The distrusting minority: Unmasking the maskless

A walker or cane can be life-altering; a mask should be easy

Unexpectedly face down on the parkway, I decided I would take the opportunity to appreciate the sight and the smell of the grass from this rare vantage point.

It was pleasant. Peaceful.

I had been having trouble with my left leg, so I was not entirely shocked that it had betrayed me. That’s how I got up close with the lawn.

I had been the most upright of people, almost never having capsized, even when negotiating ice and snow. That day, however, my body finally failed me, unceremoniously dumping me yards from my front door.

Long before, I had learned from other people in this ignominious predicament that it is often better to stay down for a while. After all, you can’t fall any further, but if you get up before you’re ready, you could fall down again.

It’s like making a mistake in the paper, hurriedly writing a correction, and finding that it’s wrong, too.

I had communed with the grass for only a minute or so, however, before I heard the one-sided conversation of a wireless phone user. 

“Hold on, hold on,” the voice continued. “Some guy fell down.”

Then, “Are you all right?” I rolled over. The man looked down at me.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said.

I looked up at the angry scowl of one of the few people I had ever had to fire. Karmic justice is at play here, I mused. 

I prepared myself for the possibility of a foot in my face. Instead I heard, “I’ll help you up.” 

That was worse. I had instantly been introduced to how debasing even a temporary disability can be. I could now expect condescending offers of aid from my enemies.

Not long after that, it got worse yet. I started using a cane.

Until I walk better again, I’ll continue using it, and it will be a part of the way people think about me.

That annoys me. I like to be thought of as strong. Whole. Manly, even.

But various doctors have said it’s clear that if I use the cane, it’ll relieve pressure on my bum leg, so I’m less likely to fall down again. 

These may not be genius doctors. After all, they have not yet been able to fix my leg or even figure out what’s ailing it. But they have great confidence in the cane thing. And from the start, of course, I have understood the science behind their confidence. It’s elementary physics.

I intensely dislike the cane, but I don’t blame the doctors. They’re right about it. It has kept me off the parkway.

So whenever I go anywhere, I take my cane, and I take another relatively primitive medical device along, too. I take my mask. 

Masks are recommended for reducing the spread of the coronavirus by doctors who, like mine, are imperfect. But the science seems obvious to them, and to me, too.

Masks are very effective virus-blockers. If both of two associating people wear a mask, it’s safer than if only one is masked, and one is a little safer than none. And the key person to wear a mask is the infected one, whether she knows she’s infected or not. So it follows that everyone should mask up if they’re anywhere near anyone else. 

I volunteer Wednesdays at a farmers market, which means from four to seven hours at a time, I keep masked.

I still hate the cane, but I have no compunction about wearing the mask, even in the heat. I’m used to it, and to some extent, it’s part of a shared experience with the 1,500 or so people who visit the Northbrook Farmers Market on any given day.

I do not feel it makes me less of a person, like the cane sometimes does. But I am chagrined that some other people do feel that way.

One of my tasks at the market is chasing down people not wearing masks, which, of course, I do ridiculously slowly. Amazingly, every person who fails to mask up voices a variation on the same reasoning.

“You have no right to tell me what to do.”

These mask-scofflaws are not talking about just me telling them what to do, mind you. They’re talking about scientists and other experts who can’t be trusted. They’re talking about people whose only interest in life is taking away their freedoms.

They’re talking about liberals.

I know this from social media, where I spend too much time. I’ve noticed that many of the same people who don’t want to be told to wear masks haven’t wanted to be told that climate change is caused by human beings, either.

If climate change is man-made, that would mean, they’ve been assured, that somebody, sometime, will tell them they can’t buy the car they want or fly in a plane for a good price. Someone will tell them that they have to put solar panels on their roof and buy expensive insulation. 

These things haven’t actually happened. But there is a great deal of worry about what could happen. 

Conservative leaders also convinced their constituents to constantly fear foreign terrorist attacks. They were told to be wary of murderous immigrants. Right-wing pundits daily poked their listeners toward panic over whether they could continue to own guns. 

These scary suspicions were overblown. But they continue to be fostered by many conservative leaders. The unmistakable conclusion is that it’s in somebody’s interest that a large number of Americans be afraid of something.

Somebody thinks we need enemies. 

We’ve been picking up extra enemies ever since the Berlin Wall fell. That was the last time we had enemies we could sink our teeth into.

Now, for the last 30 years, many alleged leaders constantly browbeat us in an attempt to get us to accept that typically trustworthy folks, like scientists, engineers and diplomats, are lying bastards.

And the voices are just as loud, or even louder, now that the stakes are highest. Life and death, you know.

So who is lighting this fire under these politicians who tell us not to trust obvious things? 

Well, who stands to gain? When it comes to who wins as the environment goes south, it seems those most likely to succeed are the fossil fuel companies, the vehicle manufacturers and the airlines. And lo and behold, they all spend a lot of money buying politicians.

But that doesn’t explain why so many people in high places now insist on saying meanie scientists are unqualified to advise us to put a piece of cloth over our noses and mouths. Who stands to gain from that?

The politicians who made their careers out of telling constituents to join them in ignoring what physicists say about climate change, what criminologists say about guns and what social scientists say about immigrants seem to feel they can’t suddenly say that other intellectual elites are right about this dread disease.

And the same donors who were paying them to ignore experts are still paying them to ignore experts. 

So stopping the spread of the disease seems less important to these conservatives than maintaining their disdain for their political nemeses: scientists and other snobbish intellectuals.

The nerds and liberals who are trying to solve real problems like pandemics and climate disaster are resented by millions who want to solve problems that don’t exist.

Meanwhile, the U.S., with less than 5% of the world’s population, has 22% of the world’s Covid-19 deaths. The reason seems to be that though we probably have the best experts, we listen to them the least.

It’s gotten to the point that the man seen as the leader among American coronavirus experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has had to ask for security for his family because of death threats. He’s being threatened by people who are sure, when he’s begging them to put masks over their mouths, he’s really trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

In 19 states -- 18 with conservative governors --  mask-wearing is still entirely voluntary. And a minority of individuals living in the 31 other states feel that being a mask scofflaw is a basic right of being an American.

After all, masking up is part of a plot by liberals and intellectual elites to control the nation.

But like a sheep, as I’ve been told, I continue to wear my mask, while having to use that awful cane, too.

The whole cane thing has become easier to take, however.

Every day that I use it is another day that I can stand and walk because I haven't caught the disease from some patriot.