Masks come off – literal and figurative

Masks have come off almost everyone, it seems. This applies literally to passengers and crew on airliners and at airports, and on the subway (not all, but most). But it also applies to politicians, their spokespersons, and their apologists. Except that the second kind of mask is the mask that covers what they really think of you.

The literal masks come off

The Epoch Times has the best summary of the order. On Monday, Judge Katherine Kimball Mizelle of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida ordered the Centers for Disease Control to knock off the mask mandate. The CDC tried to extend a lapsing mask mandate until May 3 – without inviting public comment. That decision alone violates the Administrative Procedures Act, under which, federal agencies do not make rules on a whim.

Furthermore, Judge Mizelle said the CDC has no authority to impose such a mandate. The CDC cited the Public Health Service Act of 1944. But that applies to people coming into the country, not to travelers within it. The 1944 Act assumes that, once it’s here, it’s here, and further attempt to contain it will not work. But the CDC tried to assume something else. Sorry, said the judge, but that dog won’t hunt.

Jay Sekulow gave this insight in this video:

Joyful reaction

Suddenly it was like the news breaking of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The Transportation Security Administration gave up enforcing the mask mandate at our airports. Delta Air Lines and most of the regional airlines let the masks come off.

A pilot came into the passenger cabin to announce it. (This is not the sort of announcement you can make sitting in the cockpit, your push-to-talk mike in hand, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain.” No, your passengers need to see you. That pilot understood that.) One passenger shared the moment on Twitter, and so did the now notorious Libs of TikTok account.

Here a flight attendant shares the moment on an Allegiant flight.

Another flight attendant, working for Delta, took off her mask by way of demonstration – and emotion totally overcame her.

Here’s one more share-the-moment video from Twitter:

Again, Delta announced first that the masks would come off. But American and United told pax and crew to keep theirs on. But after the story broke in The Daily Wire, United said the masks could come off aboard their flights.

Whoops! This next video isn’t real. This is a compilation of parts of the movie musical Lost Horizon (1973). “Share the joy” – that says it all.

Not everyone feels the joy

Paul Krugman said something ridiculous. He actually predicted that the rest of us would harass those who kept the masks on. “This was never about freedom,” he said.

False, Professor Krugman. Early in the pandemic you saw mask-wearing customers harass those who didn’t wear masks.

Frankly, Paul Krugman never was a friend to human liberty. His academic record belies any claim he may make that he has an ounce of respect for liberty. So when he says a thing like that, he’s throwing off on the rest of us.

Far more serious is the latest from the Department of Justice. If the CDC recommends an appeal of the summary judgment, the Justice Department will appeal. But they have two problems. The appeal would go immediately to the Eleventh Circuit, and they’re not likely to be friendly. The Supreme Court won’t be friendly, either, if only because the law is the law, and the CDC broke it.

But the mask bullies have a broader problem. After years of such bullying, about masks and vaccines, parents have had it up to their necks. So they’re not getting the usual childhood vaccines for their children, either. In fact they weren’t getting them at the height of the pandemic, because the doctors closed their offices! And now they’re refusing to catch up. Why, we might see a generation of children not getting onto the Autism Spectrum, or suffering from Landry-Guillain-Barré syndrome! Can’t have that, can we?

Masks never worked anyway

Take it from someone who has had medical training. Those masks never worked anyway. I’ve heard one witness compare it to trying to stop a mosquito with a chain-link fence.

Oh, the big Bangladesh Mask Study? Our contributor John Anthony showed that the whole study was false and misleading.

This is a larger blow to the soft authoritarianism John Anthony also wrote about. And for that reason, we have seen two kinds of masks come off. The literal masks came off transportation officers, crew and passengers. The figurative masks came off our politicians. You saw Jen Psaki openly weeping and calling that judge crazy for ditching the mandate. Again, we saw Paul Krugman throw off on people and reveal his own attitudes. Mostly we have an Attorney General who does not respect the rule of law. Incidentally we also see the vindication of Senator Mitch McConnell for keeping Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court in 2016.

So again, share the joy, and celebrate our liberty.