The Cloud of Unreason

Billions of Viruses...(The Onion)

To our minds, the Onion's sublime digitally altered  photograph and painfully hilarious headline,"Billions Of Viruses Gathered Outside Michigan State Capitol Call For End To Social Distancing Measures"  (4.17.20) is a not insignificant work of art. Over the Michigan State Capitol building grounds, where thousands of rightists (some bearing Confederate flags, MAGA hats, and automatic weapons) recently gathered to demand an end to Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay at home restrictions, an orange cloud floats, bearing some of the the protest signs.
The cloud's orange color is presumably a cheeky reference to the hairpiece and face makeup of President Trump, who has been fomenting these protests by his base across the nation. There may also be a nod to Agent Orange, and the billowing clouds of poison gas dimly remembered from the Great War.  Most pointedly, the blob evokes the mindlessness of the crowd, who have signed on to the current proliferating death cult, apparently willing to follow their dear leader off the precipice into the abyss, all in the name of freedom (among other things, presumably, freedom from science, reason, and expertise.)  The gathered bodies, ignoring social distancing measures, were almost surely hosts for the SARS-CoV-2, and in that sense the picture and headline are an entirely accurate rendition of what happened on the Capitol grounds, as the viral miasma drifts off in search of more hosts in which to replicate and proliferate within the vulnerable bodies of its next victims