You may have seen viral video of children burning face coverings while adults cheer them on and take photos and video. Someone’s gonna have to explain it to me, because I’m not sure what it means.
A group of parents urged their children to burn masks on the steps of the Idaho State Capitol on Saturday, videos show, in a state that has never had a statewide mask mandate.
“Destroy them! Feed them to the fire! We don’t want them in our world anymore!” young children are heard shouting as they grab handfuls of surgical and cloth masks and toss them into a barrel of flames. Adults in the background cheer them on.
I guess I’m missing it.
But maybe I was never born to understand it. Here’s the clip.
According to News 18, the protest was organized, in part, by Republicans in Idaho’s state legislature
The protest was organized in part by North Idaho Representative Heather Scott and Representative Dorothy Moon, who have thrown their support behind the mask burning protests.
And the wingnut husband of one of those reps also chirped in to make sure everyone knew he was important, too.
Darr Moon, husband of Republican Idaho state representative Dorothy Moon, told Mr Olmos: "We're standing here today to reign back government, to reestablish our Republican form of government, a government that has balance between the branches."
.Maybe if this pandemic was really over, I could see something like this. A joyful “burning” of masks. Hell, I know i’d like to do the same thing, when the time comes. But these kids, and their parents, never had a mandate to wear masks in the first place. And probably more importantly, the pandemic isn’t over. Not at all.
So the question I have is—what are these parents thinking? And why are they thinking it?
They’re not doing this out of some “happy gesture” celebrating the “end” of the pandemic. They’re doing it at the state capitol, to make a political statement. With their own children.
That just seems awful, sick and tragic.