Laura Rosen Cohen at Steyn Online:
Hello again, and welcome to week eleventy billion gazillion of CCP-Style Lockdown in the Allegedly Free World.
Another week of hypocrisy from the politicians who are completely-fall-down-drunk on Chateau d’House Arrest.
And another week of me feeling like I look rather like this penguin when attempting to articulate how disgusted I am with the governments of western countries – my own country and province in particular.
I don’t want any more “we’re all in this together” e-mails. I don’t want to hear “Covid-19” uttered in a morose, yet sadistically gleeful, tone with odd, demonic-like smiles. I don’t want to see any more playgrounds taped up. I don’t want to see any more “Stay Home” notices. And I most certainly will refuse the “new normal” being offered to us by the power-drunk politicians and nanny-craving, safe space lunatic multitudes.
I was talking to my wonderful and brilliant partner-in-crime Kathy Shaidle about why we hate masks. (Oh go on, just admit it, you hate them as well). First of all, like with the WuFlu, we have no exact science about them, and the reasons for wearing or not wearing keep changing, just like the reasons for continued lockdown. For a while now, I’ve been looking at them as a kind of pandemic virtue signalling device. Like a Health & Safety Boy Scout badge. But I couldn’t articulate exactly what else was bothering me about them. She sent me this:
Testing is futile. It could never be extensive or fast enough to find out anything useful in time. Compulsory muzzles, symbolic of subjection, loss of identity and muteness, are indeed oppressive. https://t.co/w84bWTApuv
— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) May 10, 2020
and said ‘leave it to a Hitchens to articulate it’. Bingo.
I replied to my dear Kathy that they are indeed like a burkah, something that anonymizes you and that renders normal civil discourse and interaction, like smiles, conversation and flirtation impossible. She added that they are also a kind of affront, a dare to others who you imply are inferior for not wearing yours. Then I saw this: indeed it is, the Corona Niqab. Nuts to that. And if you think I’m pissed, I urge you to listen to this interview with novelist Lionel Shriver who puts it better than I ever could. Shriver delivers the outstanding righteous fury we need to hear, a level of outrage matched and raised to a new level each day by my gracious and prophetic host himself.
On the masks, I believe that if you are symptomatic that would be a good thing to do, wear a mask. But to don a mask on the off chance you might be asymptomatic? To me it is more virtue signal than prophylactic. The proles are running scared though, and like a cornered rat, they get vicious and mean, and will demand that you play their game… or else.
Comment by Dwayne — May 15, 2020 @ 21:39
I’ve been pretty careful to observe the “rules” over the past umpteen weeks, so I’ve only been into stores a few times over that period. It was only on my last visit (last weekend) that I saw any significant number of masks, and about half of those were being worn by retail staff rather than the general public.
Comment by Nicholas — May 16, 2020 @ 09:59