Post
by Reuben » Sat Jul 18, 2020 7:48 am
I'll attempt a charitable, holistic, and hopefully accurate explanation of the conservative pushback on wearing masks.
When they say it's about freedom, it's almost a full explanation.
It's helpful to understand that the right tends to understand liberty differently from the left. In the right's discourse, it usually means freedom: having fewer constraints on action. In the left's discourse, it usually means empowerment: having more ability to act. (This is well in line with Kant's notions of negative and positive liberty, and the theory of negative and positive rights.)
Neither side talks much about how their notion of liberty is useless without the other notion, preferring antithesis to synthesis. Each side is well-versed in the dystopias that have followed from the "opposing" notion becoming too dominant. (Taking freedom in the name of equal power in the USSR, using freedom to amass power and oppress in mining towns.) It's a culture war, and currently the right is afraid of losing it, having their notion of liberty replaced, and losing their freedoms.
For some conservatives, not wearing a mask is both an easy symbolic gesture and a line in the sand.
So why are conservatives insecure about this? An almost perfect storm of reasons.
1. Coronavirus safety has already required curtailing freedoms.
2. Government guidance on coronavirus safety has been inconsistent. Don't wear masks. Wear masks. Don't congregate and don't sing. Unless you're BLM protesters. It leads to distrust and the general feeling of being played.
3. Left-leaning BLM narratives and ideology are in the spotlight, and it feels to the right like their narratives and ideology are being forcibly replaced. Right-leaning narratives and ideology are often dismissed as privilege, whiteness or racism. It's not just the right that has noticed this. One article I read explains what's wrong with "check your privilege" in the language of Western Marxism.
In general, the right is tired of cancel culture and being shamed into compliance - IMO it's why they hired Trump - and many now automatically resist anything presented this way, even if it's for coronavirus safety. The fact that conservatives employ the same tactics doesn't negate the effects of those tactics being used on them.
4. There's an election coming up and a Supreme Court vacancy to fill - a well-established cultural battleground - and the incumbent Republican isn't polling well.
This all contributes to the feeling that they're on the verge of having the right to be themselves taken away.
Disclosure: I'm a rabid centrist who leans right economically and leans left socially, and dislikes unbalanced concentrations of political or corporate power.
Learn to doubt the stories you tell about yourselves and your adversaries.