COVID-19's Sister Plague

The Departure of Critical Thinking

A second plague afflicts America. Besides the COVID-19 virus, we have been stricken with a kind of mass delusion. It's on a level we haven't seen in years. There appears to be an emancipated departure from reason, from science, from reality. It's an epidemic.

Emotion-based belief may be the culprit. You can't disprove faith. Extremist belief fed by fear. No amount of evidence or presentation of facts can sway this passionate lack of logic. Belief in widespread election fraud. Belief in white supremacy. Belief in the heinous spread of socialism, communism, anarchism. A New World Order. Our morals, our freedom, our liberty, our guns... our humanity itself are all in jeopardy. Paranoia.

And there are more wild, wack-a-doo beliefs. Horror stories. Urban legends. Satanism. Pedophiles. Mind control. Black-eyed children. Lizard people.

Hey, conspiracies are fun. Exciting. Nothing beats a good yarn. Gorging on dark web fantasies beats the shit out of The Price is Right any day. They warm the cold grip of suburban ennui.

Our madness is not without precedent. The Salem Witch Trials in the 17th century. McCarthyism in the 1950s. The bogus claims of day-care child abuse and Satanic cults of the 1980s. Remember how demonic backmasking on rock'n'roll records secretly was poisoning our children's minds? And you can trace the dancing manias of the Middle Ages to the Disco craze of the 1970s.

But how do we fight this? Will our herd mentality reach herd immunity?

Focusing our efforts on better education should be a priority. Championing critical thought and the scientific method may be our way out of this crisis. Despite the lack of confidence in voting, it is precisely that - the vote - that we can thank today for getting The Great Divider Donald Trump out of The White House. And it will be our power to vote that will fill The Capitol with pro-education legislators. Local and national.

Teachers, who are both blessed and burdened with the greatest responsibility of any career there is, face a criminal lack of support from both our community and our government. May future history one day show that it was our teachers who were the vaccine that helped break the fever of our current bout with mass hysteria.