Louder With Crowder “But what choice do we have?” is the go-to question for the compliant. There’s always a choice to turn it down, refuse, walk out, or take a stand. The real question for the compliant is actually “But what choice do we have that doesn’t make us uncomfortable?” My question to you is: are you comfortable now? Do you like wearing a mask wherever you go? Are you happy with the idea of getting a vaccine and having to prove you got the vaccine in order to live your life? Does that make you comfortable? Does it make you comfortable watching children play while masked? What part of any of this makes you comfortable?
There’s a chance I’ve yelled this message multiple times already, but the reason we’re all here, again, is because too many of you are complying. Still. Maybe not you personally, but someone you know who’s close to you. For example, in early May, my parents and I traveled to Arizona for a wedding. Arizona had already lifted their mask mandate. Rather hard to adhere to masks when the average temperature is above 90. Anyway, my father wore his mask while walking alone through the hotel. I did not wear my mask anywhere. My dad said to me “I wear it to make people more comfortable.” And I said “And I don’t to show them they don’t have to wear theirs.”
Why does the comfort of the fearful have more value than those who are not afraid?
On this same trip, a different relative of mine wore her mask outside ahead of breakfast. She wore it until her order arrived at which point the risk of COVID magically disappeared. Such a polite virus. But as the weekend progressed, I noticed she didn’t put it on again. Why? My theory is because, drum roll please, NO ONE ELSE WAS WEARING ONE. Her wearing a mask in this setting made her the weirdo.
Herd mentality can work in favor of the sane.
We went to a pub in Arizona where staff didn’t even sport the chin diaper, and I commented “It’s so nice to see you without masks.” The server informed us that they did have masks originally, but got complaints on Yelp! about wearing them. So they stopped. This is called peer pressure and lo and behold, it works even against the insane sheep of the world.
I remember in the early days of the lockdown bullshit that many a restaurant complied. “We don’t want to lose our liquor license” being the go-to rationale. So instead many lost their establishments altogether. But some outfits remained open and bucked the authorities, and sure they lost their liquor licenses, but many are still standing. They get nasty letters from the compassionate COVID crowd, sure. But they’re still in business and being supported by people who aren’t nuts.
The ugly truth is we wouldn’t be discussing vaccine passports if on day 16 of 15 days to flatten the curve enough of us said “That’s it, you’re a bunch of liars, time to go back to normal.” But few people did. Few in leadership stood up to the authorities. And so the authorities continued with their authoritarian ways.
The more people go along to get along, the more we have to get along with.
Why should the fears of the few dictate the life of the unafraid? More importantly, why aren’t the unafraid loudly showing it? We know peer pressure works. There’s no reason we can’t make it work for us.
We can triage what gets rolled back, but it’s long past time to apply pressure. If you’re putting a mask on your kid to send that kid to school, you’re overdue for some backbone rigidity lessons. Easy for me to say? Yeah. Everything is easy to say. All of these ideas are easy in concept but harder in execution. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You know what will be hard? When your child wants to know why he or she has psychological problems because he or she couldn’t see whole human faces during the developmental phases of their childhood. Or how he or she may have breathing and lung issues because you didn’t want to say no masks and be the outsider in your parenting group.
Sweet baby Jesus stop putting masks on your kids to send them to school and claiming to have their best interests at heart. While I’m here doling out parenting advice, stop putting your child’s photos all over social media. They have not consented, and you didn’t have your whole life splashed on the internet. C’mon.
The more people make compliance uncomfortable, the sooner life returns to normal. The sooner more people enforce normalcy, the harder it will be for those hanging onto the bizarre to keep hanging on insisting we follow their rules. What has made this entire ordeal worse is giving the mouse a cookie, handing him the milk, allowing him to move in and eventually f*ck your spouse. If you’re not shuddering over the idea of providing proof of vaccination, you’re a moron and I can’t help you.
But for everyone else, STOP COMPLYING NOW. As Rand Paul said, they can’t arrest us all.
