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So far, 34 states have imposed mask mandates on their citizens. Or, put more properly, 34 state governors have usurped lawmaking power from their respective state legislators and have ruled as dictators how their citizens shall live.
This is done under the guise of ensuring safety. Many of the face-mask orders contain language like that issued by Governor Laura Kelly in Kansas. There, among other things, she prefaced her mask diktat with a declaration that “securing the health, safety, and economic well-being of residents of the State of Kansas is this Administration’s top priority.”
That seems doubtful and, moreover, is a sentiment grounded in a falsehood. Individual American citizens have as their priority and responsibility securing their own health, safety and economic well-being. These things are not the business of government and any government that mistakenly believes that its mandate runs this far over citizens is making, in essence, a two part claim — first that it ultimately owns and controls the lives of its citizens and second that it knows what is best for each one.
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You might recognize this as the sentiment, variously, of both communist and national socialist (i.e., Nazi) regimes that both made similar claims on their citizens. Naturally, Governor Kelly is a Democrat, and of course the Democrat party is today as it always has been: divisive, statist and socialist to the core. It has a vile history of racism, was the party of slavery and segregation, and was slavishly supportive of Soviet communism, looking the other way when Stalin purged dissidents and ignoring the plight of the millions of innocents that Soviet communists killed in their genocidal campaign to build a communist “paradise” on earth.
As a visible symbol of the government’s claim that it owns its citizens, face masks remind Americans of their now visible servitude, and this generates discouragement, anger and animosity. Moreover, as the mask mandates send a clear signal that the political class, especially the Democrats among that class, believe themselves capable of knowing what is best for the citizens, it sends a clear message that citizens are mere infants needing the guidance of their betters in government. This condescending infantilization of the entirety of the American people creates an ever-present undercurrent of discontent.
The face-mask mandates also separate those willing to look to government as the new savior from those who remain fiercely independent, and this creates a significant division in American society with people on both sides of the divide angry at the other. On the side of the sheeple wearing their masks, they believe those opposed to masks are careless ignoramuses at best. At worst they believe their anti-mask opponents to be actively seeking to spread and worsen the pandemic, putting their lives and the lives of their families at risk. This sentiment has caused at least one governor, the terrifyingly horrible J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, to refer to anti-maskers as “the enemy.”
On the other side, the anti-maskers’ believe, not unreasonably, that the masked sheeple are directly opposed to freedom of any kind. And there are not just a few on the anti-mask side who are afraid to leave their homes, to speak their minds or even to shop for necessities like food because of the prospect of being attacked by easily agitated and misled sheeple.
In sum, this is a potent recipe for conflict. And conflict, including physical conflict, is just what we are beginning to witness.
In an egregious example of the physical danger Americans are now facing as a result of the mask orders, on July 5, Jerry Lewis, 50, attempted to enter a Gardena market without a mask where he was confronted by Umeir Corniche Hawkins and his wife Sabrina Carter. According to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, Lewis “reportedly entered the market without a mask and got into an argument with Hawkins.… Lewis then left the store, returned and allegedly fought with the defendant who then fatally shot the victim as he walked away.” Jerry Lewis, an innocent American, was murdered because he wasn’t wearing a mask while trying to shop for groceries.
A day later on the opposite side of the country, in Cape Coral, Florida, police arrested a woman for not wearing a mask, an event caught and made public in a disturbing and shocking video. While being arrested the woman, who is black, shouted to the camera: “I am being arrested because I refuse to wear a mask! In the United States of America! This is where we are people! This is where we are!” During the confrontation with police, onlookers can be heard pointing out that Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters can destroy monuments without fear of arrest but law-abiding citizens are arrested for not wearing masks, a truly disturbing and disquieting turn of events.
In Walmart, in early August, two mask-wearing customers aggressively and violently confronted other shoppers, teen brothers Jeriah and Landyn Dickinson, who were not wearing masks. In the video the woman screams hysterically after attempting to hit one of the victims, while her partner, possibly her husband, castigates the victims and threatens to report them to the police. He is also heard saying, “I hope you die from the pandemic.”
The situation has gotten so extreme that no less than a Catholic priest called the police on a parishioner and his two-year-old son for not wearing a mask. The obsequious and insulting Father Raymond Thomas approached the parishioner and said, “I need to ask you to leave with the officers, please.” The parishioner pointed out to the priest that the church had been closed for two months because of the lockdowns and that parishioners had not had access to the Sacraments during that time. This, one would think, would be a moving argument to a parish priest whose duty it is to gather and minister to his flock. Not for Father Thomas, apparently, who instead banished this parishioner from his flock. A few years ago, and to some degree today, it was fashionable to ask “WWJD”: What Would Jesus Do? In answer we have the Gospels, which are silent on the matter of Jesus calling on Roman authorities to haul away His followers.
Despite this nonsense, there is hope, not least in the churches. Though plenty of cowardly pastors have prostrated themselves before earthly thrones in this, our season of fear and tyranny, some are urging their parishioners and church members to resist the war of destruction on human dignity and social relations by depraved governors and would-be tyrants at all levels of government.
One of these heroes of the pulpit is Father James Altman of La Crosse, Wisconsin. In a powerful homily, Father Altman decried the godless dehumanizing mask mandates and said they were a symptom and sign of our newly imposed communist dictatorship.
“Unless we fight against it and win, then we might as well start wearing a hammer and sickle on our arms, and trade the stars and bars for the red flag of communism,” Father Altman told his parishioners.
Continuing, he exclaimed: “I as your pastor am watching out for you, and when some godless socialist attacks your very humanity when [Wisconsin Governor] Evers attacks your religious freedom, and make no mistake about it dear family this is an attack on your religious freedom, you can rest assured that I will use the brains God gave me, to make it as simple and as clear as possible, so that you can spread the news: Evers entire justification for his mandatory masking, is a Godless dehumanizing lie.”
Despite the wall-to-wall propaganda pushing masks and the overbearing orders from governors and other bureaucrats mandating them, there are many credible studies demonstrating that masks are not the solution to the pandemic. One of these is the overview of masks for stopping COVID-19 from doctors with the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. In their overview they note: “We do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of COVID-19-like illness to routinely wear cloth or surgical masks.” And, they point out: “Sweeping mask recommendations — as many have proposed — will not reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, as evidenced by the widespread practice of wearing such masks in Hubei province, China, before and during its mass COVID-19 transmission experience earlier this year.”
Many other similar conclusions from other scientists could be listed.
Here is a video that unmasks the truth about masks in fighting coronavirus. (Article continues below video.)
As with the first round of lockdowns, the damage being caused by government mandates like those that require mask wearing are more dangerous than the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The psychological damage caused is significant; the damage done to the economy is truly monstrous. The injury done to the welfare of the American people is nearly incalculable. Even the head of the CDC admits as much. “We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from Covid,” said CDC director Robert Redfield. “We’re seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose, that are above excess, than we had as background, than we are seeing deaths from Covid.”
Redfield’s CDC, of course, now wants everyone to wear a mask even though, as the researchers at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy have pointed out, doing so won’t stop the spread of the virus.
Instead, like the lockdowns themselves, mask mandates will continue to spread fear and stoke anger. They are no cure. If we want that, Americans should demand that government bureaucrats stop interfering with the rights and freedoms of citizens so that individual Americans can make up their own minds about how best to keep themselves and their families safe, healthy, and happy.
Photo: MarinaZg/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Dennis Behreandt is a research professional and writer, frequently covering subjects in history, theology, and science and technology. He has worked as an editor and publisher, and is a former managing editor of The New American.
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