Last weekend, as Iran launched missiles and drones on Israel, that coterie of pro-terrorist leftists Lenin once aptly titled “useful idiots” were launching protests in various American cities. One social media posting showed a group in Chicago learning Persian. They were learning marg bar Asra’eyl (“death to Israel”) and marg bar Amrika (“death to America”).

Americans are rightly repulsed by that vision. However, I noticed one thing about the video about which I have subsequently heard nothing. The twenty- and thirty-somethings enthusiastically chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel” were all wearing masks. Think about it: They facilely proclaim “death” to those they disagree with, but four years after the first COVID lockdown, they still cower behind masks. “Death to Israel!” “No death to me!”

I have to say, it makes me wonder. Riding most mornings on the subway, I’m struck by a very small “faithful remnant” still clinging to shots, “Science is Science” stickers, and masks. I’ve also noticed that most of them are young women. Why? I can’t believe that American women in that demographic cohort are particularly immuno-compromised or especially susceptible to whatever long or short Greek-letter variant of COVID is the maladie du jour. No doubt there may be the occasional young person for whom additional protective measures are indicated, but the commonality of such measures that are visible on the average college campus makes one ask: what’s up? Is it the heritage of helicoptering parenting, of childhoods shielded from skinned knees and mental triggers? Is it the perpetuation of overprotective parents traveling with handy bottles of industrial strength antiseptic and handwash?

I recently read two new, provocative but vital books: Brad Wilcox’s Get Married and Tim Carney’s Family Unfriendly. Both books voice a counter-cultural message: get married and have kids. It’s good for you, good for your community, and good for your country.

That said, we know young people are not getting married and, if they are, they’re doing it at ever-later ages. And whereas in earlier times marriage tended more seamlessly to move into parenthood, that’s not true today.

Masks may be symptomatic of that problem. Getting married is necessarily and inherently a social act: “it takes two.” But being willing to be social and being individualistically isolated are polar opposites. What symbolic message is sent by a mask?

The dance between the sexes is complex and it is sensory. Contrary to the unrealism of those who would reduce that dance to a verbal agreement (or maybe even a written waiver) of cold exchange of consent, real people know that bodily and facial signals are also a key part of that communication. You gotta wonder which is the more realistic opening question: “who is she?” or “who is that masked woman?” Do masks help marrying?

And, if normal life comes to be regarded as inherently and potentially pathological, is it not likely that such a skewed vision infects other parts of life? Since Dobbs, abortion advocates have pushed the propaganda that normal pregnancy is life-threatening and that the “healthcare procedure” called abortion is “safer” than childbirth. Those claims are not true but they are shaping the narrative. How might young women, shielded by overprotective parents from the “threats” of normal life, have imbibed that fear of living? How might it inhibit openness to parenthood? The mask is not just a prophylactic against disease. It may indicate a fear of life, especially of that messy biological life that its illusion of antiseptic sterility fosters.

I would certainly not suggest a facile, one-to-one correspondence between the masks I see on young people and marriage/parenthood. But I have to wonder whether those masks may not be symbolic expressions of underlying mindsets that — explicitly or not — color attitudes towards dating, marriage, and parenthood.

Among the arguments used by those who wanted to keep mask mandates in place long after the average American deemed the worst of the pandemic over was the argument of “charity” — do it (and take your shot) out of “love of neighbor.” I suspect some of those still in masks do so because they deem their neighbors uncharitable or untrustworthy. But I do not understand how those chanters are so susceptible to disease as to require masks but are sufficiently immune to assemble in close proximity at a leftist demonstration. As at some of the George Floyd “protests,” certain diseases seem to manifest particular gains-of-function in terms of virulence depending on the political surroundings. (Maybe Dr. Fauci can fund research into that phenomenon). It’s a paradox, though, that those expecting “charitable” masking by others appear to lack charity when it comes to wishing other people marg bar.

Jean-Paul Sartre is (in)famously known for the maxim l’enfer, c’est les autres (hell is other people). In the measure that mask mania promotes the fear of other living human beings — at least subconsciously — does the persistence of masks advance Sartre’s conviction? Isn’t that the paradox of posing in the “death-shielding” mask while chanting “death” to others?