They say no two snowflakes look alike. But from all appearances at the anti-vax and anti-mask rallies — filled with people convinced that either COVID is a hoax or efforts to mitigate it are one step removed from the gulag — I’m not so sure.
There’s an awful lot of similarity there: overwhelmingly white and with the kind of wide-eyed look so common for those whose marination in conspiracy theories has all but pickled their brains.
For those who’ve been wondering, this is why America can’t have nice things.
Seriously, how fragile must one be to think having to wear a mask in a grocery — or even being encouraged to do so since few mandates are in place — is tantamount to oppression?
How utterly spoiled, privileged, and not oppressed must you be to think having to get a vaccine to get on a cruise ship or to come back to your dorm room this fall are examples of persecution?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, these are the same kinds of people who think their kids’ inability to say prayers over the intercom in public school is anti-Christian bigotry, just shy of being fed to the lions.
They are the kind of people who think Black History Month is racist against whites because, well, you know.
They’re the ones who think requiring a public employee like Kim Davis to treat all taxpayers equally by issuing marriage licenses to any who seek them — even the gays — is proof of secular intolerance to Bible-believers.
In short, these are people for whom persecution is a complex, not a lived reality.
If you think nothing of donning a yellow star on your clothing as a way to equate mask mandates and vaccine requirements with the Nuremberg laws and being hauled to a death camp, you not only fail to have a grasp on history, you are a fucking monster. You deserve neither sympathy, understanding, or a hospital bed should the “Blood of Jesus” ultimately fail to protect you from COVID, which it will, by the way.
If you put chains around your wrists to equate the same things with enslavement, you confirm why Critical Race Theory is desperately needed in schools — or at least accurate history textbooks so you wouldn’t make such a fool of yourself. You deserve to have your high school diploma revoked. And if you went to college while receiving federal financial aid and still came out that stupid, we, the taxpayers, would like a refund.
If you compare vaccine mandates to rape, like one Pennsylvania lawmaker did, suggesting that, as with rape, mandates coerce people to let you “stick something into (their) body against (their) will,” you make it apparent why MAGA-bros are having a hard time hooking up on dating apps. You deserve a long and happy life with your Real Doll — good luck with that.
These are people whose incredibly privileged existence as members of the least oppressed group in human history has made them weak, unable to handle even the tiniest pushback against their sense of entitlement.
They possess an understanding of liberty suitable for a 7-year old — you know, the kind of whiny brat that wants what they want and will stomp their feet until they get it — but one that is utterly embarrassing for an adult.
To have someone follow you in the store and ask you to please wear a mask for public health reasons is not oppression. Being followed around the store because you’re Black and the clerk thinks you’re going to steal something is — and that happens all the time.
Yet we hear nothing about that from the liberty lovers with their stupid Gadsden flags and III Percenter tats.
To be told you can’t fly across the country because you refuse to wear a mask is not oppression. To be told you can’t fly because you were praying in Arabic or “look Muslim” and made some white Christian nervous — which has happened many times since 9/11 — is.
And again, the people screaming about “muh freedom!” say nothing about that. Indeed, it’s people like them pushing the flight attendant call button, paranoid that the brown guy next to them with the turban — who happens to be Sikh, but whatever — is going to blow up the plane.
Ironically, those who insist we can’t deny them service if they refuse to obey public health protocols are the same people who demand the right to deny service to LGBTQ folks if providing it would offend their evangelical sensibilities.
Ben Shapiro — supposedly the nation’s leading conservative “intellectual” — even says companies should have the right to deny service based on race. In other words, to Shapiro, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was one of the principal achievements of the movement led by Dr. King, was unjust.
Although Shapiro says he would personally be appalled by any company that discriminated for that reason and wouldn’t shop there, he believes they should have that right.
But denying service to those who won’t mask or get a vaccine? Oh no, then it’s totalitarianism at the gates.
Conservatives’ entire worldview is one of victimization. Everyone is out to get them — the good people, the real Americans, the moral ones. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the interior life of conservatives is one of never-ending panic at the prospects of persecution. Victimhood is the force that gives their lives meaning.
And so they preen as the victims of taxes, environmental regulations, secular humanism, feminism, diversity training, marriage equality, “gay wedding” cakes, immigration, radical Islam, mail-in-ballots, early voting, Stacey Abrams, Dominion voting machines, Hollywood elites, George Soros and other globalists, Anthony Fauci, Obamacare, Black Lives Matter protesters, cancel culture, big tech, the liberal media, SNL skits, non-binary pronouns, the Wuhan Lab, and a Satanic global pedophile ring run by Hillary Clinton, John Podesta — maybe even Anderson Cooper.
These are not people with whom one can reason.
They cannot be spoken to kindly in the hopes they might come around.
They cannot be brought into a larger political coalition based on some ephemeral “common ground.”
Reasonable people have no common ground with these types. They have a viral gun aimed at the heads of the rest of us as well as the economy, which will continue to suffer the longer COVID hangs around.
They have declared war on public health to satisfy their narcissistic understanding of liberty. By their actions, they are not only spreading COVID to others; they are taking hospital beds away from people with other medical conditions who did everything right to slow transmission of the virus.
Their recklessness has brought us to a place where a quarter-million children contracted COVID last week: the highest numbers ever for pediatric cases by far. Given the possibility of long-term health consequences — the full range of which we still don’t know — this amounts to seeding possibly severe morbidities in young adults and older demographic groups for years to come.
People who would cause such chaos in the name of their freedoms are as close to irredeemable as one can be. They are enemies of the nation’s future and the health of millions.
They have earned our contempt and should be the recipients of it, unceasingly.
—
This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.
***
You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: iStock