The article, My 6-year old has coronavirus. I’m trying to stay calm.”, begins right out of the gate with this sentence:
“I’ve spent the last 11 months filling my children with fear.”
This is all you really need to know about the tone of the piece, and the type of person who wrote it. The rest of the article is nothing more than an expansion of that evil and abusive sentiment, detailing the many ways in which she accomplished this task, and it ends with the author’s 6-year old son eventually contracting COVID-19. The child is now in fear for his life, thanks to the neurotic, and overtly narcissistic, behavior of his mother. It’s a dismal thing to read, and it’s even worse imagining someone sitting down to type it up and submit the ghoulish work. It really gives the reader an insight into the mindset of the upper middle class orthodox liberal mind, the type of people who can indulge wild Doomsday fantasies, joining in on the dramatic performance. Which this definitely appears to be.
It’s hard to fathom how unstable life must be to be the child of a New York Times writer in the midst of pandemic panic. Anything you say or do could possibly wind up in print, and then you have to watch mom or dad engage in ritual panic, because do they actually believe what they’re even saying? That might be the most unsettling realization of all, that they’re doing this because they enjoy it.
Anyone who has ever been in extended close contact with someone suffering from bipolar depression or an intense addiction to conflict understands how these people will look for any myriad of ways to jump-start an emotional tilt-a-whirl, dragging as many people onto it as possible.
In a way it almost sounds like Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The Puritanical, authoritarian narcissism of articles like this is enough to burn your eyes out. Reading some of these feels like sitting on a church pew, listening to fire and brimstone garbage from a similar narcissistic fraud. But there is a definite sense of elation that they can command public attention through the illness of one of their family members.
Some of these people, upper-class liberal opinion-shapers, really do seem unable to get their story submitted fast enough when they themselves, or one of their family members, contracts COVID.
How many mental health struggles will this child have, now that mortal terror has been instilled deep within him by his mother, of all people? Will he develop PTSD, severe depression, as a result? It’s monstrous to consider.
