Most of you are probably laughing that your own state is not still performing COVID kabuki theater, but California is. Your state is likely liberated; the Golden State isn’t. So, how done am I with this stupid mask nonsense? I’m more done than a French-fried Brian Stelter after an hour frying in hot oil. After all, Brian Stelter is a potato and I am a free citizen who is sick of this idiocy.
There’s passive aggressiveness, and its cloth bridle version, masking aggressive, where one merely complies at the bare minimum or less necessary to avail oneself of the basic social utilities one needs to survive. I was finished with face diapering even before it started. I always thought the effectiveness would be minimal – yeah, huge droplets of goo might get stopped going in or out, but my mistake was looking at it from the perspective of objective science when it was really all about displaying the proper talisman to others. Wearing a mask now is a fetish, a totem, a signifier that one fully accepts the narrative. And that’s not my scene.
And it didn’t take the malignant midget’s email dump to prove this was a sham from the get-go. Just look at the bizarre rules the establishment attempted to enforce. Social distancing is vital, except when it cuts into airline profits. Then, a thin shield of paper magically protects you. But that doesn’t work in churches, even though the First Amendment recognizes our rights to assemble and to worship, but not to be a CNN audience while waiting to load the 787. And rioting for the right cause somehow confers immunity, but kids alone in a park breathing freely calls for the deployment of a SWAT team. Sitting at a table for an hour, breathing like a criminal, and everything is swell, but if you get up to take a Schumer you better channel Bane or you’ll infect all the diners you pass by on the way to the john.
It turns out this was less about science than the ability of bureaucrats to show us our place by making us wear the stupid things in contexts everyone knows is stupid, and then shame or cancel people who point out these obvious truths. It’s sort of like the emperor’s new clothes, except this time everyone pretends he’s going commando.
Now, I originally respected the right of shop owners to ask people to wear the dumb things – they were forced to by the fascist regime, but also, I thought, “Your store, your rules.” I was also initially reluctant to judge those donning their thong-burkhas when doing things outside – I have no idea about their health status so I didn’t go too nuts. But now I’ve had it with both.
And I’ve had the disease too. It was like a mild cold for me, and like a bad flu for Irina. We recovered, like 99%+ of people. I did not fear it before I got it, or when I had it, and I certainly don’t now, having been vaccinated in addition to my acquired immunity. We chose to get it because conservative doctors we know and trust advised us to do so. I am indifferent to whether you do or do not, as you should decide for yourself based on your own situation, which I have no knowledge of. Just don’t make the error of second-guessing me because I decided for myself based on my own situation, which you have no knowledge of.
But though I am super-immune, as many are, I still get caught up in the one-size-fits-all mentality that distinguishes everything the government ever does. What scientific reason is there for me to wear a mask? I can’t catch it, and I can’t spread it. The virus touches my antibody-rich blood and it detonates. Yet, to get into places in California – which, as a matter of state policy, apparently never wants this foolishness to never end – I have to at least pretend to do the mask thing, and pretending is my go-to now. I have a sheer bandana that provides no protection at all, but it at least looks a little less undignified than the surgical masks that provide no protection at all, or – ugh – the cloth ones in pretty colors that provide no protection at all. It is sort of on when I enter. By the time I leave it’s hanging around my throat. It’s not that I’m trying to make some point to a helpless merchant caught between his customers and the local government Stasi. It’s not some bold statement – it makes little sense to me to rebel against people who are also victims. Me not wearing a mask properly in the gardening store is not a courageous rebellion. I just don’t care to pretend, and neither do most of the employees, who themselves are stuck wearing the dumb things.
It’s the people walking around outside with the things that get me. We now know for certain that transmission outside is not a thing, but there they are, walking around with the stupid things on, and often with their little kids doing it too. Young people don’t get sick with the bug, and if they do, they don’t die of it in any significant numbers. Yet I see kids walking, running, and even biking with a lil’ feedbag tied on all the time.
And here’s the thing – if you are such a doofus that you wear a mask in the fresh air, you’re almost certainly paranoid enough to go get the vaccine. You can’t spread it, because the vaccines work, we are informed by #science people (and by the evidence of the plunging infection rates in the wake of the vaccine campaign Donald Trump should be so proud of prove it), so you’re not putting others at risk by living free. Nor are you at risk from people not wearing masks, since you’re immune. So why are these idiots jogging with stupid masks on?
They are irrational, stupid, or – to the extent it is different – liberal. They are not doing it because they have to but because they want to. It’s a message – “I am a proud sheep!” And the rest of us should be wolves. Look, I am going to judge you if you wear a mask outside, and I know that a statistically tiny number of people have real conditions that make COVID super-risky, but the mask isn’t going to help. I’m not going to hassle you, though, because your self-own is much worse than any ownership I can inflict upon you for being such a geebo. But don’t mess with me. I only had one person do that, a walrus in a Prius who bellowed at me to wear a mask outside, and Chumley did not dig my response. I can’t make you free, so my motto is, “Live and let live as a serf.”
***
June will bring my sixth Kelly Turnbull action thriller, The Split. Get the most recent bestseller, Crisis, as well as my other four novels about what happens when America splits into red and blue countries, People's Republic, Indian Country,Wildfire, andCollapse!
My super-secret e-mail address is kurt.schlichter@Townhall.com.