As anyone with half a brain could’ve predicted, Team MAGA and Team Unpronounceable String of Capitals are still fighting over COVID masking despite the fact that it will soon be a moot point. This is especially sad because, like so very many societal issues, it has a very simple solution: “Mind your own damned business.” A person has the right to cover their face in public if they want to, and their reason for doing so is none of your concern. Maybe they’re paranoid; maybe they’re Muslim. Maybe they were burned by acid. Maybe they’re hopeless fantasy geeks cosplaying in public. Maybe they’re overcautious about germs. Maybe they’re severely immunosuppressed. Maybe they are justifiably worried about facial recognition. Maybe they were wrongly convicted and wish to avoid recapture. Maybe they’re in mourning. Maybe they just have a weird sense of style. But no matter what the reason, nobody else has any more right to violate their boundaries, harass them about it, attempt to involve the state, etc, than they’d have to veto others’ tattoos or get Delta Dawn arrested for walking downtown with a suitcase in her hand.
MYOB
May 21, 2021 by Maggie McNeill
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This, of course, works both ways. Just as it’s not cool to harass people who choose to wear a mask, it’s not cool to harass people who choose not to. Especially now that vaccination is available to all adults in this country who choose to make use of it, there is all the more impetus for people to adhere to MYOB (or, put more strongly, MYOFB).
I can’t claim to know what has gone on everywhere, but the Mask Stasi that I’ve witnessed has been far more prevalent, judgmental, and virulent (word chosen deliberately) than the non-mask contingent. You want to wear a mask, fine. You don’t want to wear a mask, also fine. It’s a question of personal responsibility and decision, and busybodiness of any ilk is uncalled for.
Would that more people were aware of, and paid heed to, Epictetus’s words.
Exactly so. It was the policing of others’ mask-wearing (plus the dumb masked avatars, politicians speaking while masking, etc) which made it into a political issue in the first place. MYOB should be the real Golden Rule.