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This is no country for old men — but it never was, or hasn’t been for a long time… This pandemic is that it is a plague to the elderly, a danger to the middle age, a cold to healthy young people… but because we don’t want to admit that many elderly people are already forgotten, boxed away, institutionalized — dead-to-us — we have decided to pretend that this pandemic somehow means that 25 year olds can’t go to a bar or restaurant. Society has fabricated a myth of a caring collective, an ethically integrated whole — but we were atomized and selfish… and remain so. Virtue signaling fans the waves of panic — wear a mask even when you’re in your own car you asshole! — so that spiritually, physically, emotionally, and socially lazy people can feel like they’re on the right side of history, so that they have someone else to blame. New sanitation taboos spring up because productive younger people are irrationally afraid for themselves — and thus need to use ‘protection of the vulnerable’ as cover for their own timidity.
