Anti-maskers are looking for an excuse.
Written by Jessica Wildfire and published in Media.com 9/18/2021
The waitress sat down and asked the young couple to take off their masks. They weren’t allowed to wear them inside the restaurant. The couple said they couldn’t. Their son had a compromised immune system.
He was four months old.
There was no discussion or debate. The staff didn’t defend their personal choice. The manager didn’t come over to listen to their side. He told them to leave. Later, the owner went on local television to defend himself. He said it was his restaurant. “I don’t want to see them.”
That’s it. That’s the only reason he gave.
He doesn’t like masks.
That’s odd. I mean, I thought this whole mask controversy was about personal choice. Wasn’t it? That’s what anti-maskers have been saying for the last year. Same thing for vaccines. You can wear a mask if you want. You can get vaccinated if you feel like it. Don’t make them do any of that. Don’t expect their kids to, either. America’s a free country.
So, where did all this go down?
Of course, Texas.
The capital of personal freedom and accountability.
It’s not the first time, either. Lots of people are getting bullied, harassed, and threatened simply for wearing masks — all around the country, especially in states that zealously protect our personal freedoms. It happens a hundred times a day. It doesn’t always make the news.
What’s up with that?
Anti-maskers are supremacists.
Let’s get real for a minute.
We know why anti-maskers are harassing anyone who wears a mask now. It’s because masks themselves have come to symbolize oppression. Liberals didn’t make this happen. Conservative politicians did. Fox News did. They conspired to politicize a public health protocol.
There’s only one halfway logical reason why someone would spend the last two years absolutely refusing to wear a mask.
Here it is:
They believe they have superior genes.
Despite everything, these far-right extremists sincerely believe in their genetic supremacy. They believe their lineage makes them and their offspring invulnerable to disease. Many of them actually want to catch covid. That way, they can prove to everyone how resilient they are. They believe masks are useless strips of cloth that make them uncomfortable and possibly rob their superior brains of precious oxygen.
They believe vaccines will contaminate their DNA.
They don’t care about grandma and whether or not she needs a medical exemption to go maskless. Anti-maskers have routinely posted tweets, memes, and videos bragging about how they exploit loopholes in medical exemption policies in order to get around mandates.
They think it’s cute.
Politicians defy mask mandates in public while secretly sending their own children to private schools that require masks. They know they’re being hypocritical. They want to appear strong to their radical, white supremacist base. So they lie. They hide behind “personal choice.”
It’s appealing. It looks innocent.
It also makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Every single day, we encounter hundreds of examples of how our actions impact other people. Nobody ever disputes this until we start talking about things like guns and (now) masks.
There’s one thing I’ve learned about far-right extremists. When something doesn’t make any sense…
It means they’re lying.
Anti-maskers don’t believe in personal choice.
We’re starting to learn the truth about these anti-maskers. They don’t care about “personal choice,” except when it serves them.
They know this.
Go to any back channel web forum where far-right extremists gather to talk about rhetorical strategies. They know how awful their real views sound to everyone else. They know they can’t just come out and say what they really think. Guess what they really think:
We should let the virus circulate unrestricted and cull the weak from the herd. Let the strong go about their normal lives.
Again, that sounds horrible.
It is horrible.
But if you’re a supremacist, it makes perfect sense. Sick people with weak immune systems cost a lot of money. It is a pain to wear a mask everywhere you go. It does suck to stay away from bars and restaurants. Life has been extremely inconvenient for the last 18 months.
But guess what?
Even those of us who exercise and eat healthy (like me) aren’t so overwhelmingly arrogant to think we can rush headfirst into battle with a novel virus, putting our “good genes” to the test.
That’s how a supremacist thinks.
To a reasonable person, it makes a lot more sense to do what we’ve been doing. Assume everyone faces the same amount of risk. Band together and make collective sacrifices for everyone’s sake. That’s how an actual patriot thinks. That’s how democracy works. This hyper-individualistic, “personal choice” stuff is bullshit. Everyone knows it.
But “personal choice” sounds good.
It sounds a lot better than:
I’m going to take my chances with a deadly virus because I think my genes are better than yours. If you die, that’s your fault. If you wind up with long-covid and never fully recover, it means you’re weak.
That is, essentially, what “personal choice” means in this situation. This is the core belief under all the anti-masking, anti-vaxxer arguments that otherwise make absolutely no sense, including the continued insistence that the virus somehow isn’t actually that bad.
