Sorry “Patriots”, the World Is About To Change…Again

Maybe I shouldn’t think what I do when I see a “Don’t Tread on Me” license plate or flag… probably not healthy…mentally speaking.

It’s not the historical misuse of the Gadsten Flag of 1775 that bothers me, given that flag had nothing to do with individualism or civil liberty. Not even that the symbol and phrase glorify aggression as a means to deal with irrational fears of insecurity, inferiority, and impotence (among others).

That it’s embraced nearly exclusively by Conservative, white men in America is somewhat troubling since it has been picked up, in many parts of the Country, like a baton from those who have had to let go of their “Stars and Bars”. The sound of dog whistles is deafening.

No, what truly bothers me the most when I see that license plate or the little flags attached to automobile side windows, or the banner proudly hanging from a front porch are my thoughts of the children of these “patriots” who are encouraged to have a world view of intractable inertia.

Hopefully, with a dollop of education, a spoonful of experience, and a squirt of empathy those children might live long enough to chuckle at their father’s paranoid antagonism, while simultaneously shaking their heads, possibly uttering the words “poor mom”.

65 percent of Americans today are under the age of 44. None of them have any idea what the world is like without packaging that has one or more levels of security and, I believe, don’t think anything of it. I, on the other hand, occasionally muse over those days when I could just unscrew a bottle of ketchup and pour it out, instead of surgically removing a band of hard plastic around the neck and then ever so slowly pry a sticky tag off the mouth of the bottle.

How long ago did that change take place…the 1960s, 1950s? No, it was actually in the 1980s, beginning September 1982 to be exact. One event, the unsolved “Tylenol Murders”, led to changes that impact every person in this Country, maybe the world.  Seven people died as a result of intentional product tampering. So do you think your Conservative-Libertarian lives are not going to be involuntarily adjusted after the deaths of more than a quarter-million people?

Everyone can speculate on what those changes will be, from access to healthcare to chest bumps, however let me suggest one thing that isn’t going away.

From now on you will never be able to enter a hospital without a face covering. That will probably also be true of clinics, doctor’s offices, physical therapy workplaces, and maybe even dental offices. Essentially anyplace that deals with health services. No telling where else masks might be mandatory, movie theaters, pharmacies, indoor school events…who knows?

Hopefully, it will become common practice for anyone who knows they are sick with a communicable illness, albeit minor (a cold, e.g.), to wear a mask where ever they go, as is already being done in much of the world.

So if you think that wearing a face covering labels you as a Socialist Liberal and violates your inalienable civil liberties…get over it, and get used to it. Just get ready to be carrying a mask around with you 24/7. Your fidelity to “individual patriotism” doesn’t work in a world that includes other people.

Your children or grandchildren will probably never think twice about putting on a face covering when and where appropriate, anymore than they question the security of their food or medicine. They may also never know how uninformed and thoughtless members of a free society could be. Now wouldn’t that be nice.