It's truly amazing, and horrifying, that face masks — a cheap, minimal precaution in a pandemic — have become a front in the culture wars 1/ https://www.axios.com/nebraska-coronavirus-masks-f45cee42-628d-41c3-8c1f-21f8cbc383c8.html

But it fits a pattern. There's a peculiar rage that afflicts some right-wingers when asked to bear even minor inconveniences to protect the public good. I remember Erick Erickson threatening violence over ... phosphates in dishwasher detergent 2/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/phosphate-memories/

The rage over "cancel culture" is also, I think, part of this syndrome; some people can't stand the idea that they should be asked to, say, avoid insulting women or minorities, as if that were a terrible imposition 3/

I'm not fully sure I understand what's going on, but I suspect that what enrages these people isn't the cost, but the benefit — they aren't so much against wearing masks as against doing so *to help others*. And a lot of people die because of their pettiness 4/

And, of course, Trump thinks it's all about him 5/ https://twitter.com/MichaelCBender/status/1273640861398679554