Literally a yarmulke

Seen on Twitter:

For people in urban, liberal cities, the mask and associated rituals are articles of faith. It is literally a yarmulke or a prayer shawl. Not hard to understand if we see it as motivated by signaling “I’m part of the good tribe.”

No it isn’t. If the mask were literally a yarmulke or a prayer shawl then it would be literally a yarmulke or a prayer shawl. It isn’t, it’s a mask. You can tell it’s a mask because of the loops for the ears, and the size and shape. It doesn’t look like a yarmulke or a prayer shawl.

But more to the point, there’s no need to attach some weird political idenniny to it. I don’t know, maybe some people get a little “right-on!!” thrill from it, but it has to be very little, because…what’s political about it? There’s no political thrill to putting ice on a bruise, or washing a cut carefully, or taking aspirin for a headache. There’s little if any political thrill to trying to cover your cough when you’re around people (I read somewhere a few years ago that the best way is to cough into your elbow – and definitely is not coughing into your hand, which will just spread it). It’s just ordinary medical advice and basic (seriously, so basic) consideration for other people. I guess you can decide that’s “political” if you want to say that all Republicans are malicious boors who want to make other people sick, but otherwise it makes pretty much no sense.

I get what the idea is supposed to be, I think. Politics is groupthink, lefties are very susceptible to groupthink, this is just more of that. Wearing masks during a pandemic is groupthink, and it gives lefties a little righteous glow of being better than those rebellious independent thinkers over there in their MAGA caps.

But it’s just dumb. It wouldn’t be a right-left controversy in the first place if Trump hadn’t decided to make it one, and why would we take our ideas of what’s political and what isn’t from him?

We wear the damn masks (or did) because that was the medical advice, and it’s stupid to go all do-it-yourself on medical issues of all things, especially during a pandemic. There’s no thrill in it, it’s just the inconvenient thing we have to do (or did) to try to avoid spreading the Covid. That’s all, no psychoanalysis necessary.

Updating to add (h/t Mike @ 2)

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