In the current political pandemic, it seems that everyone has their opinions about what you should, and should not be doing with your body, your time, and even your face. Numerous lock down protocols instituted by various misguided governors and executives have created a hodge-podge disaster of a response. Among all the confusion there is a topic that seems to have drawn some amount of agreement, at least among political partisans. Wear a facemask to protect others from the Covid-19 Virus. Or, as some would say, the Kung Flu.
Several governors have created executive orders seizing the bodily autonomy of their citizens and forcing the donning of a mask indoors, or outdoors, or both. Entire political entourages have sprung up refusing to wear the mask. Demanding a return of their bodily autonomy from an overzealous government.
The Jewish Media has gone far enough in their vilification of the no-maskers that unstable political partisans have physically assaulted them. It has become a hot button issue to which the general answer is that only bigots who hate the elderly refuse to wear a mask in what is now “agreed upon science.”
I hold an alternative position. Those whom partisans refer to as bigots i.e. conservatives, should consider wearing a mask. Not because of the pandemic, and certainly not because the executive branch of the state government told you to, rather for an entirely different reason.
We are in an era of economic terrorism, where the far left will dox you, find your family, your home, your friends, and harass and threaten you should you dare step out of line. The government has made it socially acceptable to wear a mask in public, everywhere. While the intent is highly contestable, the result is the same. You now have a reason to wear a mask all the time in public, preferably a generic one to make you even harder to identify. No longer are you bound by the same social rules. If you live in a region with a reasonably large population, you may now freely speak your mind provided that you’ve no easily identifiable markers.
Give a man a mask
Oscar Wilde wrote the following: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” We live in a surveillance state, where your every move is watched by corporate political partisans. Where you’re one YouTube or twitter video away from violent thugs showing up at your home, or that of your spouse or sister or father. Why would we want to live in such a state where we can at any moment suffer a curtailment of our liberty by an angry mob?
It has been now documented that masks are playing havoc with state and corporate facial recognition systems. That isn’t something to scoff at, it’s a very real liberty that citizens now have to speak their mind where otherwise that liberty has been stripped of them. No longer can security footage of ‘man who made sexist remark’ or ‘woman who said the n-word’ provide of the alleged perpetrator an address and a name.
The legal structure behind the mask is evil. The seizure of bodily autonomy by the executive governors is evil. The effects though, that’s something some people who treasure liberty and anonymity have been wishing for. Total liberty in anonymity provided you don’t do anything stupid enough to identify yourself. This may be the greatest unintentional gift that the various elites have provided to the public in a very long time. Were I told a year ago that it would be common place for virtually all citizens to wear masks at all times, I would have been ecstatic.
For the first time in a long time, people are free to speak their minds, and not need to fear the sudden appearance of some Karen shoving her cellphone in your face attempting to justify her existence through the vilification of others. No longer will the typical twitter lynch mob have so easy a time finding its next victim. So wear the mask, my fellow bigot, not because it protects them, but because they’ve inadvertently given you a tool with which to protect yourself.