Americans don't get ruled / The face mask is the clearest symbol of America's divide
There have been several great columns on the debate over mask-wearing in public. Scott McKay at the American Spectator explains why the mask is essentially useless: the mask is not an adequate defense against the COVID-19 virus, gang The virus checks in at somewhere between 0.06 and 0.14 microns, meaning it's too small for any commercially available mask to effectively filter it out. The pores on an N95 mask, which are the best masks you're reasonably going to find, and the vast, vast majority of you are going to have not N95 masks, but rather cloth masks, which perform far less well, are 0.3 microns." Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker writes about how "wearing face masks has become a cultural divide[.] ... On the left, mask wearing has become a basic marker of good citizenship, no matter how silly it may be[.]"
Then on Tuesday at the Federalist, David Marcus astutely observed that the mask has become the political symbol of 2020. Indeed it has...
This is all the end result of the wholly unnecessary lockdown of the American economy, which was based on fallacious "science" from the outset. It is the distillation of the cultural divide. We are a nation split between the fearful, those easily frightened by anything they read in the mainstream media, and the not-by-nature fearful who are justifiably suspicious of the nonsense spewed forth by the mainstream media....
This cultural divide has become clearer and clearer over the last three years as the NeverTrumps become more and more unhinged, more desperate to convince the rest of us to denounce the man who brought us the best economy in decades until this virus was used to sabotage it. Does anyone doubt by now that the lockdown, based on ridiculously exaggerated predictions, was a Deep State plan to destroy Trump by destroying the American economy or that the blue-state governors' intentions to extend it as long as possible is part of that ploy?
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is gleefully keeping most of California's businesses shuttered despite that fact that the deaths there have been only .0001% of the California population. This proves that his tyranny over the state's small businesses is just that, an iron grip without any legitimate cause beyond damage to the Trump administration....
The power of the mask police will be short-lived for "The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets." —John Mark Green
Americans Don’t Get Ruled, by John Hinderaker, Powerline, May 28, 2020:
Michael McHaney is a state court judge in Clay County, Illinois. On Friday, he ruled from the bench in a case brought by a Clay County small business owner against Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, contesting the validity of Pritzker’s shutdown order. Via RedState, these are excerpts from Judge McHaney’s ruling:
Democrats Demand You Wear a Symbol of Fear, Rush Limbaugh, May 28, 2020:
... Now, when the hell did going to work become political? Right now — right here, right now — and who has made this possible? Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, all these mask-wearing freaks demanding that you use the symbol of fear, demanding that everybody wear the symbol of fear....
Their demand for masks is political. Everything is political. They hope to capitalize on the image they’re creating that we’re all about to die — that we’re all very, very near being wiped out — and only those who wear masks are gonna be safe and only Democrats advocating the wearing of masks care about people....
... Here, I found a Roy Cooper tweet, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina. Unmasking. Remember, the mask, that’s supposed to make us safe. Keep everybody safe. Keep you from infecting anybody and to keep you from getting infected. Well, let’s see. Yesterday governor Cooper tweeted the following: “A face covering signifies strength and compassion for others. Wearing a mask shows that you actually care about other people’s health.”
So now we’re not wearing masks to stay healthy. We wear them as a symbol of “strength and compassion.”...
Democrats Fear Prosperity - They’re terrified the American private sector will defeat them this fall, by Scott McKay, American Spectator, May 28, 2020:
... the point isn’t complicated; nor is it particularly arguable. Democrats are trying to keep the economy closed because it’s more important to beat Trump in November than for the country to succeed. You can call that bad faith, or you can call it economic treason — call it what you want. But don’t call it a conspiracy theory.
Don’t call it a conspiracy theory, because they admitted it to Politico earlier this week. One last quote from the piece:
The former Obama White House official said, “Even today when we are at over 20 million unemployed Trump gets high marks on the economy, so I can’t imagine what it looks like when things go in the other direction. I don’t think this is a challenge for the Biden campaign. This is the challenge for the Biden campaign. If they can’t figure this out they should all just go home.”
A Lockdown Line in the Sand, by David Cole, Taki's Magazine, May 26, 2020:
And if you think I’m comparing the lockdowns to the Holocaust, I am. Not in terms of loss of life, but in terms of a monumental line-crossing that can never be undone. The lockdowns have committed obscene violence against our rights and our Constitution. We are a changed people because of them. Yes, there have been previous mass infringements of liberties in the U.S., from Prohibition to Manzanar. But they always came down through channels. It’s telling that the same people who won’t allow a single Trump executive order to go into effect without running it past judge after judge after judge to test for “constitutionality” have suspended basic rights for a majority of Americans based on dubious proclamations from mayors and governors.
Funny how no one on the left wants to run the lockdown orders past a Hawaiian judge.
The most basic constitutional rights of worship and assembly (and other things the Founders didn’t think they’d have to enshrine, like the right to sit down and the right to leave one’s home barefaced) have been abrogated because some tin-pot state and local officials invoked the “cuz I sez so” rule. That’s a crossed line of dreadful magnitude. And just as with the Nazis, prior to crossing that line, the powers that be recognized the line, and respected it....
The Only Social Contract is the Constitution, by Darrell Greenwald, Frontpage Mag, May 29, 2020:
Indeed, one of the more terrifying things to come out of the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 is not the virus itself, but the plethora of officials and ordinary citizens citing “Social Contract Theory” as a justification for the various so-called “stay-at-home orders” imposed in one form or another across our nation, many of which imposed draconian restrictions on our basic civil liberties. Don’t buy it. Unless someone is referring to the Constitution of the United States, or a state constitution, no such “social contract” exists. Nor should you want there to be one...
Mich. Gov Gretchen Whitmer Loses Again to 77-Year-Old Barber: Judge Rules Shop Can Remain Open, Geller Report, May 28, 2020.
Hydroxychloroquine, Me, and the Great Divide, by Richard Moss, MD, American Thinker, May 30, 2020:
HCQ is only another bellwether. It represents the latest nonevent in a long string of fabricated media nonscandals. If a nation can be divided over HCQ it can be divided over anything. It shows neatly, as many of the other non-issues did, whether one embraces the U.S., our history, culture, and constitutional system, or rejects it. Whether one believes in Americanism or despises it....
Virtue Signaling Masks Smothering Our Society, by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, Canada Free Press, June 30, 2020.