Thinking a lot about Americans refusing to wear masks. At first I just chalked it up to stupidity and selfishness, but on further consideration I think it is bc Americans have no healthy relationship with death.

By inventing nursing homes we've moved the infirm, frail, and aged to places where we can't see them.

We also glorify youth culture (something that is definitely not a thing in Europe or Asia), and modern Americans have never experienced war on our home soil (besides Hawaii), endangerment from the environment isn't something we fear?

It actually reminds me of @martinhaegglund 's work where if you accept you will die and have no eternal afterlife, then you would probably want your life on earth to be as full of meaning/connection as possible.

I was really struck by the beauty of Dia de los Muertos where families remember and mourn the family members and friends they had lost.

In America, through anecdotes here on Twitter, it has sounded like if you suffer a loss you have one month to grieve and then are supposed to act normal again. Where it's a miscarriage, a parent, a child, a spouse.

Even though deep and irrevocable loss changes us fundamentally.

Unf I don't have any better ideas than to make it socially taboo not to wear a mask in public bc Americans' relationship with death is not going to change overnight.

Just as voting for Trump is voting for their paradigm of white supremacy. Not wearing a mask is their way of being in denial that death could come for them and their loved ones.