this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
342 points (97.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43945 readers
526 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I still can't wrap my head around why certain political factions latched onto not wearing a mask as a political rallying cry. Like.....why do you want to kill the people you need to vote for you? I can't understand.
My guess is it was part of a two-pronged election strategy. First, make COVID denial part of the GOP's political platform, so that they're more likely to be performatively reckless, including waiting on line in crowded polling places where no one is masked (which goes further to scare people away that were actually taking COVID seriously), while people taking precautions like voting by mail or by voting early when it's less crowded would be disproportionately likely to vote Democratic.
Then, pass unreasonable regulations like "mail-in and early votes can't be counted until all votes cast on Election Day are counted", while pressuring election workers to post results as early as possible, skewing votes in their favor, or, failing that, point to the fact that the votes against them were counted later as evidence of fraud.
Ok that actually makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
It was stated in some documents or something that were released that this was the plan. I don't know about the entire anti-mask plan, but they absolutely knew early/mail-in would skew Democrat, because it usually does and covid made it worse, so they knew they could sell the narrative that the sudden increase in Democrat vote averages must be cheating somehow. I don't know how Fox News still exists after they sold this lie. Hopefully the people who fell for it eventually realize how wrong it was. It's going to keep being true (probably not the the same level without covid though), so they'll either belief every election is fucked or that they were manipulated.
Making a loooot of assumptions here. Like that conservatives know how to think for themselves, or that right wing fanatics have any understanding of how reality works.
Have you ever seen that movie Don't Look up? It's a great watch. Even in the face of a planet destroying comet heading for earth, the conservative were all "You know what, I'm FOR all the jobs the comet will provide! Don't look up! Don't look up!"
Not really. They were told by their talking heads that they should be against masks but that doesn't make sense. The powerful people need the votes right? We haven't descended fully into fascism yet, just mostly...so why would they push that narrative knowing it would kill people who would vote for them? Was it a calculated risk to attempt to kill more of the other guys? I'm just confused about how that worked in their minds, and why they wouldn't have looked for some other narrative that wouldn't endanger their voters so much. I get that they don't care about the people who cast the votes, but they do care about the votes.
They thought that cities, which lean heavily blue, would be more affected. This was the case at first, until we got a handle on things, particularly vaccines. Then their strategy backfired and killed more reds.
From all the things to make political why mask? Is taking care of your health a leftist move
Caring about other people is leftist and woke, and no god fearing american patriot would ever give a fuck about another person, ever! Thats communism! /s
Honestly I think some of this stuff is a way to filter out people with critical thinking skills the same way scam emails are often deliberately spelled wrong to filter out people who wouldn't have fallen for the scam to begin with.
I think the logic goes something like this…
Masks are annoying and a hassle and everyone hates them.
But you also hate democrats and every major or minor inconvenience in your life is always their fault.
Since wearing a mask is something one might choose or not choose to do, it is therefore a choice issue and therefore a freedom issue, which is guaranteed to you by the constitution. And hence it’s a political issue.
Very simple.
Buddy I think you just cracked the code of why it's political
Also freedom of choice but only for this specific thing ONLY nothing else
Funnily enough, I think watching "The Last of Us" made me understand what these people were afraid of.
Personally, my mind doesn't go in that direction when I see the government doing something, but I guess for some people that is their first thought. They think that when you're temporarily not allowed to congregate in public, it's a slippery slope into a permanent lockdown state.
In order to consolidate power the Trump allies multiple factions of right wing nut jobs. I one of which is the anti-vax group. Most of the covid knee-jerk reaction was to appease this group. The leaders need to keep the loyalty of the groups, so when a pet issue of a group comes up in the main public discourse the sub-group demands the leaders act, the leaders then tell the rest of their followers what to think and do.
The government isn't supposed to tell them what to do, they are good people.