Note: From our former editor, Michael Jay Tucker

I am increasingly concerned by the people who are protesting the quarantine. They are, well, troubling…not because I disagree with their position (which I do) but because of the fury with which they state it.

Twice now, anti-quarantine protesters have entered their states’ capitols with their guns in tow. Once there, they were confrontational to the say the least.

Take a look at the images below, which come from Mr. Dan Zak’s Facebook page. Look at them closely, particularly the one of the man yelling at the policeman. Look at the hatred and rage in that face.

It has always been clear, of course, that there is a great deal more going on here than just objections to the shelter-in-place policy. The fact that the protests are being funded and organized at least partly by far right wing organizations, and that the protestors have somehow conflated their opposition to shelter-in-place policies with the Second Amendment (as though a virus cares about the Constitution, or anything, for that matter, beyond infecting cells), and that the demonstrations have taken on an anti-media and anti-foreigner tinge (“Go To China!”) show that a variety of dissatisfactions are being aired herd.

But, that said, I can’t look at these faces and not think that at least some of these people seem to really, and truly want to kill somebody. And that’s all. They just want to kill somebody. And they just want someone to give them a reason to do it.

And that’s scary.

 


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Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

 

Tucker’s most recent book is Padre: To The Island, a meditation on life and death based on the passing of his own parents.

 

 

 

 

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