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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.
What was the law that made this a temporary exception? Your link only shows the removal.
Anyway, you missed a couple options.
Now, I agree with your prediction. At least the strict form, where you mean people committing crimes other than mask-wearing. I do not expect the law to be used against sympathetic chemo patients. I think it would quite likely be applied to the mythical peaceful (but still masked) protest. As in—near 100% that, if a protest were shut down with arrests, some of the perps would only be charged under this statute. It’s just too easy to insist that they were aiming for intimidation and thus must have been concealing identity. Ask @gattsuru if it’s a good idea, generally speaking, to rely on police discretion.
Of course, I don’t really expect such arrests, because I expect the law to have its intended chilling effect.
Again, I’m not asking you to agree with objectors. You probably have a very different level of trust in the police, and you certainly have a different evaluation of health risks. I’m simply imagining the alternate universe where this has the complete opposite valence. Where it’s seen as legal chicanery comparable to NY handgun law, or a state power grab along the lines of wiretapping. Where the same users who cry foul about liberal bias ask why this time, the ambiguity is okay.
Thanks for the corrective, I sincerely appreciate the effort and want to improve my mental model of what people are thinking. The biggest change I would make in my framing is updating the fourth item to be significantly more charitable.
As a bit of pushback though, if the explanations you're offering are the positions held, I don't see what the reason would be for making the argument about the health provisions. If it's an important right for people to be able to conceal their identities, why not focus on that instead of whether there should be narrow exemptions? If the problem is vagueness, that should be addressed directly.
For the record, I am not particularly trusting of police, either individually or institutionally. My position on this doesn't really on police being the rigorously honest thin blue line, it only goes as far as noticing that I can't think of any parallels for something like claimed negative impacts of repealing this exemption. Again, if the concern is that people should be able to conceal their identities and not allowing them to do so is an abuse of state power, I can easily get into the mindspace of sharing concerns and trying to figure out what to do. I just flatly don't buy that the change to statute is criminalizing anything that actually has anything at all to do with health.
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Here. Compare with here for what the law looked like before.
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