Let me start by saying this – I apologize for using the above snark.
I can’t stand snark. I agonized over this poster. Yes, I thought of it. Yes, it’s marginally clever. But do I despise anyone who feels justified in not wearing a mask in this crisis – no. Do I hate people who think differently than me politically? No.
Am I frustrated? Yes.
The whole point of whyihatepolitics.com is to get people to calm the fuck down. I started it nearly 2 years ago, before any of the COVID crisis, because I’d had enough of one main thing:
I’ve had enough of people being so certain about the essential ‘rightness’ of their political views.
Why would this piss me off so much?
Exploring ideas is important to me. Unfortunately, ideologues and zealots rarely do much to get people to think. They may convince others to follow, but rarely do they inspire deep, nuanced thinking. It’s more like a sustained shout.
In the mind of an ideologue (someone who is fully committed to an ideology), there’s no room for grey areas, for I don’t knows, for nuance. And frankly, I VALUE the opinion of someone who is willing to say ‘I don’t know’ drastically more than someone who’s not – because deep down I know that they’re in touch with that key aspect of humanity that no-one touts… the fact that we are all ignorant, about most things.
And when it comes to politics, there’s a reason ‘political science’ is in the humanities department. It’s not exactly a field of study in which causes and effects can easily be measured.
We can’t even agree on whether or not a president / prime minister can take credit for the economy that exists while he or she was in office.
When was the last time we used simple science to test and compare political systems?
You know… taking an entire country as a control group and comparing it to another country, with equal population and demographics, while testing the effects of simple changes to single parts of the political and economic systems, and measuring the results of those changes over a period of say… 10, 20, 50 years?
Oh that’s right, we can’t.
It’s why nutritional studies are so goddamn hard. Getting humans to act like mice steps on all sorts of personal freedoms which we (rightly) value over getting perfect science.
We can’t even agree on what the goals are, let alone know how to get there. We can’t agree on what words like ‘healthy,’ ‘equality,’ ‘fairness’ mean. At it’s core, what the fuck does ‘Make America Great Again’ even mean? Obviously something very different to those wearing the hat than to those who think the hats are symbols of hate.
But even within a single ‘demographic’ (those wearing the hats) – ask 10 different MAGA hat wearers and you’ll get 10 different answers.
Consequently, there need to be a lot more people admitting that they just don’t know.
We need for the general public (and the media, and the politicians) to admit that ultimately running a country is a game – a game with real (and deadly) consequences, yes, but also a game without a rulebook. No index at the back to explain how the game can be won, or which scenario is ‘best.’ And the more we pretend we know when we don’t, the more we ultimately lie.
The more we lie, the more fearful we become that someone (especially ourselves) will catch us in that lie. And so we start to yell louder, to drown out the doubters.
Such a slippery slope, when so often you can win the hearts and minds with authenticity – with a simple ‘I don’t know.’
One example? Trump – he almost never says it ‘I don’t know’ or takes responsibility for his blunders. But then, neither do his critics. Which came first? Does it matter? This fever of the mind seems to not only exist on both sides of any argument, but as the fires of hate grow on one side, they inspire equal or greater fires of hate on the other.
I want to be a part of the conversation that stops that.
And so now here we are, in a moment in which the entire world is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re rabidly dissecting / criticizing / scandalizing everything: every step or misstep taken by governments in response to this, every word uttered by our esteemed / despised leaders, every perceived imposition against our ‘God-given’ freedoms.
And if that wasn’t enough, now we have individuals resisting the idea of wearing a masks in public, during a pandemic which has become the leading cause in the death in the United States.
So… on with the article.
Because really, what point are you trying to make by not wearing a mask in public?
a) you think you’re stronger than the virus?
None us know what effect this disease will have on us, individually. Sure, we may have preliminary reports of how deadly the disease is, on average, to those in our age range. And sure, we humans take calculated risks all the time.
But with other calculated risks (smoking, drinking, eating too much, getting too much sun, etc.) there’s years of data to support the risk associated to each activity. Additionally, none of these activities is likely to precipitate a disease in you right now – so it’s easier to experience a reduced perception of risk when the downsides of an activity don’t tend to present themselves until years and years down the road.
This is a failing of the human brain, but I’m not here to convince you to change those habits. I understand why you don’t. I’m as guilty as the rest.
When it comes to a virus though, and a NOVEL virus like this one, the truth is simply:
We don’t know (I know – those dreaded words).
So, naturally, neither do you (perhaps an even scarier realization). And it doesn’t take years for this thing to kill – it takes weeks. And if it doesn’t kill you, it might kill your friend, or your mom, or just someone who was unlucky enough to stand behind you at the checkout counter at a supermarket.
So please, don’t think you’re stronger. You don’t have to prove anything. In fact, your authenticity (admitting you don’t know, and that you’re not stronger than the virus) will immediately make people more interested in hearing what you have to say.
You will have passed test one of being an authentic human.
b) You’re choosing to not wear a mask to make a political statement
Maybe you feel as though the mask represents all of the impositions you’ve just experienced at the hands of your country’s government.
You’re looking at your mounting debt, your closed business, your isolated apartment, and the way your life has changed, irrevocably, for the worse over the past few months, because of a virus which you, very likely, haven’t yet experienced first-hand.
It’s infuriating, right? And the government’s rules are starting to feel more and more like tyranny.
Let me say this…
It’s a mask.
It’s a mask, meant to keep fewer foreign particles from entering your lungs, and to keep fewer particles from your lungs from being shared back into the surrounding air.
It’s not a yellow armband signifying your targeted religion or political affiliation. It’s not a ball and chain around your leg. It’s not even a seat-belt, which many could argue are over-reaching regulations by a government who doesn’t need to be protecting you from yourself.
So why is this different? Because this is a war. A war against a virus that jumps from human to human, indiscriminately, through simple, normal human interactions which were once viewed as totally benign.
Except now they’re not. And by no fault of your own.
It’s not a punishment. It’s a necessity.
So, I’ll end this here. If you want to go and stand up for your rights, your liberties – I understand. I don’t personally think we’re at that point yet, but hey – I haven’t lost my house. I haven’t had to lay off employees, or burn through my life’s savings because of a pandemic for which no-one in the world was prepared.
But if you go protest, wear a mask. Keep a social distance. Do we truly know how well these protective efforts actually work? No. Might we look back at all this and criticize the over-reactions we then, in hindsight, see clearly? Perhaps?
And are you justified in staying mentally vigilant against any authority which might take advantage of a crisis like this to restrict or oppress its citizens in ways that aren’t related to the ending of this global crisis? Yes.
But please, respect the fact that your very existence, out in the world, is the mechanism by which this virus spreads.
And respect the fact that there are many, many, many people who have been working continuously through all of this, to keep our hospitals open, our food supply chains intact, and the electricity and internet on.
They still have jobs, but they’re in the thick of the battleground – out where this virus dances and skips from person to person, indiscriminately.
And if those central elements of society start to fail (food supply chains, power companies, internet providers), then we’re in a different nightmare scenario.
Wearing a mask is an easy, logical way to respect your own health, and that of others, and for each of us to show each other that we value each other. It’s not a political statement. It’s not evidence of having succumbed to a tyranny. It’s a mask, to keep your body’s bad particles from reach other people, and other people’s dangerous particles from reaching you.
We may disagree about when and how this all should be played out, and we have a tough road ahead in which no one will know much for sure.
But we can wear a mask in public.
