Incompatible with a free society
The Daily Beast transcribes much of Tucker Carlson’s anti-masking rant.
“Masks have always been incompatible with a free society,” he fumed. “We used to know that. Masks strip people of their identity as individuals, transform people from citizens into drones. They isolate us and alienate us to shut us off from one another, they prevent intimacy and human contact. If I can’t see your face, I can’t know you.”
You know what does that even more? A ventilator. More again? Being dead.
It’s a temporary measure to slow a pandemic, not a totalitarian plot to hide all our faces forever. Get a grip.
“The rest of us should be snorting at them first. They’re the aggressors. It’s our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in,” he said. “So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, ‘Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.’”
He added: “We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro on an elevator. It’s repulsive. Don’t do it around other people. That’s the message we should send because it’s true.”
No it isn’t. Cigarette smoke is a physical substance, it smells bad, it irritates the throat and nose, and it’s a little more of the harmful muck we have to breathe in when we live in an industrialized world. Wearing a mask is in no way like that.
“As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal,” the Fox News star huffed. “Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re looking at is abuse, it’s child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it.”
And, you know, people will be doing it, because he told them to.
Drugs are bad for you. You should never take drugs. So you should never take aspirin.
See the problem? It’s the same problem with the anti-mask argument.
Masks hide your face. You shouldn’t wear masks outside or in places where security matters, like banks. So you shouldn’t wear a surgical mask.
Same move. It applies an argument about a subset, which supervenes on a feature of that subset, to a different subset lacking the critical feature. The switch is hidden by referring to the superset instead of the subsets.
Also, sounds like the Forstater ruling.
I have a few thoughts on masks. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have been surprised how well I can recognize people who are wearing masks, even those I’ve never seen without a mask. I noticed this with clerks in a hardware/garden store I go to at most once a year. Once around the store and I could recognize them all and knew who I spoke to about what and the same with the customers. The other thing is, I’m not having any difficulties reading facial expressions with folks wearing masks. It’s all about the eyes. Sunglasses and a mask would be difficult, but just a mask? Not a problem.
Don’t know if this is a general human thing, or if I’m just weird.
If the ability to recognize individuals and facial expressions behind a mask is not unusual, then Tucker and his like are either mentally slow or in need of new corrective lenses.
I mean, I don’t like wearing masks either, but I understand the purpose and comply because they do work. I hope we get to a point where we can stop wearing because, honestly, it kind of sucks to have a piece of cloth over your face- it’s hot, it fogs my glasses, etc. I certainly won’t do it when I do not have to.
But it certainly is not an infringement on my rights to be required to wear one at certain times. And (despite my own vague fears on this issue) there has not been a massive increase in violent crimes that I know of. Or bank robberies, despite everyone looking like a bank robber.
I see people without masks (or wearing one incorrectly) and it makes ME uncomfortable, yet, the very last think I want to do is confront a non-mask-wearer because they are likely belligerent jerks. No thanks.
My two year old niece wears a mask, not always perfectly, and she tells other people to put theirs on (kind of bossy, I like that), so kids can and do adapt to this current reality and it is certainly not child abuse.
Well, since we’re having a discussion about what makes us uncomfortable about other people, let’s have a chat about that gun you’ve got strapped to your hip.
(Outdoor mask mandates are going to disappear very soon; I believe the CDC is about to update its recommendations on this today. There’s a kernel of a point there, though “no reason” is an overstatement, and unlike guns, other people wearing masks when they probably don’t need to doesn’t actually pose a danger to you.)
Tucker is already a drone. Too late dude.
@3 Yes, the wearing one incorrectly gets me too. Most of the time I think they are simply stupid with their snoots hanging out, but sometimes I see them wearing it on their chin in some kind of defiant idiocy.
@4 I have asked several civilians carrying guns in public what they are afraid of, to some interesting reactions. :D
My response to this would be a firm, impolite “fuck off”. Because, Tucker et al., I don’t give a flying crap how uncomfortable you are, and you dingles have no understanding of “science”.
I’ve realised how much I rely on lipreading to understand people (or maybe it’s just that masks muffle voices below the level that I can understand words)–so I find myself saying ‘what?’ a lot more often. But whatever.
My dog friend Cooper and my neighbor-dog friend Duffy have ZERO problem recognizing me instantly, mask notwithstanding.
“I’ve been telling you that people in masks are a menace for years!” — J. Jonah Jameson
Anybody into dream analysis? I had a dream about smothering TC with one of Mike Lindell’s pillows while listening to Cat Scratch Fever from the speaker of a Dell computer? Any idea what it means?
I was going to say that I have yet to fail to recognise anybody I know because of masks but then Mr. Logic tapped me on the back of my forehead and said but you wouldn’t know it if you had.
Damn!
You might fail to recognize them if they recognize you and greet you.
But this requires encountering people you know, not something I do very often, mask or not. I’m also not good with recognizing faces.
I’d know about the ones who greeted me but I still couldn’t say with confidence that I haven’t failed to recognise somebody I know as we passed in the street.
Luckily, we tend to recognise people by more than just faces; there are many visual clues that we pick up on without realising it. There are many people I can recognise from the back, for example, or from their gait, though these are people I know well. Recognising people is not a problem for me – names, on the other hand, often evade me. I can remember where I know them from, where and when we last met, where they live, how many kids they have, etc. but unless it’s somebody I know well I tend to find myself mentally running through the alphabet of names like a really bad stage medium until something clicks.
I seem to be fine at recognising faces, but I have a maddening irrational fear that I won’t be able to recognise someone when it really matters. It’s not a crippling fear or anything, just a mild, low-level anxiety. I’ve no idea where it comes from or under what circumstance my correctly identifying someone’s face would be so crucial. I can’t even do irrational fear properly, it seems. Although you wouldn’t think so if you listened to half the people who interact with me on Twitter.
Besides, as AoS says, I get as many cues from gait, body proportions, contextual elements and what have you as from faces alone and I’ve never knowingly mis-recognised anyone. But it’s only faces I’m anxious about not being able to recognise and only in some highly unlikely fictional situation. I’ve said it before: brains are stupid.
Not necessarily dog brains, though. I understand that dogs recognise people visually as well as by smell. I’d be interested to know if Cooper recognises Ophelia’s face in particular, even when it has a mask on it, or whether dogs are less obsessed with faces than people are and more tuned into subtler things like gait.
I have prosopagnosia (so does my husband, so that has led to some interesting situations over the decades) so I have always had to recognise people by something other than their faces. But I’m pretty hopeless at that, too. So, I simply wave to everyone, regardless. Despite wearing a mask, reflective ski goggles, and a hat or helmet, everyone recognises me because I am extremely eccentric. There is no-one quite like me anywhere; because I don’t recognise other people, it never occurred to me that they could recognise me otherwise.
After having my first jab, I have noticed that am very much less afraid of people than I was before it; not that I encounter very many.
One benefit of masks: pretending not to recognize people who you don’t want to talk to. If they catch you, you have a ready-made excuse.
latsot @ 14 – and not even just sight & smell & gait – this one time I was walking up the street while (I don’t usually do this) singing to myself VERY under my breath, and suddenly Cooper popped into view coming around the hedge at the corner of his territory, wagging his tail.
I’ve noticed myself singing under my breath a lot, I think significantly more often than before without a mask. The mask makes me feel like I’m less audible, I think.
Pleasingly, Fortran responds to my voice but not mrs latsot’s
Not that she does what she’s told or anything, but at least she looks at me disdainfully when I call to her, rather than ignoring me completely. It’s a work in progress. Admittedly, achieving even that much took eight years but I didn’t claim it was rapid progress.