Nothing personal

It’s strictly business

Face mask, check. Sanitizer, check. Just one person on the trip, check. These days, you have to take precautions when you go to the grocery, library or home improvement store.

Well, you don’t have to. Which was quite apparent on an outing last week in central Arkansas.

At one store, almost everybody wore face masks. But at another, we’d say 90% of the people went without. We note that the second store was an outdoorsy place, which sold fishing rods and shotguns. So it attracted a more conservative clientele.

After a few minutes of walking around inside, we got the feeling we were being watched. As in: “Who’s the liberal wearing a mask?”

Apparently, wearing masks is considered, by some, to be a political statement.

Now, it sorta can become political if a state and a city are going back-andforth about whether masks should be required, and if so, who can require them. (Sound familiar?) But a mask as virtue signaling? Or a mask as the counter to a MAGA hat? Of all the silly ideas.

“We want to make sure that individual liberty is not infringed upon by government and hence government cannot require individuals to wear a mask,” says the governor of Texas. Which might come as a surprise to the governor of California, who did indeed require them in public spaces.

But, of course, not all California politicians agree: “I consider masks much more effective at spreading panic and much less effective at stopping a virus.” — Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.)

There are polls about this. Democrats are more likely to wear masks than Republicans. Gallup reports that 75% of Democrats wear masks in public, compared to about half of Republicans.

The governor of Arkansas, a Republican in good standing, wears a mask to read his daily briefings, and then takes it off to speak. And he recommends everybody wear one in public if they can’t social distance. He said at Thursday’s press conference, it’s not a political statement.

Which might come as a surprise to somebody walking around stores in the central part of the state.

The fact is that face masks slow the spread of this virus. And people who wear them aren’t showing their preferences for red or blue politics. Fact is, a lot of us who wear the masks do so because it’s polite. Doing so can protect others. It’s not so much like wearing a seat belt in a car, as it is not going 70 mph in a residential neighborhood. It’s a safety concern for others.

Speaking of seat belts, we remember back in the 1980s and ’90s when a certain number of Americans refused to use them because they thought it signaled government interference with their liberties. And now look around.

The best comment on the matter might have come last week from a Republican a little north of here. Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, told the press: “I would really love to see, in North Dakota, that we could just skip this thing that other parts of the nation are going through, where they’re creating a divide — either it’s ideological or political or something — around mask versus no mask. This is a, I would say, senseless dividing line.

“I would ask people to try to dial up your empathy and your understanding. If someone is wearing a mask, they’re not doing it to represent what political party they’re in or what candidates they support. They might be doing it because they’ve got a 5-year-old child who’s been going through cancer treatments. They might have vulnerable adults in their life, who currently have covid and they’re fighting.”

Or, it could be that some of us don’t have a 5-year-old going through cancer treatments, but the person next in line just might have. And we don’t want to be any cause of harm.

Let’s be Americans. Let’s wear our Che T-shirts or our MAGA hats. It’s almost the Fourth of July. Celebrate our liberty!

But let’s wear our masks. It’s not personal. It’s just a sign of being well mannered and helpful. And aware.