In other words...
Unmasked Party of Trump Party Cultists: The Bulwark recently took a hard looked at the unmasking of incivility during the pandemic:
We have a “don’t wear masks” movement that overlaps almost entirely with the “reopen immediately” movement.
There are only two possible explanations for why this might be. The first is that people are dumber than a bag of hammers.
The second is that when people tell you what they think about “reopening” and “masks,” they aren’t actually talking about the coronavirus … when you see people nodding along as Judy Mikovits claims that “wearing the mask literally activates your own virus” it can be very difficult to tease out which way the causality runs.
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| This really happened! |
MSNBC's Chris Hayes spelled it out below in a way that even the unmasked TrumpCultists could understand. It's still hard to believe this is a topic at all:
In this popular video tweet, you'll see unmasked protesters in Long Island get in the reporters face purposely as brutish intimidation. I've included the reporters uncut footage and the actual armed occupation of Michigan's Capitol suggesting they would lynch the female governor as well:
More from the Bulwark article:
…they don’t view the pandemic as an event to be managed, but as an opportunity to posture and perform. In part, this is an artifact of how successful the mitigation measures have been: Because the death toll has been held to the scores of thousands, many people have the luxury of talking and acting however they like...One final word...
...one of the stories we have told ourselves was that we could become a serious people again if we faced a big enough shock or a stern enough test. That the steely, strong, serious America of the last century—the America that survived the Depression and crushed the Nazis and put men on the moon—was still somewhere within us, just waiting to be awakened. That our true, best selves just needed a call to action, a grave, existential summons.
The reaction of this vocal and sizable minority to the pandemic suggests that this story might not be true, either … the restless grumbling of the open-it-all-up, masks-be-damned crowd should concern us, not only because their actions endanger them and us, but also because of what it says about the American character.
As the pandemic moves from public health crisis to partisan flashpoint, the debate over the coronavirus response in the U.S. is becoming increasingly nasty – and, in some cases, violent.One final picture...
It's not just the clusters of gun-toting protesters at state capitols. In sporadic incidents across the country, disputes over emergency measures have turned into shootings, fistfights and beatings. Stories abound of intimidation over masking. And armed right-wing groups have threatened contact tracers and people who they say "snitch" on neighbors and businesses violating health orders.
Trump's refusal to wear a mask despite the advice of his own health authorities and recent coronavirus infections among White House staffers ... Rachel Kleinfeld, who studies polarization and violence at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the president's decision not to wear a mask is calculated.
"Trump recognizes that by talking about masking in a certain way, he can play on an identity," Kleinfeld said. "And it's an identity of virility versus fear, an identity of urban versus rural, an identity of race, even, given who's being hit by the virus, and he can do all those things by triggering something that was not polarizing before, which is whether or not you wear a mask in public."
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| Sure, go check it out... |
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