The Still-Masked Among Us

They are everywhere, and most of them are not elderly, obese, or suffering from compromised immune systems. They never needed the face masks they wear, as most human beings never needed the COVID-19 masks they wore.

For the elderly, obese, or immunocompromised, we say, go ahead, continue to wear the mask. Doing so might save you from the coronavirus. It might also save you from becoming a flu death statistic.

Those among us who are perfectly healthy and remain dutifully masked despite the general lifting of mask mandates are making a political statement. For them, the masks meant something they continue to hold dear, cannot relinquish.

The masks were an important, probably the most important tool in the toolbox needed to destroy President Trump and the threat he posed to the Deep State and Democrat ruling class. For that ruling class, the masks were an evil genius deployment in a pseudo-crisis; for those who continue masking despite good health, the end of mandated masking abandons them to an unsure condition of political flux. The masks represent a kind of yoke, and to the still-masked among us, the end of masking means a return to an uneasy freedom that could lead to a vast majority of voters coming to their senses and re-electing Trump, for what many are convinced will be the second time.

But it is much more than Donald Trump they fear.

Freedom, self-reliance, limited government, and rugged individualism are values that do not rest easy on their minds. Living in a society where everyone is forced to hide behind an N95 is cocoon-like, comforting in a dysfunctional way. It signals the ultimate power of the nanny state they need to not feel adrift in a sea of American freedom.

For them, the masks are needed to bridle white supremacy. Those who burnt masks immediately after the Big Lift might even be racist. Masks were instrumental in stifling parents who showed up at school board meetings to question the rot being taught to their children by insidious Marxist educators. Symbolic mask-wearing signals an actual sick nostalgia for the muzzling days of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.

In Portland, Ore., since mid-March, no grocery store can lawfully enforce mask-wearing. And yet at least 50% of shoppers are still masked. This is what politically-freighted mask signaling looks like. Continued adherence to masks might even double as symbolism for the canceling of free speech the hard left so longingly seeks to mandate.

The message sent by otherwise healthy maskers is that “we voted for Biden, we fear a return of Trump, we believe in the existential racism of the United States, we believe that a pandemic lie was justified to remove Trump and demoralize his supporters, and we think it’s better, just to be sure, that everyone continues to wear masks up until some unspecified period of time.”

And in the ultimate irony, the final proof of the grand masking spoof, as Title 42 expires, after forcing masks on the populace, the Democrat enforcers stand ready to open the immigration floodgates to an invasion of unvaccinated illegal aliens.

It is just so much bulls**t.

We see last week the resurfacing of Dr. Anthony “Gain of Function” Fauci, he of the NIH Wuhan clan enablers and dog-torturing research grants, to assure those caught up in fear and loathing of an unpleasantly unmasked society to hold tight. The Great Face Covering mandates may be abated for a time, but, diseases and viruses being what they are, there’s just no telling when they might be necessary again.

Look for die-hard mask-wearing right up until the midterm, and even beyond, when the COVID pandemic hysteria will likely be history. Its effect to consign the 2020 election into a cesspool of disarray will never be forgotten.

It worked, you see, the mask mandates. The fear campaign. The horrible illness that overcame an election, an economy, the psychological health of our children and grandchildren, our rugged individualist entrepreneurialism. Our freedom.

The tables have turned, at least for the short term. Unmasked America is rising up to unmask the maskers.