Striped Pajamas

 Content warning: Quite Serious today.

Herself speaks.

I saw a meme on FaceBook the other day, that made me think, I need to take a social media break. Or possibly filter a whole lot more people.

I won't post the image here, because it does NOT need to exist in any more places. I'll just describe it to you:

It's based on a still shot from the movie, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas: on the left side is the pale, emaciated boy in his dirt-covered, striped concentration camp uniform, sitting on the ground in the dust. On the right side a boy stands in a field of grass and looks across at the sitting boy; the standing boy has on a clean white shirt, clean knee-length shorts, socks and shoes. Between them in the photo is a post; barbed wire extends to the left from the post, showing the sitting boy to be enclosed behind the wire. 

You can find the photo online. You'll know the one. 

Superimposed over the heads of the boys, images of states: the concentration camp boy is "New Mexico", and the free boy is "Texas". The caption reads: "Exactly how it feels."

This is in reference to Texas lifting pandemic restrictions, while New Mexico maintains restrictions.

No.

No, no. no.

Really? Following pandemic restrictions -- wearing a mask, limiting the number of people in stores/businesses/restaurants at one time -- is somehow equivalent to being stripped of your humanity, torn from your family, starved, abused, and possibly gassed to death, solely for being a particular religion/ethnicity/minority? Putting a piece of cloth over your face and social distancing is equivalent to systematic genocide? 

No. 

The restrictions are designed to prevent loss of life. Yes, they can be inconvenient. Yes, there has been serious financial impact on businesses, individuals, the economy as a whole. It is a pandemic. Over 525,000 people HAVE DIED. This is a crisis of epic proportions, which we are all experiencing, and will continue to experience in new and terrible ways when restrictions are lifted too early.

I. Just. Cannot. 

Let's never use the Holocaust as part of a meme or a joke. Let's JUST NOT. Find some other way to express your dissatisfaction with the current state of things. 

Please. 

We shouldn't even have to ask.