I would be willing to wager that many, if not most, of the anti-maskers who today are screeching about being oppressed over being asked to make a minutiae of effort to help stem the spread of COVID-19 are the same people who with wide open, welcoming arms did not question or even attempt to oppose, let alone protest against, the egregious expansion of the police surveillance state and military industrial complex after 9/11.
Many even cheered on and thumped their chests as the U.S. and the so-called coalition of the willing used the attack as justification to launch the so-called War on Terror and the illegal Iraq invasion, dropping bombs on brown people in countries so far away these Americans wouldn't even be able to point them out on a map.
This, despite the fact that the threat of terrorism in North America is grossly exaggerated.
Statistically speaking, one has more to worry about in Canada or the U.S. about getting killed by a drunk driver, an animal attack, or even being struck dead by lightning, than by being blown to bits in a suicide attack.
Yet when I would point out these facts, no shortage of sophisticated savants on the right who profess to espouse the simple philosophy of 'common sense' seemed all too eager to dismiss me and remained firm in their irrational fear of terrorism. They don't even seem to care that even their own precious intelligence agencies are more concerned about growing right-wing extremists and militias than Islamic militants.
And now that the whole world faces a far more legitimate threat in the form of a pathogen that spreads easily and has killed more than 600,000 people (far eclipsing the roughly 3,000 killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre), these same folks are deflecting, dismissing and outright denying the risk of a novel virus whose long-term effects we have not yet even come to fully understand.
Making matters worse, they seem intent on labelling as paranoid anyone who doesn't mind taking the most modest of preventative measures, such as frequent hand washing and donning a mask indoors, especially when physical distancing is not an option.
Many of these folks are the same who snidely, condescendingly denigrate and mock as "blind sheep, libtards, snowflake, and commies" essentially anyone who disagrees with them.
The kicker? If you respond in kind to their incessant ad hominem attacks, which of course recognizing two wrongs don't make a right, they suddenly dare to play the victim card — which they also claim to hate — and cry foul about a bunch of big, bad, intolerant left-wing meanies.
But anyone who loses their mind over peacefully kneeling protestors, happy holidays, transgendered people using washrooms, and NASCAR banning a symbol of treason to the U.S., has absolutely no moral leg to stand on whatsoever when contemptuously calling others "snowflakes."
Simple fact is I don't recall hardly any conservatives marching and protesting against their substantially eroded civil rights in the fall out of 9/11.
But now, suddenly, they dare pretend to be oppressed for being asked to share in our collective responsibility to look out for one another.
To cry oppression for being asked to consider wearing a mask when going indoors to a place of business is frankly an egregious insult to people who every day live and die under actually ruthless and oppressive regimes.
Then again, I've come to realize that seeking consistency from right-wing ranks is a fool's errand.
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