It's because people are really fucking stupid, Rob, and, Americans, on average, haven't been subject to actual discipline in decades so they think there are no consequences for anything. There's just no other explanation. You can watch countless examples everyday. You'll get some fat dumbass throwing a tantrum at Costco and see his social media where he calls The Germ a hoax and then an obituary. Or you'll see some dipshit hippie wannabe revolutionary throw an incendiary device at the police who are trying to clear a burned out street and then he puts on surprised Pikachu face when he gets arrested. Americans on average literally have no concept, zero, zilch, nada, of adverse consequences as a result of shitty decision making. "Wah, I didn't save any money for retirement, give me money." "Wah, I bloated myself up to 400 pounds and now high value men won't date me so Sports Illustrated needs to put me in a magazine to try to normalize my lack of self control." "Wah, I borrowed $200,000 for a doctorate in art history and now I can't repay my loans so the government needs to just forgive the loans." "Wah, I lent a bunch of money to broke ass proles who can't pay their mortgages so I need a bailout to the tune of $10 billion." It is all over the place.
And then if you add any element of coercion on top of something, holy balls are you asking for trouble. "You must wear a mask." "OR WHAT? I DON'T HAVE TO. THE RULES DON'T APPLY TO ME." Then you have guys like Pence or Trump on one hand, or Cuomo or that fat F who looks like Penguin, on the other hand, not wearing masks and basically saying "rules for thee, but not me, peasant" and it makes that shit even worse.
Mass media and lack of discipline in our schools has really fucked up our society. Look, man, I'm an unabashed Trump supporter and I was telling people about masks back in March. I don't need some edict from the government telling me to wear a mask if I go into the store during a fucking respiratory pandemic. Here's my post on it from March 19:
"People are always going to complain about the government when there is a crisis, like this pandemic. But Western society simply isn't ready for something like this. I have a shitload of masks at home. 99.9 anti viral things. My old lady buys them in Japan. How many American houses have masks? Way under 1%. Of course the media says "masks don't help." Yeah right. You look at the infection rates in Korea and Japan versus rest of the world. That ain't from testing, it's because those people have lived through SARS and other pandemics and the populace is loaded up on masks. A mask keeps the viral load close to the infected person and keeps people from touching their nose and mouth."
This shit is common sense if you have a room temperature IQ. America is in a really bad spot, bruh. Really bad.
The root of the problem is getting people to wear masks en masse.
But whether you're for it, against it, or indifferent to it, the conversation is totally moot. 100%, completely academic wasting of breath and keystrokes.
Hate masks and mask mandates, and don't think they do anything but violate "mah cahnstitooshunul rahts?" Don't worry. A wide-scale mandate is never gonna happen. There are over 100M people in this country who refuse to wear masks. That includes judges, lawmakers, and law enforcers. It. Will. Not. Happen.
Do you think masks are the answer to slow this thing down and that we should put in place a national mandate complete with harsh punishments for those who refuse to wear them? Go ahead. Try and get a law and punishment for breaking it put in place. You going to fine every one of them? Throw them all in jail? Take their babies and birthdays away? 150,000,000 people? Good luck. Let me know how that turns out.
This country is going to be the first large scale science experiment of what happens to a society on a macroeconomic and macrosocial level when a pandemic tears through it. No one's gonna change that. Not even a little.
There is only one thing you can do for the next 8-10 months until The Shot is ready and that's to look out for yourself. Sure, you can go on social media and bark about how no-maskers are assholes killing people, and write articles, and assemble socially-distanced protests down at City Hall, but it ain't fuckin' happening, Jack. All you're doing is making yourself more vulnerable.
Control what you can control. The US is too big to enforce anything (yes, anything) on a large scale. You simply cannot do it. You might feel like you did the noble thing by speaking out and railing against anti-maskers on twitter and on your blog, but you're screaming in a forest where there's no one to hear that tree fall. Doing the noble thing when you know you'll have no effect is stupidity in reality. Total waste of time second only to prayer on the effectiveness scale.
Again, control what you can control...no one individual can control whether there's sports this year, or whether businesses fail because of lockdowns, or whether people do or don't wear masks, because NO ONE AGREES AND THEY NEVER WILL. Give it the F up, people. You want to be 100% sure that you don't get the virus or give it to anyone else? Stay home. Otherwise, take whatever personal amount of risk you're willing to take while at the same time limiting your proximity to other people for their own safety. I should make one thing clear...I don't say "stay home or take whatever risk is acceptable to you" because I'm anti-mask. Quite the contrary. I think if every living soul in the US masked up for 8 short weeks we'd be done with this.
I say that because no matter how much the pro-mask side says "YOU HAVE TO WEAR A MASK!" statistically 50% or more of the total populace (including those people with the power to enforce a mandate) will refuse, and there's no way you can punish that many people and, hence, enforce a mandate. So wear a mask, limit travel, and all the other shit to limit transmission. But for F's sake quit whining about it on Twitter and podcasts and instagram and Fartbook. Masks aren't happening in the States
ever, so give the spiel a rest and look out for yourself until The Shot gets here.
) Interesting to look back and see how much things have changed since.
