A friend posted this meme on Facebook today.
Though I agree with the importance of wearing masks, I have a lot of problems with the rhetoric here. Businesses are not friends of freedom, and are really the biggest threats to freedom today. They're not natural friends of safety either, for their workers or their customers: there's a reason for the safety regulations we have, to limit the freedom of businesses.
As for "consequences," that's a popular word with authoritarians too. "You had sex, you're pregnant, so you have to accept the consequences - no abortion for you!" "You got raped? Well, you shouldn't have been out alone at that hour of the night. Accept the consequences of your sluttishness!" "The police shot you in the eye? You should have stayed home, there are consequences for protesting!" How we frame these issues is as important as the issues themselves; maybe more so. The people who refuse to wear masks, to stay away from crowds, to keep distance from others, are practically begging to be despised and scorned, but that's not a good reason to indulge them. The same goes for the refusers who hassle others. Punishment is an ineffective way of changing people's behavior, and if we really want to get people to wear masks, we want effective measures, not ineffective ones. Demagoguery isn't going to close the divisions that everyone deplores.
The use of "asshole" reminds me of another creepy authoritarian, anti-freedom meme, that famous xkcd comic that also used "asshole" as a punchline. Who is it that decides when you're an asshole for behaving badly, or speaking out of turn? It's usually not the audiences; to the extent that it is, it's called "cancel culture," and our guardians of free speech are deeply concerned about it. It's the corporations, the bosses, the rulers. The rest of us shouldn't side with them. When the cruelty becomes the point, it's time to stop and think for a while. The law of talion (an eye for an eye) is meant to restrain our sadistic fantasies, not indulge them.
If you jump off a high building, getting squashed is what you might call a natural consequence. If you refuse to wear a mask during a pandemic, the natural consequences are the risk of getting sick, and of passing it along to someone you may care about. I read today about a young woman who went to a party, contracted COVID-19, unknowingly gave it to her grandfather, became ill and was intubated in the hospital. Her grandfather died of it, a day or two before the girl was taken out of the ICU. That would be very hard to live with for the rest of your life. We need to think twice before inventing and delighting in artificial consequences. Deciding where to draw the line isn't easy, but if I want to be better than the assholes, it's what I have to do.
