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2020-

2020-05-26 b
This story from The Guardian, a notorious leftist rag, has been re-written by our “truth squad.”

Corona rage is boiling over because so many of us now realize an infectious corona cold-virus became the pretext to curtail our most fundamental freedoms, and to euthanize our Potemkin economy, both to bail out bankers and to further many leftist agendas. To exacerbate tensions and inflame the culture war, I, Jessa Crispin, propose that masks should be mandatory.

Messaging about masks has been inconsistent and contradictory. This confusion about their dubious benefits and known dangers is leading to angry altercations with strangers.

A man shot a cook at a Waffle House in Colorado, after the customer was told he must have a face mask to enter the restaurant. When his legalistic interpretation of the mask “rule” by attempting to re-enter holding the mask in his hand was rebuffed – I literally have a face mask, what is your problem – he became part of an altercation that ended in a non-fatal shooting.

A church was burned down in Mississippi, after the pastor tried to sue the city because of its unconstitutional interference with the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause. The pastor was still gathering people for worship, despite the illegal stay-at-home despotic decree issued supposedly to slow the spread of the synthetic coronavirus. After the church was burned, someone found graffiti that read: “Bet you stay home now you hypokrits [sic].”

A man was arrested in Missouri after he licked a bunch of items at the Walmart while yelling: “Who’s scared of coronavirus?” A woman was arrested in California for licking groceries. A woman coughed on some produce in Pennsylvania as a “prank”. A cop “jokingly” coughed on residents in Baltimore. All were juvenile acts that ridiculed the Left’s latest utopian crusade.

So people are not really managing their media-driven anxiety about the synthetic coronavirus very well because of what it is doing to our country. The threat is real to the frail elderly and to melanin minorities who do not get enough sunshine to make their own Vitamin D. Some people are dying, almost as many as from a severe influenza outbreak. I want to believe that some early synthetic Covid-19 deniers have been brought around by witnessing sickness and death. But the messaging about what to do about this over-hyped cold-virus variant has been inconsistent and contradictory, with despotic rules by decree changing from city to city, state to state. To cut through the confusion, my simplistic solution, if I were dictator, would be to immediately require in every public setting that virtue-signaling, yet ineffective, masks should be made mandatory.

I know that making a dictatorial nationwide order to wear masks in public is not going to prevent all Waffle House shootings – no real law yet created has been able to stop such an inevitability. But during times of uncertainty, we the sheeple should look to our leaders to tell us what we should do. And where are all of our agents of authority? Our president says to wear a mask, but he’s not wearing a mask. He says we should keep our distance, then he shakes everyone’s hand at the press conference. Mike Pence doesn’t wear a mask during a visit to the Mayo Clinic, but later says he regrets it. Cops are walking the streets all the time without masks. The people we usually look to for guidance are either being deliberately confusing or at best cavalier and reckless. That makes me so mad. I want simple rules for simpletons like me.

The media keeps telling people they have to rethink every aspect of their lives right now. How do I make my six-year-old watch this video about math while also attending a Zoom call while also constantly refreshing Instacart to see if a delivery window has opened up for groceries? How do I navigate the unemployment benefits registration system when millions of others are all calling at the same time? How do I get from one place to another when even the thought of getting on a subway causes nervous collapse? We should help people out by establishing one totalitarian certainty: when you go outside, you put on a mask, whether it works or not, simply because that will make me feel better.

Please do not talk to me about science right now, I’m already so confused. I’ve read the scientific studies. They are contradictory, I don’t understand why. I want there to be settled science on masks just as we in the Left claim there is settled science about the climate hoax. Anyway, official announcements about the science are constantly changing. Plus, when you are outside on your one daily reminder that the sun still shines and flowers are in bloom and you are holding the hand of your child whose mask is always somehow sticky and slipping, and a jogger is coming at you and not getting off the sidewalk and sweating and puffing all over you as he passes without a shirt on, is that really the time to start Googling “coronavirus transmission risk from joggers”, read five or six different sources, and determine what the chances are that maybe you just got infected? Joggers: you are freaking out simple people like me. Please wear a mask so I don’t have to see my analyst more than twice a week via Zoom.

And I am tired of reading the science literature. All those big words intimidate me. I just want to take some things for granted, so I can use my pretty little brain for other things, like reading my horoscope. Like wondering about whether or not my cat knows he is a cat. Or, why his feet are so small. These are the important things of life to a simple Kansas girl like me.

People are clearly anxious about reopening after all the fear-mongering. And one of the easiest ways to exaggerate that anxiety is to issue a draconian decree to require everyone to wear a mask. (And pay everyone a monthly Magic Money stimulus, and create socialist Medicare for All to help everyone who just lost benefits when they were furloughed or laid off, and organize workplaces to reduce hours and provide adequate protective gear and avoid physical contact with people or potentially infected surfaces. Can you tell now that I’m a Loony Leftist?)

People love their “freedom” in this land of the free, by which of course I mean the freedom to freak out sensitive people by wearing a gun in public where open carry is legal. Some chose to freak out others by trolling people with death threats just for the giggles, and they will want to argue about the totalitarian order to wear a mask. “Debate me, bro,” they’ll all shout, as they trot out the one piece of “scientific” information they misread in passing on social media between a video of a parrot dancing to a Nicki Minaj song and a stranger’s tearful and heartfelt defense of some multimillionaire celebrity whose feelings were recently hurt by mean comments.

But no, actually, I don’t want to debate you about whether masks protect you or the people around you, in the same way as I don’t want to debate about whether the Earth is round or flat or whether vaccines cause autism. I lack the expertise and am not too articulate. My writing rambles and is filled with logical fallacies. Can’t you just feel smug about being right deep down in your heart, and still wear a virtue-signaling mask so I can feel better? You can even talk about it, if you want, as long as the sound of your voice is being muffled by layers of virus-permeable fabric featuring your favorite Disney character. The jerks and trolls will always be with us, but if everyone else is wearing a mask at least they’ll be easier to spot for those of us with simple minds.

Totalitarian mandatory orders would need to be enforced by robotic Stormtroopers, and that creates its own issues in contemporary American society. As the cops tackling mostly black men and women in the name of “enforcing anti-social distancing” and throwing people into crowded cells without soap or hand sanitizer shows, we cannot rely on our traditional means of maintaining order to make people wear those virtue-signaling masks. We cannot rely on a President, who we claim told the nation to drink bleach, to establish moral authority. So we have to do it ourselves, even when grumbling, even with a “Well, actually” stuck in our throats. You are freaking out the simpletons. Please wear a mask. And, please, don’t talk to me about my poor grammar, argumentum ad hominem attacks, straw man arguments, and many other logical fallacies. For gosh sake's, can’t you see I’m a bona fide Leftist?

Jessa Crispin, a native of Kansas, is a Guardian US columnist on issues dear to the Left, as well as astrology. She is the affirmative action hostess of the Public Intellectual podcast. I see you smirking! Stop it! You are freaking me out.

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