Marg bar, masks, and mania

Last weekend, as Iranian missiles descended on Israel, some Americans were standing with terrorism.  Social media featured a Chicago group happily being taught Persian phrases for “Death to Israel!” They even asking how to add “Death to America!”

Anti-war activists in Chicago learn to chant “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” in Farsi.

Read more from The FP’s @Olivia_Reingold: https://t.co/1jMM5ydhpp pic.twitter.com/z7T9AKNrF9

— The Free Press (@TheFP) April 14, 2024

Think about that: people in America wishing – and wanting to know how to wish – “death to America!”

Most commentators on that video noted that paradox.  None noted two other things in the video.

The first is “what does it mean?”  After the crowd enthusiastically chants those slogans, somebody finally asks, “what does it mean?”  One might have expected that question to come first, but at least it came out.  What’s telling is the leader’s response (at 0:40).  He says it has two meanings, “depending on who’s asking.”  Marg bar can mean “death to” or “down with.” 

Depending on who’s asking,  I guess “down with” can include “six feet down under.”

That word game is not new.  Apologists for leftist supporters of the “Iranian revolution” have played that verbal shell game for years, insisting that fanatical crowds chanting marg bar Amrika!  were merely proponents of a multipolar world.

My second observation on the video are the masks.  Almost everybody in that video is masked.  I count at least nine.

We’re four years past COVID.  Most Americans long ago figured out – even when our “public health experts” were still urging quadruple masking while showering home alone – that the masks could go.  But, on my morning subway ride, I still notice a hardcore “faithful remnant” still clinging to masks, “science is science” tote bags, and even gloves.  What I find strangest, however, is that: most of them are twenty- to thirty-something women.  That observation is reinforced by walking through an urban campus when school’s in session.

Now, I don’t doubt some young people may have particular health challenges, but I find it hard to believe that the average twenty-something college female is particularly immuno-compromised.  I’d like to see the “science” behind that.

I note these phenomena for two reasons.  First, apart from the fever swamps of some social media, the epicenter of the “down with America” anti-Israel fervency is U.S. college campuses.  We saw that last week — and this week — at Columbia University in New York.  Take a look at the Columbia University “protestors” rightly arrested for trespass: it’s the next gaggle of “masked men” … and women.

Our mask-toting crowd chanting “death to America” is, four years after COVID, still cowering behind masks.  “Death to America!”  “No death to me!”

John Paul II spoke of the “culture of death.”  Has the culture of death so permeated the modern mind — especially the leftist modern mind — that we can wish marg bar to others while desperately fencing one’s self off from the “mortality” posed by normal human presence and interaction?

Take a further look at that video.  The “death to” crowd is masked, but it’s not socially distanced.  Most charitably, that diminishes the effectiveness of the mask. 

So, why are you clinging to your Linus oral security blanket while sitting in proximate solidarity to chant “marg bar?” 

Yeh, we know from the various vandalism “protests” of 2020 that “leaders” of very blue jurisdictions indulged that COVID had variable virulence gains-of-function.  Sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God!” in church and the risk of COVID spread was worse than having Typhoid Mary as a kissin’ cousin.  Chant “Marg bar Omrika!” on the street and COVID suddenly lost its contagion, especially among one’s fellow illuminati.  And, of course, it was all grounded in public health “science” in which we “believe.” 

I wonder if Anthony Fauci will entertain any grant proposals on “Selective Viral Gain/Loss-of-Function as a Correlate of Political Correctness?” 

One can understand if the crowd in the Chicago video was hiding behind masks out of shame for their wishing death on others.  That they are hiding behind masks out of likely exaggerated fear for their own hides, one cannot.  It’s time to stop indulging self-centered advocates of terrorists chanting their own death wishes. 

Images: Screen shot from CBS News video