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Notes -
My favorite story of the day is an intersection of old Covid drama, current protest drama, and a healthy dose of TheMediaRarelyLiestm. Per the news headlines, NC Senate votes to ban people from wearing masks in public for health reasons:
Now, I will certainly admit to having a great deal of contempt for people that are still wearing masks and having immediately experienced some schadenfreude, but as someone that just doesn't really trust the media to rarely lie, I thought I had better go check what the bill actually says. As it turns out, what the bill does is strikethrough a temporary exemption that had been added as a Covid-era protection:
The strikethrough in the quote is the only exemption eliminated by the change. The actual text of the criminal statute 14-12.7 is:
The other sections say essentially the same thing, but for a few other contexts. The core of these is that it's illegal to use a mask to conceal the identity of a wearer in public places. The Covid-era text was being used as a way for people to conceal their identities and use the health carveout as a shield against the plain meaning of the law by playing the Taylor Lorenz card. In contrast, no, little old ladies going to medical appointments scared out of their minds and wearing N-95s aren't going to be stopped by police, because they're obviously not attempting to conceal their identity at health clinic.
One might be inclined to explore whether this is one of those rare media lies or whether they didn't quite technically lie, but I don't personally find that a terribly interesting game to play. Instead, I think the interesting thing to consider is why Democrats are so strongly opposed to this. I can see a few options, none of which are mutually exclusive. In roughly ascending order of badness:
They simply don't understand the law despite the plain text reading that indicates that the exemptions are only relevant in the case one that has actually violated the criminal statute in the first place. In being so confused, they think eliminating the exemptions really is banning people from wearing masks.
Distrust for Republicans runs so deep that despite the text being clear and obvious, they think that villainous right-leaning prosecutors will start filing charges against people that have done nothing other than go to their chemotherapy appointment with a mask on.
They don't really think there's anything wrong with the reversion, but they see it as a good opportunity to call Republicans fascist grandma-killers.
Support for protestors concealing their identity while behaving badly actually does run strong with some on the left and they see keeping the easy loophole of everyone just being able to claim it's for their health as a very good and important thing to do.
To me, these all make my opponents sound very bad! I don't think they're actually uncharitable though and suspect that some would just outright articulate the second and fourth options above as their rationale. For my part, I'll pre-register my prediction that the statute will only be used against people that are actually committing crimes, not against random mask enthusiasts that are otherwise doing nothing wrong. If I turn out to be wrong, it's time for some introspection.
Would you still find the fourth point bad if the resulting mask-off mandate were primarily used against your tribe - say, retroactive dragnet identification of the Jan 6th protesters from photos, or police demanding that any future garden-variety right-wing protester unmask while being fully aware that the leftists are already standing by with cameras to feed a well-oiled machine of crowdsourced doxxers ready to send form letters to his bank and employer?
This sort of thing has been a long-standing concern of lefties dating back to when they had a more credible claim that institutional power is aligned against them. The way I see it, the right wing, in its knee-jerk opposition to masks and affinity towards police powers, is interrupting the left in the midst of making a rare mistake borne of their denial that they are in charge. The train of a sympathetic police getting to use this to unmask and prosecute someone like BLM rioters has long left.
Sure, selective enforcement is a concerning aspect of any potential criminal law, but this is also a fully general complaint. I don't want to protect right-wing rioters or left-wing rioters as a matter of principle though - it's the rioting I object to, not the political positioning of the rioters.
I don't think the complaint is fully general with respect to measures that help with policing. Police are already capable of physically arresting people in the midst of rioting or other illegal acts (at the cost of public scrutiny), regardless of whether they are masked. Forcing everyone to be unmasked during protests will help police prosecuting illegal and broadly disliked acts a little, in those cases where they are too overwhelmed to catch individuals in flagranti; it will help them a bit more in situations where they want to avoid public scrutiny, so rather than visibly arresting people for political crimes they can quietly come after them later; and it helps with extrajudicial punishment such as cancellation and debanking, where the punishers have no right to perform a physical arrest, a lot.
In concrete terms, for example, I would have been quite happy to turn up to a masked protest against excessive COVID measures (not that such a deliciously ironic event was on offer anywhere I lived). I would not go to one if I were compelled to show my face, since I'm in a line of work where an easily identifiable photo in that context could be career-ending.
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