It was incandescently stupid and irresponsible on every level for Trump and his local political imitators and cult followers to politicize wearing masks to prevent transmission of the coronavirus. That said, Trump does dumb things all the time and gets away with it. Maybe not this time:
New York (CNN Business) Walmart will require customers at all of its US stores to wear masks beginning next week, becoming the largest retailer to mandate facial coverings as coronavirus cases continue to rise.
Perhaps this means nothing, but it strikes me as significant. Trump’s initial impulse to politicize masks was almost certainly denial, the same thing that led him to make outrageously dumb and self-destructive statements downplaying the danger early on.
Masks are a visible symbol that something’s wrong, that things aren’t normal right now. Honestly, I hate masks for that reason myself — I feel like I’m in a particularly tedious dystopian movie every time I go on a grocery run. But as a mostly functional adult, I also understand that something really is scary and abnormal right now, and it won’t go away if I just pretend it doesn’t exist.
Walmart requiring masks — which goes into effect on Monday — is probably going to galvanize a lot of other retailers who were contemplating it. And it’s probably going to lead a whole bunch of Trumpsters who were participating in Trump’s oppositional defiance disordered-resistance to masks to either double-down on the acting out or just put on a goddamn mask already. Moreover, it’s further evidence of Trump’s catastrophic handling of the pandemic, that Walmart is requiring masks starting JULY-fucking-20, 2020.
The mask war was always stupid, and now Trump is losing. Good.
Open thread.