By Max Eden
Senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute
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If you didn't know this, then you might want to read beyond the "mainstream" corporate media. It took until December 27, 2021 for a major media figure, Jan Crawford, to declare the "crushing impact that our COVID policies have had on young kids and children" as one of the most underreported stories of the year.
Why haven't we heard the voices of children directly? Perhaps because their voices haven't fit the corporate media's preferred partisan narrative.
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But last week, a bright young teenager named Addison stood up in front of her school board in Naperville, Illinois, to speak for herself and for her generation. She didn't speak in the woke-propaganda-Newspeak that the "mainstream" media loves to amplify. Rather, she spoke from the heart with wit and verve, pulling off a magisterial performance of satirical gratitude:
"I am here to say thank you. Thank you, school board and Superintendent Bridges for not using your power to push back on the state of Illinois about the mask mandate. We get to wear masks all day, every day now. Isn't that great!
Thank you for forcing me to wear a mask so I no longer have to brush my teeth or wash my face. Seriously, my life is so much easier. I don't wear glasses, but if I did I would thank you for concealing my eyes with the fog from my breath, too. Thank you for teaching students that our own mental health is much less important than making triple-vaccinated adults feel safe.
Thank you for teaching me that even the most minute risk is not worth taking. Life is best when you take the path of least resistance with no chance of failure—and definitely no chance of catching a cold.
Thank you for not reaching out to the students to ask how we feel about masks. Because, if you did, the majority of students would say that they hate masks. And then you might second guess your decision to make us wear them.
Thank you for allowing me to experience the anxiety associated with never seeing facial expressions.
Thank you for teaching us that we should never question authority or think critically, but instead, we should follow whatever the people in charge tell us to do. Obedience is best. I realize now that thinking for yourself is overrated, and not really necessary when you can just make decisions based on fear.
...
Thank you for pushing your irrational fears and anxieties on me. Because I didn't already have enough to worry about. I realize now how easy I had it when I only had to worry about my classes, my grades, the SAT and getting into college.
Thank you for teaching me that being a morally superior person only requires that I cover my face for eight hours a day. And that the most morally superior people wear two masks. Or even three masks! As you know, states around us—Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota (which have 2.5 times more students than Illinois)—don't force kids to wear masks. I am with you, though! These states are out of control. Recklessly putting kids at risk of misery and death every day. Masks work! Even if the states have the same outcomes as Illinois. Speaking of data, thank you for staying silent about masking despite the fact that COVID has a very high survival rate in kids my age. Who needs data anyway, though? We all know that it will never be safe to see anyone's face ever again.
Thank you for not challenging this irrational fear and ineffective COVID policy of masking. After all, of the $42 billion spent in research by the NIH, not one dollar went toward studying the mental health aspect of kids. I ask you: Don't give in. Stay strong. Stay courageous. Stay quiet. And let's keep masks on kids forever. Thank you."
Why haven't we heard more students speak out like Addison? In overshadowing the corporate media, there is social media. The "Metaverse" is transforming the world, as Marshall McLuhan predicted, into a "global village"—with none of the virtues, and all of the vices, of village life. Schools don't really teach that witch-hunting was not as much a Christian phenomenon as a village phenomenon. Villagers didn't persecute young women for actual witchcraft, but rather because of the bewitching power of their oppositional intelligence. Youthful, oppositional intelligence poses a threat to the sacred order.
As must be expected in today's global village, some adult women hunted Addison on Facebook. One woman named Nicole Hilfinger Laipple posted: "I'm just grossed out. The parenting is just unreal." Another woman named Autumn Geist replied: "same, girl."
In a fully civilized society such as Victorian England or pre-1960s America, such resentment is felt but neither spoken nor heard. If spoken, it would be properly heard and dismissed as reflecting a disordered soul. But in our woke village, these disordered impulses carry the weight of holy writ.
Any intelligent teenager must be acutely conscious that America's woke village elders have arrogated and perverted the moral authority of God. The Book of Numbers says: "The LORD is slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children."
America's woke village elders are quick to anger. They lack loving-kindness, but are keen to punish parents for the virtues of their children. The same disordered moral impulse that drives women like Nicole and Autumn to persecute bright teenage girls on Facebook can drive H.R. and DEI elders to persecute their fathers and mothers in the workplace. Villagers react to protect their social order—be it sacred or profane.
Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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