“I am talking about confronting them with what they are doing. I’m talking about short-circuiting their mental programming — even if just for a few fleeting seconds — by holding an accurate mirror up to them, and forcing them to look directly into it, and recognize what it is they have become. That is what I did in criminal court last week. It’s why the judge was forced to acquit me, and why she felt compelled to deliver that tirade, and strap on her mask to make a big statement. She could have convicted me. She probably wanted to. In her mind, and in the minds of most New Normals, people like me are existential threats. However, to convict me, she would have had to watch herself make a mockery of the law and behave like a fascist … like a totalitarian functionary. Call me a hopeless idealist if you want, but I have to believe that somewhere deep down inside even the most fanatical New Normals (or most of them anyway) is a decent human being, with principles, who does not want to be a fascist (or a least doesn’t want to look like a fascist), and who can still be reached, if they can be forced into the position that judge was forced into last week. I have to believe that each brief short-circuit, each momentary glimpse at themselves in the mirror, cumulatively, over the course of time, is eating away at their mental conditioning.”