I recently saw a news story that contained this little gem:
“Like anything else, the more you kind of present it as the norm, the more they get used to it,” said Dr. Tony Giordano of Pediatric Health Care Associates.
The topic was whether kids should be made to wear masks in school, but it really applies to any attempt to domesticate people — from getting them to hand over their money, to getting them to ask for permission in order to make a living, to getting them to accept encroachments on fundamental rights like self-defense, privacy, worship, and so on.
Briefly, if you can get people to think that something is normal, you can keep them from considering whether it’s right.
And — as with other kinds of domestic animals, from puppies to pigs — the earlier you begin the process, the better it works.
From that perspective, the real question facing us isn’t how we’re going to re-open public schools, but whether we should at all.
