THE HISTORY PROFESSOR’S CONFESSION

Back in 2021 some boy’s mother went out and shot a school security guard in the head – because he hadn’t let the kid into class without the required face mask. The shooter was given a life sentence.

What we fail to remember is that back then there was a life or death reason for wearing them. If you didn’t wear a face mask you would infect everyone else with a deadly infection they called Covid, or Covid 19. Historians are not sure why the 19, but it could be the year it started, or, more likely, there had been 18 outbreaks before then.

Either way, that reason does not apply now. It’s easy to forget that the 21st century was far from disease free. Words like cancer, malaria, HIV, and flu sound strange to us, but at one time they were a constant and painful reality.

And we have pictures and film in the academy archives showing that before 2020 most people were happily going about in public without their face covered. This was apparently no big deal. Nobody took it as a flirtatious thing, nobody was embarrassed, and you see whole families out together, none of them with face masks covering their mouth and nose area. And by the way those are simply the correct terms.

We have many pictures of families sitting around a table eating together, in public, with apparently no indication that this is unusual or daring, or offensive. Eating and drinking was not a private matter, and it was unencumbered by hoods or screens.

Sure, faces were used to sell products. It’s notable that advertising images of nude faces were among the first to be banned, but it’s arguable that this was more about encouraging face masks for health reason than for reasons of morality. My point is that what we feel is pornographic now was, only a century ago, perfectly harmless and normal. It may be hard to accept, but even heads of state, religious clergy, school-teachers and law enforcement operatives routinely were seen without face coverings of any kind – in public – with no criticism or judgement. It was a time of innocence, in that way.

It’s true that many people wore eye coverings, and it’s been said that this shows a degree of modesty, but I would argue that this too was more about shielding the eyes from the harmful effects of the sun, because it is also clear that a century ago there could be long periods without cloud cover, almost anywhere. We read of regular information campaigns to make people smear a cream over all skin that was thought to screen the skin from solar ultraviolet light. The really interesting thing about this was it clearly was intended for every inch of the body, including not just arms and legs, back and breasts but the face too. In fact especially the face.

Again there is archived photographic and video evidence, which I have seen, legally in the course of my research, that shows massive crowds including families, covering coastal beach areas, all with almost no covering at all save for the eye covering. The eye coverings were even marketed as “sun-glasses”, which just reinforces the idea that they were about sun protection, and not modesty.

Face coverings first became popular  as a way of showing off and expressing the wearer’s wealth and artistic taste around 2022.  This is clear from the rising pricing structure and marketing, and the fact that they didn’t really become widespread until they were made attractive and desirable. In the example at the top of this article there was clearly some kind of law making the wearing compulsory and one family was so outraged at being compelled to that they shot the enforcement operative. So was already compulsory in 2022, apparently, but became also fashionable and a lucrative business from that time on. 

Ironically, the word modesty has now come to describe something arguably in some sense far from modest. The degree of glamour and expense and pride associated with face coverings is arguably as obscene as wearing nothing at all. Those who can’t afford the best masks are despised, while those who model the cutting edge fashions are lauded like gods. This is in my view immoral.

The activists know they are being provocative by perversely covering their chests while totally exposing their faces but behind the political anarchy and lawlessness they have a valid point to make. They don’t refer to the historic precedent of course, since the 2040 Big Wipe left only the few hard copy remnants of historic records in academic archives. But I am in a position to refer to them and my stated view is now that these anarchists should be listened to. Hence my undignified arrest.

It is for this so-called crime that I am being held against my will and charged with many things that have no reasonable proof. I am not anti-global-federation, nor am I subversive, nor am I perverted nor psychologically defective. I am merely reporting on what I have seen. Since the academy has been razed to the ground it cannot be corroborated other than by my my fellow academics, from whom strangely I have heard nothing. I respectfully ask that you make more attempts to contact them.

L.C. May 2129