The Great Unmasking

 ("The Great Unmasking")

Mr. Brooks writes of "The Great Unmasking" as an act of liberation, as an opening of endless possibilities, as a call to the young on their day of graduation to free themselves from self imposed restraints that weigh them down.

But after the past year, after the past five years, none of us, not even the young, are young anymore. We have been unmasked throughout this desperate time, our prejudices and hatreds no longer covered in covert words and signals but revealed in the office of the presidency, in the halls of Congress on an incendiary January day, suffocatingly evident on the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds.

Today there is a freedom to do the ordinary that, in the moment, seems anything but. An ability to say "I can breathe", unburdened by the fear of death lurking in the shadows. But the "Great Unmasking" comes too with the knowledge that we, as a nation, are filled with those who, when their masks are off, do nothing but denigrate and diminish, who act to destroy and demolish.

Freedom, as they say, is not free. And what we reveal, as we unmask, is something we can no longer pretend we don't see. While we cannot be blind to the light of tomorrow we dare not be blind to yesterday's darkness.