Thread by @BagTooth

Lately I’ve been thinking of butter vs margarine in the 80s / 90s as a kind of analogy for covid. Margarine was always bad for us, but it was marketed as healthier. I had a good friend whose family stuck with butter and knew back then that margarine was unhealthy.

This friend’s family always seemed smarter, more cultured, and more thoughtful than mine. Surely there were ways to know back then that margarine was actually worse for the body than butter, but there were also constant ads calling it “heart healthy” or whatever.

So my friend’s family had a broad enough information diet that they knew years before less informed people that margarine was worse.

So I’d expect now for similarly worldly, educated people to be covid aware. Even as things got worse and worse, more and more people gave up

on mitigations in the blue / lefty parts of the U.S., I always figured the people I knew like this family would stay informed and require masks at their events, be sure their local schools had air filters, etc.

Anyway, one of the parents from this family of my childhood friend, who I’ve so looked up to, recently posted a photo of a packed auditorium and said how great it was to see such-and-such for a “post pandemic” performance.

It just felt like a reminder that my vision for SOME people who aren’t grievously impacted by Covid to stay aware and contentious is no match for the propaganda war being waged on us all right now. There wasn’t a massive disinfo campaign around butter vs. margarine when I was

a kid. It didn’t impact every aspect of our lives. People would have their whole life, and just buy one product or another at the store. It didn’t matter to anyone’s health what any other person chose as their creamy bread lubricant.

So anyway. That’s a bummer. I was about to write that everyone caved whose life didn’t depend on Covid caution, but don’t we have a small handful on here who are still cautious AND healthy????? I would be very, very curious to know why they are like this!! The only people who

have hung on to some fucking morality, not to mention self preservation and general reading comprehension. I feel like most healthy-ish people who are covid cautious are aware of a risk factor like EDS, or had a previous bout of post viral illness. But yeah, anyone know of

people who are healthy and covid cautious??

The biggest betrayal to me is possibly the lack of critical thinking skills. I grew up around a lot of people who allegedly valued education (or did that just mean valued succeeding financially, which meant going to “good schools”?).

So, education, critical thinking skills, etc. Then we have this undeniably massive thing, and we get this sort of “eh you’ll probably be fine” public health messaging, and it’s “wonderful to be back in this crowded theatre”??! Like???

Why was I lectured for my whole life that learning history is important if you’re gonna hear a public health leader say “vulnerable people will fall by the wayside, but it’s generally cool or whatever” and go: “sweet, it’s cool!”

Thanks for joining me on this the-edible-has-kicked-in late night ramblie journey, friends. I think I actually answered my own question with a parenthetical. Did they “value education” or was that really code for “live somewhere with high property taxes and “good schools,”

so you can raise your kids in an elitist bubble and have them continue your legacy of privilege”? Sure, a lot of people in my home town did read and enjoy learning……. But they were more committed to their lifestyle than to fearlessly pursuing the truth no matter where it

led, including if it made them have to do socially unpopular things.

Damn, this contradiction has been like a grain of sand in my brain for ages!!! I had been coming to terms more and more lately with the hollowness of the settler-colonial dominant culture I grew up in.

But damn, like… to see the inherent bullshit in even people I have the very coziest memories of??? To see those people behave like this???????? Fucking damn.