Daily Verse | Joel 2:12
“Even now,” declares the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
    with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

Happy Monday my friends. Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But here we are on Monday — again.

Yesterday I went to a restaurant that we’ve frequented over the last 18 months and by “frequented” I mean that we’ve gone there more often than any other eating establishment, which may or may not mean “occasionally.” The last few times we’ve been there no mask has been required. This time we walked in expecting the same, but the (masked) Karen server behind the counter immediately asked us if we had masks.

“No,” I said. “Do you have any?,” knowing that some establishments would provide them for their guests.

“No,” she replied, “we don’t stock them. And there’s a sign on the door when you come in.”

I confess to seeing the “sign,” which was written in small type as part of a paragraph of small type on an 8½ x 11 sheet of paper taped to the glass door, which I didn’t fully read because we were all going in and it was an interruption and it was hot out and we were hungry and I assumed they only partly meant the word “must” and they didn’t require them before and, besides, who’s enforcing mask mandates anyway?

To be fair, the masked woman behind the counter was probably only enforcing the company policy, so I can’t really fault her, but she wasn’t particularly nice about it. My immediate reaction to her telling us that masks were required and, without saying so, implying that we would not receive service without one, was to turn around and walk out and find a place that would serve us without masks.

But my wife had a mask for me and for her and she put hers on and started her order, while our two guests retrieved theirs, so we stayed. But I was not happy about it.

As I walked to my table I grumbled about how the Beijing Bat Flu was certainly deadly as we stood and ordered but that it very obviously weakened on the way to the table and by the time I sat down it was safe to de-mask because reasons. And how stupid this whole thing is.

I got to thinking about it and, for the first time, I truly understand the observation that being required to wear a mask creates a two-tiered society, with non-maskers being “second-class citizens.” I’ve read that before in the commentariat in a variety of opinion pieces, but it really hadn’t penetrated like it did yesterday.

Many of the authors say that masks are just a first step in dehumanizing the citizenry. Think about it. What is the difference between someone without a mask not getting service and someone with a yellow star not getting service? One concerns medical purity, the other racial purity. In both cases people are classified negatively.

While it’s true that one is contagious and the other isn’t, they both result in the same thing: ostracization from society.

In both situations, the ruling authorities mandate the conditions: not complying with masking denies you service today, wearing a star denied you service then. While we are all ostensibly free to choose whether or not to wear the mask and the Jews were not free to reject wearing the star, the result is the same: complying with the star or not complying with the mask results in a denial of service.

Not wearing a mask and wearing a star both telegraph a negative association to the rest of society. And while non-maskers and those refusing to get the vaccine are not being shipped off to concentration camps (yet), they are subjected to tyrannical language and treatment from those who decree the conditions and their supporters in government and business.

The Resident pointedly blamed one-third of Americans for the rise in the Delta variant.

“We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” he said, all but biting off his words. The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of damage, and they are.”

[…]

After months of using promotions to drive the vaccination rate, Biden is taking a much firmer hand, as he blames people who have not yet received shots for the sharp rise in cases killing more than 1,000 people per day and imperiling a fragile economic rebound.

Shock jock and noted medical expert Howard Stern used similarly strong language about the unvaccinated.

Radio host Howard Stern said people who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 are “idiots” and called for vaccinations to be mandatory.

“When are we gonna stop putting up with the idiots in this country and just say it’s mandatory to get vaccinated? F— ’em. F— their freedom. I want my freedom to live,” Stern said on his SiriusXM program on Tuesday. “I want to get out of the house already. I want to go next door and play chess. I want to go take some pictures. This is bull—-.”

In another rant, he said,

“We have no time for idiots in this country anymore. We don’t want you,” Stern said. “We want you to all either go to the hospital, stay home, die there with your COVID, don’t take the cure but don’t clog up our hospitals with your COVID when you finally get it.

“Stay home, don’t bother with science, it’s too late. … We want you to go away,” he continued. “We want you to leave the country. Go somewhere where they have ultimate freedom, wherever that is, some bizarro world where you don’t have to take the vaccine. … I don’t know when nonsense became such a thing.”

Here’s Jimmy Kimmel, the very unfunny late night host.

“Dr. Fauci said that if hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU bed. That choice doesn’t seem so tough to me.

Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in, we’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy.”

Add one more for good measure. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager, David Plouffe, called MAGA supporters a “sick, perverted one-third of the country.”

He added, “I think these governors, legislative leaders who have stood in the way of vaccinations, who belittled COVID, who don’t want masks in school — here’s the thing, we’re basically two-thirds of the country in support of mask mandates in schools. So again, they’re speaking to their sick, perverted one-third of the country, you know that gets injected by Fox News and Sinclair and Breitbart, all the stuff.”

Jews forced to wear the yellow Star of David in 1941 Nazis Germany were subject to segregation and discrimination. We can’t deny that something similar is happening. Our freedom is being restricted if we are being demonized as “idiots” and “sick and perverted,” told we’re not wanted, that our freedom is meaningless, that we should essentially f*** off and die, and we’re not allowed to conduct transactions and travel in public unless we wear a mask.

Feel the love?

Right now we have the opportunity to push back and refuse to comply with the tyrannical edicts from our rulers. But how long will that opportunity last?