Science-fiction readers among you may have had a scene from a novel coming to your mind, lately. It has been to mine.
It must have been more than two decades ago that I read the Lisa Goldstein novel having this closing scene:
The tyrant who has persecuted mask-wearers finds one of their masks in his hands.
He tries it on.
Whether he then sees the world clearly, at last, or sees himself clearly — or whether Goldstein makes either aspect plain — memory fails to tell me.
The memory, though, does help bring to the fore this thought: that in fomenting rebellion against those state governments which have adopted lock-down methods to mitigate contagion's impact, our unmasked president is, indeed, persecuting mask-wearers.
Cheers . . .
