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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36583 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Hey, I'm sorry you went through that.

We managed to be friends with both rabid vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, but it wasn't always easy. I even (gasp) played volleyball with some unvaccinated. They were fairly young and healthy, I was vaccinated and healthy. I don't share your anger at the mask mandates, but I see where it comes from after hearing how your own family treated you (especially given you'd had it, which was generally thought to be better than a vaccination, I thought).

I think something about the fear of death, and maybe plagues, triggered something deeply primal in a lot of people ("broke their brains") and we got a lot of extremism out of something that was comparatively mild (especially once a vaccine was available).

I wish more people were like you, then. I've had too many conversations in which people claimed to be indifferent to others' vaccination status on stated liberal principles and then proceeded to completely cut the unvaccinated out of their lives as soon as they learned of their status.

And yeah, I suppose brains are easily broken, on every level of society. And normally I'd want to stand back and observe and give my best judgement on the matter, but as per the objective of this subthread, I'm somewhat beyond reason when it comes to this topic. That kind of panic being infused into my hitherto tranquil private life just seems like too much of an act of aggression, like norms being broken the breaking of which should not be tolerated.

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