Ozzy, do you live in NYC? I thought this is the only city with enough lunatics to keep wearing masks in appreciable numbers but maybe I’m wrong. What can these people be thinking? In their cars, outside with the wind whipping past them . . . probably in a CDC hazmat room. They’re obviously not "following the science" because there’s no science to tell them to wear masks.
I only have two possible explanations and one covers only a tiny minority of the population. If you do live in NYC, you know that are plenty of out-of-this world gorgeous looking women around. Until now, they’ve done everything possible to hide from the world around them. If you get on the subway and see one, they have a fixed stare into the middle distance. They’d cut off their right arm before making eye contact.
And who can blame them? Guys constantly gawking at them, hitting on them. I could see them finding happiness behind the anonymity of a mask.
Also, for whatever reason, wearing masks is sorta standard operating procedure in Japan. In Tokyo, anyway. It’s part of their culture. Maybe it’s becoming part of our culture. (Not the best part, I would argue.)
And yet the masks are less of a signal of a personal characteristic than the signals that come pouring out of the mouths of Trumpers about even the most innocent topics. Such anger! Such resentment! Victims of all sorts of conspiracies!
I put an ad on Craigslist to sell my old speakers. It was a very quick process, price readily agreed to, arrangements for pick-up easily made. But in that short time, the buyer’s political views might as well have been put up in skywriting.
"Do you want subway instructions?" I asked. "I don’t take the f***ing subway," he said. "What, we can’t drive? Are they going to take our cars away?"
"So you can use Waze?" "That f***ing thing? It’s programmed to take you out of the way so that you go past charging stations for electric cars."
Verbatim reporting. I used to be a journalist.
And here’s more, even though I’m getting a bit off track. My son is in his first year of engineering school. Rough going. Forty percent of the kids got a D or worse in physics last semester. (I’m thrilled that my son got a 78. He hasn’t gotten a grade like that . . .ever.) It doesn’t seem right to me that all of those kids should fail. The university shouldn’t admit kids they don’t think can handle the curriculum. It’s not a perfect analogy but I don’t think anyone flunked out of law school. A handful dropped out in the first semester but the admissions dept. didn’t let you in unless they thought you could make the grade. (Pre-med is different for reason I won’t go into here.)
Anyway, there’s a Facebook group for parents and I posted something along those lines. A very lively, civil debate followed. Until, "Well, now that they’ve made standardized tests optional, they don’t know what kind of f***ing kids they’re getting." I don’t know what kind of work you do, I replied, but it’s interesting that you know more than hundreds of people who have dedicated their lives to the admissions process. You alone, Joe Blow, have the answers?
"Whatever," he wrote. "I just don’t want any motherf***ing bridges to collapse under me just because some incompetent built it." Is that a big problem for you? I asked. Do a lot of bridges collapse under you?
I’ve found that attitude to be not atypical of people from red states. (Or Staten Island, in the case of the speaker buyer.) So bitter! So deprived!
I’d even venture a guess to say that they are worse than the mask wearers. If you’re wearing a mask today, it says that you’re halfway around the bend, not that you’re a fan of Dr. Fauci. Whatever explanation they offer for the masks, while not necessarily the ravings of a lunatic, are at least open to question. Whereas the disgruntled right wingers would argue that they’re weighed the facts, analyzed the situation, and come to what they believe is the correct answer.
But I apologize. This is not the place for such arguments. And I started it. I’m the bad guy. If the moderator would like, I’d be happy to go back and remove all political content. My point was about speaker footers, not politics, and I hereby apologize to all forum members.
But I was halfway through writing it that before it occurred to me that I was going down a road marked "Caution." So I’m going to leave things be unless, as I said, the moderator would prefer otherwise.