Analogues

It occurs to me there is an analogy to be drawn between the lockdowns–with restrictions on movement and social interaction, a demand for obedience to authority, and for mask wearing–and the normal means by which the Left relates to ideological difference of any sort.  I won’t even limit it to conservatives, although that is the main target.  They will turn on Muslims at some point, but they want to destroy Christians first, if they can.

They distance themselves, do they not?  They lock down communication, and when it happens, maintain a distance.  They wear masks.  They don’t speak with personal voices, but more or less the We of the Borg.  Talking points.  Yesterdays news, blogged today.

And the latent assumption behind all censorship is that Authority is to be trusted implicitly, and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.  Why would you not remove wrong opinions from the public domain?

I was thinking about it this morning, and one of the more primal reasons I hated mask wearing from the get-go–even though I started stocking up on masks back in February–was that I could see the salacious glee with which the Left embraced it.  It was a pain they were going to be able to inflict on us.  They were going to be able to make us uncomfortable, and then get to use government to make it nearly impossible to avoid. 

I felt that clearly, now that I look back on it.  Not wearing a mask felt like a way of saying FUCK YOU to people who truly deserved it.

My new stance is a bit more nuanced.  I have had some luck saying I have asthma, which is not entirely untrue, but in stores I am wearing my mask, and here is my logic: the customers can kiss my ass who care one way or the other, since they could stay home if they were that scared.  However the people who WORK there are stuck.  They can’t run.  They can’t hide.  They don’t know who has the disease, and they don’t know if masks work, but it’s all they have.  Out of courtesy to them, and only to them, I have started being a good boy, mostly.