They really mean it’s not that bad for them.
You?
They could care less.
Anti-maskers don’t care about your freedoms.
Here’s something I’ve noticed…
Anti-maskers are never satisfied after getting their way. When a school drops their mask mandate, anti-maskers start pressuring everyone to take their masks off. They say things like, “You know you don’t have to wear that thing, right?” They make fun of masks. They violate your personal space. They frequently remind you how dumb you look.
Consider this:
Children respond to peer pressure.
When their anti-masking friends start pestering and harassing them about their masks, you know what they do?
They cave.
They conform.
They take off their mask, because they want to fit in. This is how young, undeveloped brains work. Far-right extremists aren’t that stupid. They know the ins and outs of groupthink.
Peer pressure works well on adults, too.
The right knows how to manipulate the perception of personal choice, as well as the power of peer pressure. It was the whole idea behind Reagan’s “Just Say No” to drugs campaign, which was a catastrophic failure if you were actually trying to stop drug use, and a huge success if you simply wanted to convince everyone drug use was a personal, moral failure. See, the right insists on personal responsibility when it makes their lives easier, like coming up with an excuse for our drug crisis. They also know how well peer pressure works, and how easy it is to push for conformity.
They work both angles.
They push for personal freedom to get rid of laws they don’t like, then they start pressuring everyone to conform to their position.
It’s a win-win.
So when anti-masking, anti-vaxxer parents flood school board meetings and demand “personal choice,” they know it won’t stop there. It never does. They use their freedom as a platform to start forcing their own views on everyone around them. You don’t get personal choice. You simply get their version of it shoved down your throat.
It’s the same way with everything. Guns. Abortion. Healthcare. Taxes. They get their way. You deal with it.
That’s freedom.
Anti-maskers lie about “both sides.”
Let’s revisit a point I’ve made before:
Some issues don’t have two valid sides. They have a right side, and a wrong side. If you light up a cigarette in a public restaurant, you aren’t just killing yourself. You’re killing everyone else. If you refuse to get vaccinated and ditch your mask in public, then there’s a high chance you’ll catch covid and then spread your germs to lots of people, including strangers.
That makes you a threat to public health.
That’s how “personal choice” works in this situation. You’ve made a personal decision that hurts everyone around you.
That makes you a piece of shit.
Let’s consider Texas, the anti-masking, anti-vaxxing capital of the free world. No state talks more about “personal choice” than Texas.
The loudest advocates in Texas have willfully appropriated slogans like “my body, my choice” from the pro-choice movement. They did it while actively depriving women of their rights.
It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t lack of awareness.
They’re trolling us.
Anti-maskers weaponize mild disapproval.
This same group frequently appeals to moderates when liberals stand up to them. They fall back on “both sides” and “civil discourse.” They talk about the importance of respecting different opinions.
When liberals get fed up with having our rights trampled on, they go to great lengths to cast us as the bad guys.
Wake up, people.
They don’t believe any of this stuff about “sides.”
Case in point: A Texas restaurant owner threw a couple out for wearing a mask, and nobody on the “side” of personal freedom gave a shit. Their perceived rights weren’t violated. They waited until the rest of us got upset. Then they expressed mild disapproval.
The expression of mild disapproval is a widely used tactic.
Anti-maskers never truly get upset when someone in their group harasses or threatens healthcare workers or teachers or school board members. They don’t leap to defend your right to wear a mask or get a vaccine. They don’t get angry when any of your rights are violated.
They gently disapprove of what happened in order to look moderate. Then they move on to their key point:
Not all of us act like that.
See the problem here? It’s a defensive move. They’re not taking responsibility. They’re not managing their own house. They care more about how the vocal, indiscreet members of their club make them appear.
That’s a big tell.
Appearance is all that matters to far-right extremists, whether we’re talking about anti-maskers or anyone else. They only care about assaults on our rights enough to restore their reputation as “very fine people.” Then they go right back to pursuing their own ulterior agenda.
This is why you see so many anti-maskers appealing to “personal freedoms” and “respecting everyone’s opinion.”
Here’s their real opinion:
They don’t care.
They know “personal choice” makes them look much more reasonable. Meanwhile, they go around without masks, believing in their superior genes and going about their mission to cull the weak.
This was never about personal choice.
It was always about domination.
Wake up.
