I’ve watched this video about 100 times today already.  A man wearing a face mask and questionable shorts is stalking a woman around a store, demanding that she put on a mask. She very wisely decides to film him and eventually he storms off with righteous indignation. His good deed for the day has been foiled. Facebook will definitely be hearing about this!

I’m not sure what’s more offensive about this man:

his propensity to intimidate women or his girl shorts.
pic.twitter.com/N26f7EwW6M

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) December 15, 2020

Thankfully the people watching this unfold took the side of the woman filming and told this man to leave her alone, which he eventually did.

Unfortunately this woman’s experience is not an isolated one. All over the country we are seeing confrontations between mask-wearers and non-mask wearers. The maskless  are typically engaging in normal activities, minding their own business, certainly not shouting at every passerby to take off their masks. Most of them keep to themselves while out, not talking to others or getting too close. Many seem to be in contact with almost no one around them until a Very Indignant™ masked person comes along to yell and holler in their face.

The maskholes, on the contrary, cannot keep their COVID-infected hands to themselves…or at least their mouths to themselves. They feel the need to follow the maskless around stores, stop their cars and scream at them from the middle of an intersection, stalk them on sidewalks yelling foul things. They are the ultimate Karens. They have convinced themselves that the fate of the world lies in the fabric covering their mouths. Worse, they have convinced themselves that the fate of the world lies in the fabric covering your mouth.

The truth is, maskholes didn’t become that way overnight. Maskholes have always been holes of some sort. They are marked by EXTREME CONCERN, a need to RIGHT ALL THE WRONGS, and an outsized sense of IT’S NOT FAIR. Some also suffer from the uncomfortable side effects of IF ONLY EVERYONE WOULD.

Maskholes were formerly Enviroholes (and will be again once they’ve Karen’d the virus into submission). Some of them also doubled as Taxholes. When the mask thing came along, they slipped right into it. It felt cozy and familiar and the fit was just right.

All these conditions are the result of an outsized need to save the world, which is rooted in helplessness.

Saving the world is a pretty heavy burden for a single person to bear. No wonder so many maskholes seem so insane. They have been driven crazy by the impossibility of making 7 billion strangers comply with their whims and notions – notions they believe literally mark the difference between life and death.

We were not meant to bear that burden. The world is not ours to save, only to manage. Many who have found comfort in their faith are not abdicating their responsibility to fellow citizens or to be good stewards of their earthly home. They have accepted that their lives are the only thing they have the right to control and everything else is a part of a strange, eternal journey that we may never fully grasp. It makes it easier to look at people who think differently about issues like this virus or the environment as fellow individuals who will also make their own choices for themselves that are beyond our control.

We are born with the innate need to be in control. It’s actually more than that. It is the need to take God’s place and it is why once faith communities are devastated in a given region, the government can so easily oppress and enslave their own populations. Everyone’s looking for something to take God’s place and if God isn’t around that job typically falls to government.

To Karens and maskholes.

There are a lot of people running around America right now who aren’t really concerned about the virus. They are just concerned about your compliance, about your refusal to follow orders because the orders will bring control and control is how we thwart God’s sovereignty. Or so we believe.

Look once more at the video of this man. He is stalking a woman with no mask on, but he doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned for his health or safety. He isn’t worried about getting the virus from her at all. If he were, he would have immediately left the store and sought safe air elsewhere. When people are frightened for their lives, their first instincts are to either run or freeze in terror. This man marched up and down the store aisles just to scold a stranger.

He wasn’t worried for his life at all. None of the maskholes are. They wouldn’t be out of their homes if they were.

No, they are not scared to die of COVID, they are angry that you’re not “following the rules” while they are. It’s not fair. These are the same people who believe the best solution to the success gap is to level the playing field by punishing success. If their lives are miserable then yours should be too. If they don’t want to use plastic bags (even though everyone prefers them) then you shouldn’t use them either. If people won’t make the “right” choices then they should be forced to make the “right” choice because it’s only fair.

Maskholes are out to save the world. When COVID is gone they’ll find something else to yell at you about. We should all be like this woman. Do what you want and start putting maskholes on record. Their unreasonable response to a virus with a 99.6% survival rate needs to preserved forever. Then, maybe we can dare dream of a world where one day everyone assesses their health risks for themselves and then acts accordingly without having to lecture to everyone around them.