I have this half-formed thought in my head that ‘softness’ serves as a camouflage for some of the most vile and evil thoughts and people. I’m basing this on my experiences with a lot of contemporary media - the latest of which are think pieces about how we should ‘accept’ death.

There are these ‘thinkers’ lately who’ve been writing about how accepting death is a natural part of life, and we shouldn’t strive for being as old as possible. This is what I mean with ‘soft’ - yes, it’s an open door that death of a part of life. Nothing new here.

However, context and timing are key. And it’s suspicious, ghoulish, and frankly vile, to argue for accepting death during a major pandemic. Many avoidable mistakes were made, and many people who could have been saved died.

If you hold the means to saving someone, are you seriously going to tell them to accept death?

The same goes for the discourse around children. It’s enveloped in the same sugary, sticky softness about how hard it is for children during this period and how we should try to keep their lives as ‘normal’ as possible. This ‘normality’? Keep them going to school, unprotected.

At this point it’s not even a question of opening or closing the schools. There are parents and ‘thinkers’ seriously clamoring for the schools to be completely unprotected, without any masks or testing, because children’s innocence needs to be protected. Lest they be traumatised.

And here again we see this ‘softness’ - ‘think of the children! But screw ‘em if they’re poor, neurodivergent, or if they catch the disease and die.’ It’s ghoulish, and it’s packed in the most sickeningly sweet softness.

I could even argue the same applies to anti-abortion. Or hell, even ‘euthanasia’ for young people who are mentally troubled, for the death penalty... it seems like a lot of this discourse is packed into a very smothering softness. Sugary language used to hide vile thoughts.

It’s a half-formed thought, and I need to find some proper examples, but it would be interesting to contrast this softness with the perceived harshness people project onto activists and leftists. I would love to see if there are any pieces discussing this in some detail.