Dave Simpson: Temperatures Soaring Over Masks

Where I live, it's about half people wearing masks at Walmart, and half not. So if you wanted to pick fights with people not wearing masks, you could be fighting all the time.

DS
Dave Simpson

May 19, 20204 min read

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TOGETHERNESS: An editorial in our local paper last week said failing to wear a mask in public “reeks of selfishness and lack of compassion.”

Reeks!

This week in the paper, a letter writer gave a columnist and other letter writers the dickens for suggesting that masks are optional. Such opinions are “bringing together a lack of character with a selfish lack of interest in the welfare of ” others. People like that are  “full of (reference alluding to raw sewage).” 

People who don’t wear masks, the letter continued, “suffer from a demagnatized moral compass. Giving two whoops in hell for other people” is beyond them.

On the facing page, an unnamed emailer (back in my editing days, people had to sign their letters) unloaded on a letter writer who does not wear a mask:

“People with your attitude are just as irresponsible and self-absorbed as most 16-year-old boys. … While you are out there socializing at the pub or restaurant or library because you are immortal, you may just get COVID-19 and then infect a bunch of other people. If that happens, I hope your conscience condemns you to a life in Purgatory.”

Purgatory! (Better than Hell, I guess.) Folks reeking of selfishness. Our mask-less brothers and sisters “full of… sewage.”

Are you sure we’re all in this together, like we keep hearing?

Even the ones headed for Purgatory with demagnatized moral compasses?

I WEAR ONE: Trying to avoid  Purgatory, or worse, I wear a mask I found in the garage from my drywall sanding days. It’s kind of ratty, and I can’t wear my glasses when I use it because they fog up. So I can’t read small print when I shop, and I tend to run into posts. 

I buy the argument that I’m protecting others from anything I might have picked up. But I’m not into scolding those who disagree.

Where I live, it’s about half people wearing masks at Walmart, and half not. Fewer masks at the home improvement store. So if you wanted to pick fights with people not wearing masks, you could be fighting all the time.

I hope someday soon masks with our favorite sports teams, university mascots, or preferred brand of pickup trucks become available. I’ll need a Ford Ranger mask before this is over.

FURIOUS: I remember the days when politicians were sheepish about our national debt. They promised to “get control of spending” every time they raised the debt limit. 

Ha, ha, ha. That’s a good one. A knee-slapper.

Today, however, when we have already spent trillions in borrowed money to battle this virus, and Democrats want to spend another $3 trillion in borrowed money, some politicians are ANGRY at anyone who suggests not heaping on more debt.  

Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Ohio, railed on the floor of the House last week:

“Are you KIDDING ME?” he yelled at Republican House members, waving his arms in fury. “Where do you guys LIVE? Food lines at our food banks AROUND THE BLOCK? In the United States of AMERICA?”

It’s too much to expect, I guess, that politicians who have already racked up $25 trillion in debt would suddenly understand how a checkbook works, and stop spending when the money runs out. That’s beyond them.

A cynic once asked why I care about the debt. 

“We’ll be dead before the day of reckoning arrives,” he said.

I can’t look my little grand daughter in the eye, however, and buy that argument.

HO HUM: Another day, another investigation of the president, this time for firing an inspector general late on a Friday. You could get worried about this, if it weren’t just the latest in four years of steady attacks on anything the guy we elected president says or does. Even the pills he takes.

This could be different, I guess. Maybe they’ll get him, this time.

Maybe this time, Ralphie gets his BB gun for Christmas.

A THEORY: I suspect that some of my Democrat friends want this country shut down all the way to election day, after which they figure that articulate ball of fire Joe Biden will step in and solve all our problems.

Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Dave Simpson can be contacted at davesimpson145@hotmail.com

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DS

Dave Simpson

Political, Wyoming Life Columnist

Dave has written a weekly column about a wide variety of topics for 39 years, winning top columnist awards in Wyoming, Colorado, Illinois and Nebraska.