Missed yesterday's post due to an extended shopping trip and mental exhaustion following our contributions to keeping the economy humming.
Kathleen and I roused ourselves enough to attend granddaughter Grace's JV basketball home opener at Arapahoe HS, where we saw one of the silliest examples of "mask theater" I have come across.
By mask theater, I mean the idea (or at least suspicion) that the act of wearing or not wearing a mask has much more to do with state of mind than physical protection from the virus. It is similar to the theater we have come to see when we fly: shoes must come off to be carefully scanned... all tracing back to one hapless terrorist-wanna-be attempting to damage a plane with a shoe bomb.
Maybe I have not paid close enough attention, but I have never read or heard of any similar attempt in 15 years plus, but the ritual continues.
We know it's mostly theater when we experience, as we did during Thanksgiving week travel, TSA agents treating everyone as if they were TSA Pre-approved. During Thanksgiving week, Denver TSA agents waved everyone through without having them remove their shoes or place electronics in a separate bin, etc. There had been too much bad publicity for the airport over the preceding months about incredibly long lines to get through security. So rules were bent.
Sorry about the short detour there, but all the athletes who played last night wore masks, but they were tucked under their chins. This included the referees. Many in the stands didn't even go that far, simply dispensing with masks altogether.
Evidently the players and coaches were ordered to wear masks, but were also informed that HOW they wore them was their choice. The masks ended up being weird additions to their uniforms and (I guess?) met the letter of the law, or recommendation, or policy, or... something. Maybe next game they will wear them as armbands?
The effect was clear. Rules and 'best practices' are flexible at Arapahoe (maybe throughout the state?) and those who (as we did) wore their masks correctly could be forgiven for wondering just how far behind the zeitgeist we were.
The zeitgeist -- or defining spirit or mood of the times -- appears to be that everyone has had enough of the pandemic and that we simply need to figure out a way to live with yet another danger (like brain damage from motorcycle riding or fellow drivers clearly texting at stop lights). We're Americans, damn it, and our freedom cannot be abridged in any way (well, beyond seat belt laws and required immunizations for our children to attend school and speed limits and payroll taxes and... the list is quite long).
When we got home, we watched the Iowa-Iowa State basketball game (a debacle for the Hawks). Perhaps it's just Iowa, now dominated by rabid reactionaries and conspiracy theorists, but there wasn't a mask in sight in that crowded, sweaty arena of screaming fans.
Honestly, I prefer the blatant and public to the game playing and lip service. Live your truth, I guess.
Maybe everyone in Hilton had been fully vaccinated, so why bother with masks?
Ha! Ha! Ha!
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