Mask warriors, worriers and wafflers reflect July 4 spirit

From across the parking lot at the Connecticut Post Mall in Milford, I see three people at the edge of a fireworks tent, one of them wearing red shorts, a white T-shirt and a blue hat.

No masks. Then again, they’re outside, talking only to the fireworks proprietor.

I’m on a mask quest, but not to document the wearing or not of the garment that defines 2020. We can all see it’s spotty outside, even in crowded settings; more popular indoors, like the public areas of malls, where coronavirus can spread more easily; and nearly universal where it’s required in stores, at least in states not under the spell of a know-nothing president.

Habits aside, it’s people’s attitudes toward face covering that I’m seeking out. Specifically, how mask opinions fit into the philosophy behind the grand experiment that became the most powerful nation on Earth. Is there a link between those attitudes and the principles of liberty and community that we’re celebrating on July 4?

“Make the choice to put it on if

you want to,” said Massimo DeMedici, the guy in the colors of the weekend — which may have been a coincidence, he wouldn’t let on. “We’re not fond of it.”

His fiancee, Liza Davis, declared herself more likely to wear a mask, largely because of her profession, bail bonds.

“I wear it because I’m afraid,” said Davis, who owns and operates Liza Davis Bail Bonds in Middletown — not, apparently, realizing that masks protect other people much more than they protect the wearer.

DeMedici’s cousin, who gave me only the name Will, opposes masks by the rule of law.

“If the government is mandating me to have to wear this, then I have a problem with that,” Will said.

DeMedici, who also lives in Middletown, is unconvinced that masks do any good, anyway. “You’re never going to win. It’s silly,” he said. “I’m talking about common sense and the individual’s right to express himself.”

Despite that view, DeMedici said he often wears a mask. And even Will, railing against government intrusion, added, “I don’t want to offend people, either, by not having one inside a store.”

Davis, donning a black, polyester mask with her company’s name and phone number, disagreed with the whole freedom rap. “I don’t feel as though it’s infringing on my liberty.”

Clearly this isn’t simple stuff.

When it comes to mask wearing, we have warriors — freedom advocates who say it’s their right to not wear a mask no matter what Gov. Ned Lamont and health authorities say. They are the descendants of the Tea Party wing of the patriots of the American Revolution, the ones who fought against British rule and still fight against government control of anything (except, of course, when they want something from the government).

That freedom from centralized oppression is a cornerstone of our independence. Some but not all of those warriors descended from a populist American tradition, the Know Nothing movement, or the American Party in the late-19th century. It fought against immigration and rights for anyone here who was different than the WASP majority.

I think we all know their leader. He opposes maskwearing and scientific thought for no reason whatsoever and has caused thousands off needless deaths.

Then we have the worriers. They believe in the masks and other sacrifices we make. They abide by it with religious fervor because it serves the greater good, not because it’s the law. They, too, have their heritage in an American Revolution cornerstone idea: that community, common citizens and common welfare — not the king, not the lords who own the most property, not giant corporations — are what this nation should be about.

Warriors and worriers, the title of a book on gender differences, adapted to mask-wearing here by Patrick Sullivan, the lobbyist at Sullivan & LeShane and an all-around observer of culture.

But as we see from that scene in Milford, most of us fall in between. Wafflers, I call us. We wear a mask and we socially distance some of the time and we drop our guard some of the time — like when there’s a Black Lives Matter protest.

Wafflers isn’t a slur. I can imagine even in 1776, most American colonists just wanted to provide for their families, not devote their lives to a new experiment in community or to fighting oppression. They made time for both, or we would not have a country today.

In Norwalk on Thursday night, a young woman named Malaury sat outside at a restaurant with two friends, her mask at her right hand for the moment she would leave the table. She’s a devotee, even as a member of Generation Z — an age group widely blamed for mask lapses.

“Just wear the mask, that’s it,” Malaury said. “It’s not a freedom of speech issue . ... It doesn’t impact your breathing.”

I ask whether she’s worried about COVID-19 for herself and loved ones. Someone close to her did die, she said. “If you asked me in March, of course I would be worried,” she said, “because people were dying left and right. A lot of young people are dying, too.”

She embodies the community values at the base of a nation that strives for equity. That we fail is no reason to stop trying, though there are many these days who say we have little to celebrate on this July 4.

Down the street at another restaurant, tables packed outside, I see A.J. Ibarrondo, a young man striding home, as he comes across four friends. There are hugs all around — hugs, I tell you — and no one is masked. And yet when I approach him, Ibarrondo reaches for a face covering in his pocket and declares, “You’ve got to wear a mask. I never go anywhere without a mask.”

He thinks the anti-mask independence movement is “pretty stupid,” and considers himself a moderate. He’ll hug close friends, “But I’m also not too loose.” He raises a fist for a bump as we part.

On the way out of Norwalk I come across seven middle-aged men hanging around six motorcycles, mostly Harleys, in the harbor parking lot. Not one wears a mask.

“If it’s really Independence Day, let’s act independent and not strip away our rights, because we know how to take care of our bodies,” said one of the men who identified himself only as Jimmy.

The mask makes him unable to breathe, he tells me. “I feel like George Floyd.”

As it happens, all seven men in that group are Black. Just then a white Norwalk police officer orders them to leave through the loudspeaker of an unmarked car. They’re parked illegally.

Scared of coronavirus? “We’re more scared of the police...and we’re more scared of fake information,” Jimmy says. “We don’t have the luxury to go in a huge yard and swim in a pool. We don’t have the income.”

Like the nation that’s struggling on so many fronts right now, the mask issue, unmasked, reveals layers of complexity related to freedom, community, economic fairness, even race. And through it all, we find reasons to celebrate — all the more for our ability to argue about what’s right.