real, their way of determining truth (truth=whatever they want to believe) crumbles.
If the virus is real, their entire universe crumbles into non-reality, non-existence; and if their universe doesn't exist, then they are in an existential crisis. Seatbelts never made anyone think that they would cease to exist, but masks do.
Since their very universe is hanging by the thread of the non-existence of the virus, they're particularly vulnerable to fear and rage caused by any suggestion that their Fantasyland isn't real. Wearing a mask makes them fear going poof into non-existence.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213809789
Jeebo
5. Thanks for articulating what I've been thinking for years.
I refer to the Faux Fantasyland, of course. The mask situation is a very recent manifestation of that phenomenon.
Every time I hear one of those polls that puts Biden ahead 52 percent to 39 percent, I always think, What the HELL is wrong with that 39 percent? Are those people INSANE or what? What you wrote explains what's wrong with those 39 percent.
-- Ron
Windy City Charlie (621 posts)
6. Exactly
None of this is real to them. I've had a few conversations with such. Everything's a conspiracy and a hoax, and every time I have an answer for their conspiracy, they're always moving the goal posts.
Mariana
11. It's like a circuit breaker trips in their minds
to prevent them from even considering anything that might make them change their views, even a little tiny bit. If you present them with facts, arguments, or even questions that might challenge their ideas, they instantly change the subject to something else. From what I've seen it's entirely unconscious and automatic. They don't even realize they're doing it.