It occurs to me that the karen/ken hysteria, and the anti-maskers psychosis, reminds me of the

[niyad]

witch burnings. Crazed people, clearly under some pernicious influence, going around making bizarre accusations, behaving in completely hysterical ways. Pitchforks and pyres next?

[Demonaut]

1. hard to understand, I know they don't

[Nevilledog]

2. Fuck.... Maybe we should check our wheat crops

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Yup, maybe it's ergot poisoning!

[niyad]

4. I have been maintaining for years that there is something in the water. But the grain crops

Should be checked as well. Some bizarre mutation that affects reichwingers. (There is some evidence that their brains are wired differently. Maybe a weird genetic marker??)

[Nevilledog]

7. They're missing something in their DNA sequences

[tanyev]

5. Wow. Interesting correlation.

There certainly seems to be some kind of mass hysteria right now.

I used to wonder how a well educated and technologically advanced country (for the time) could be taken over by Adolf Hitler. Sadly, that’s no longer a mystery.

[BamaRefugee]

6. Those same people are gonna sign up for the ICE immigrant hunting license

[niyad]

9. A truly frightening prospect.

[applegrove]

8. The followers of a cult getting their self worth by taking on policing and

science roles themselves. They are not police or health experts. There is some emptiness in their lives, likely caused by the GOP gutting middle class jobs and union ones over 40 years, etc... that they need to fill with these false roles they feel compelled to act out. Feeling compelled by a psychopath or psychopatic movement is a really strong magnitude of emotion than you have ever felt before with : "i must do this" atrached. And then they get some self esteem from those actions. So they are locked in. And telling them the need to wear a mask just robs them if that compelled by the psychopaths role and they get angry because you are taking away their identity.

[SledDriver]

10. I've seen Covid described as a blood disease

Maybe their hysterics are some weird side effect of infection, one that doesn't manifest in the usual way with aches and breathing issues, but maybe affects their minds and makes them crazy? I keep seeing videos of people losing their shit over having to wear a mask in a store, and i don't recall ever seeing people go nuts over something like that before. Like off the deep end losing their shit throwing a hissy tantrum and getting crazed and violent over a having to wear a mask. Maybe the virus affects the brain and zombifies them in order to spread itself further and this is how it manifests? It does seem as though they are under some pernicious influence.

Either that, or maybe these are just Trump cultists coming to the realization that their orange jesus isn't the second coming and they lack the mental tools to deal with it in a rational way and are lashing out?

[niyad]

13. Both extremely interesting hypotheses. We are only beginning to see some of the other effects

Of this truly insidious plague (the viral one. The political one we have been observing for some time)

[gratuitous]

11. They're not going to go quietly

A lot of these people have lived their entire lives in a cocoon or bubble or sanctuary that assured them they were superior to other people. Reality is impinging on their chrysalis, and they don't like it. Granting other people legitimacy or agency is not necessarily a problem in and of itself (they're not racists or bigoted or prejudiced), but when "those people" start trespassing on their turf, Something Must Be Done.

[BigmanPigman]

12. They are products of a generation of Fux Ruse watchers.

[niyad]

14. I do like that name!

[delisen]

15. I think the Karen meme is being used by the would-be witch burners

It is a sexist term as is the term witch and denotes women rather than men as the sinners.
It seems to go straight back to Puritan New England. The judges of the women were the powerful male rulers aided by the "good" women of the community who
signaled their virtue by following the patriarchs lead.

I haven't seen much usage of "Ken."

Puritan New England was a patriarchal society as is our modern day society. Patriarchal societies tend to see power as a "natural" order of a hierarchy of men

A lot of time has been wasted normalizing Donald Trump who is basically the Lord of Misrule-a concept of Western European Middle Ages.

If if were a female Donald Trump that Putin had managed to install in the Oval Office, she would've been gone within 6 months.

[C_U_L8R]

16. History is filled with village idiots.

Unfortunately for us, they've been breeding.