I'm back and honestly, I'm only madder than I was two days ago because I've had time to mull the bullshit over. Link, for those of y'all out of the know.
It appalls me that any community of people that claim to be marxists, that claim to follow the scientific method in all things that would contribute to the betterment of the world we're forced to share, that claim to be really out here performing praxis and making differences in their communities; it fucking galls me that a community like everything I just described can still look at a still on-going pandemic and still have such a tacit anti-mask stance.
More of you admitted to not masking than I'm comfortable with and y'know what, maybe we could've left it at that. It'd have been a form of liberalism to not dig my heels in on that and take a swing at that mindset because again: I took on a new disability in the wake of a COVID infection. My partner took on a new disability in the wake of their infection. I was put in a hospital bed, my grandparents were put on respirators, so many members of my family and my community were genuinely out of commission and a good number of us really had to question if we were going to make it to see the next morning under those infections-- but maybe, we could've left it at that.
But then, I have to see you people not only trying to justify it, but taking up for smuggards who just think it's all some big fuckin joke, like they're their favorite podcast crackerbro getting to have their own personal Matt Christman moment. I expect "u mad bro" smuglord fuckery out of crackers who can't even be trusted to properly wipe their asses after they shit, or to wash their hands after doing so. And worse, you expect me to not be heated about smug-assed crackers making light of genuinely-disabling infections after the fact.
I stand ten motherfucking toes down on what I said to Cantaloupe Ass and Ghost of Faso; any plague rat motherfucker who wants to take issue with how I feel about people who won't mask can catch the same cases my partners and my family caught. It's a whole lot of you motherfuckers that are so unserious, so emphatically not my comrades that it sickens me seeing you call yourselves so.
Do better. Deuces.
Uphold Amerikan Pharaoh thought.
The Western left, such as it is, has really shown their liberalism when it comes to COVID. What should have been a time for us to shine was dominated by a small liberal anti-mask sentiment, then a larger liberal anti-anti-mask reaction, and finally liberal normalization and a much higher anti-mask sentiment. We should be 100% top of caring for community, organizing in community, calling out liberal hypernormalization and building from it.
Instead, we have mostly seen opportunism. COVID-cautious folks (which is to say, correct folks) a minority in orgs, sometimes listened to at first. Orgs trying to say that wearing masks alienates you from the proletariat (lmao). And then people who are understandably tired of being the odd one out using this as justification to be massively inconsiderate, even dangerous.
There is still plenty to organize around, though the lightning strike moment has passed for now. Paxlovid is $1400 for the uninsured in the US. There's currently a wave. There's a new, seemingly better vaccine and we could organize around access to it. There are locales trying to ban masks in order to crack down on Palestinian solidarity protests. Public health aside, normalizing masks is good for our ability to safely carry out actions. It's not out of the cards for lightning to strike again and give us dual pandemics, as COVID damages immune systems and public health had adapted to a "fuck it" status quo, flirting with bird flu for no reason other than a poultry lobby. Will your org be ready to agitate? Or did it alienate the people with the most knowledge and investment in this topic?
Promote correct positions (COVID-safe) and reject dominant liberalism (nornalization), especially in our own spaces!