I look at Bernier and other anti-mask protestors and I can't stop thinking about the way that ideas about Christian suffering changed in the new world, how Christians went from being persecuted to persecuting and suffering became about having to exist around unbelievers.

That shows up in all of this, and while I'm not accusing these people of being Christian, the ideas are embedded in whiteness regardless of whether people are religious or not. This idea that having to exist with unbelievers, whatever your belief is, equates oppression.

And of course this demonstrates the failure of the police state to keep us safe. By constantly framing it as rules with punishments instead of caretaking to avoid illness these protests and this mindset are inevitable. The police state is particularly ineffective against it's own

ps. Christians went from persecuted to persecuting long before they arrived in the new world. pls don't read this as me buying the "persecuted believers fleeing to safety" narrative that gets peddled as a move to innocence. It just took a particular turn when it arrived here.