I live in a small town, and unlike many people, I have no desire to move to a big city. During the fall, our town makes money on farmer's markets, we have fish fry days, and we have a big event called the strawberry festival (nevermind that I'm not sure we even still grow strawberries around here, this is an event that attracts pwople from miles around). During weeks where there is a BBQ, a metallic pig (it's a repurposed stove) gets rolled out from somewhere. It has a blacksmith. It has weavers. It has a lively folk art movement. It's a cute and quiet town with a wooden cutout statue of what I assume is George Washington and his wife (probably not).
You ever played the game Mother 3? Probably not, because it wasn't officially translated. It revolves around the plot of this town slowly getting subverted. At the start, they don't even use money, then after a major crisis, we see barter. Then some trader comes in with a "happy box" and we see the emergence of an economy. Gradually things get darker and darker until the town is abandoned and the remaining people have their doors all locked. Everyone moved to the city and it's just kinda gloomy and depressing.
During COVID time, some unelected goons probably from the state have taken to masking historic figures. They're also vandalizing and tearing down statues. In bigger cities, they may have posters of Adams or Lincoln wearing a mask (which already annoys me because it is completely unfactual) but here in our small town, you walk down the main street and there are cute little wooden cutouts (under normal circumstances) who are now forced to obey state edicts that didn't exist during their time (they had enough to deal with paying taxes for playing cards, tea, and other things). Awhile back I also plopped grass in Martha's mask (the idea being that she was breathing in stale moldy air but not only was it never noticed but it actually made her look like she was breathing), but after a vacation that kinda barely was (couldn't go inside shops, mainly just walked around outside except for one concert in a park), I'd had enough, and on the way back from the post office, I took off George's mask.
So here it is below. If you all wanna call the police on me for vandalism, I'm the one officer. But is it vandalism? When a statue gets BLM graffiti on it, is the person who undoes it a vandal? Probably not. Not unless our laws are now screwed up. But the making Martha breathe in moldy air, yeah that kinda was (it's not noticeable though).
I don't think this double standard of freely allowing some oafs from the state department to put a mask on something that someone else painted is okay, yet getting rid of it is not. But that's why I'm making a poll.
The thing is, I'm not sure whether I want our small town in the middle of nowhere (aside from being county seat and part ofa road to other small towns) to be a mouthpiece of policies that it doesn't necessarily agree with. This whole masking historical (or at least colonial, if they aren't in fact George and Martha Washington) figures smacks of heavy propaganda. This is a small town, but more importantly, this is OUR small town, and it's getting propagandized by its own cute wooden cutouts.
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