Influencing Mores

Social distancing was once the sole
baileywick of the cultural and social
elite who wouldn't dream of mixing
it up with social and cultural inferiors.
Neighbours who got to know one another
all too well might on occasion begin to
practise social distancing. Mothers were
notorious for instructing their little
Jimmys and Nancys not to play with
those nasty children of Jewish, Black
or immigrant parentage lest they be
contaminated by whatever character
flaws their race was known and despised
for. Eventually a classless system of
equality prevailed and it was the poor
and the ignorant who became the social
outcasts whose presence one distanced
oneself from while celebrity culture
embraced all, oblivious of heritage. Now
the yellow peril that racist seers warned
of while the world watched as its culture
of sacrifice and work ethic rocketed
it into superpower status inadvertently
unleashed a deadly menace it refuses
to own returning the world community
to its waning isolationist defence against
the demon of morbid contamination.