In 2021, when air travel started to open up after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown, airlines reported greatly increased incidents of aggression, hostility, and violence on the part of passengers. A Southwest Airlines flight attendant asked a woman to honor the mask requirement then in place, and the passenger hauled off and slugged her, breaking two teeth and bloodying her eye.

Was this really just a disagreement about masks? Was it really just an individual objecting to a rule or a right-wing fanatic reacting to what she perceived as a left-wing policy? In energetic terms it was more than that