We've all seen people who, once they get the slightest amount of power, will immediately exercise it in pedantic and even tyrannical ways. I think of some of the volunteers doing crowd control at public events—even events for worthy charities—who exhibit a blissful enjoyment when commanding others and hurling scorn at those who don’t instantly obey them.
This impulse to tyrannize is being encouraged with the advent of the mask mandates. Now, all the people who crave the thrill of bullying others have been recruited into this movement of perpetuating a proven fallacy because it offers them the psychological boost of righteous indignation. Furthermore, they are given psychological cover by all the people who are genuinely frightened and those who are not really frightened but who have made fear a virtue as a means of furthering the ends of tyranny. The bullies justify their behavior because they are doing it (they tell themselves) on behalf of all those frightened people who would tell you to wear their mask if only they had the courage. Some even will admit that masks aren’t effective in slowing the spread of the virus, but they demand that you play along because some frightened people still believe they do work, and so you will be making them feel more comfortable if you merely indulge their delusion.
What the Mask Nazis have brought home to me is how many people will grasp at anything that they feel will give them power to bully others. There is something horribly wrong in their hearts that causes them to crave the power to lord over others. Of course, it's often just a compensation for a sense of inferiority, but it is combined with a resentment toward others who do not share that feeling of fear and inadequacy. As surprised as I am by these developments, I am even more terribly disturbed by the realization that there are many people on the Left in America who would delight in and relish the opportunity to send to the gulag anyone who would dare defy their draconian tactics in their march toward the total state. A friend posted a video of a mall cop in Bulgaria clubbing passers-by who weren’t wearing masks and showing how quickly others put on their masks when they saw him beat the disobedient. The video was a spoof, but I was shocked at how many people angrily weighed in against those who decried this tactic. It was clear that they would do the beating themselves if they could, or alternatively, they think it’s a good idea to have such brownshirts clubbing people in public who don’t mask up. One said that people should be denied health care and left to die if they don’t comply with the mask mandates. I am flabbergasted at the swollen reservoir of viciousness that is percolating just below the surface, and I am reminded that civil society is merely a thin crust above the volcano.
We saw these dark urges reveal themselves in action several times a couple weeks ago at the Acoustics for Autism event where hundreds of people filled the large room at the Elks in Maumee which was nearly as full as it would have been had there been no capacity restrictions, as well as at the Village Idiot which was fuller than I'd seen it since we moved down here. If people were truly afraid of the virus, they wouldn't even come near these venues, so it is highly unlikely that anyone that did attend really believed they were protecting themselves from the virus by wearing a mask as they walked to the tables where they'd be seated with strangers who weren't wearing their masks in a room through which thousands of people came throughout the day.
Most of the staff and volunteers were genuinely good-hearted people just trying to do what they were ordered to do by going around reminding people that if you stood up from your table, you had to have your mask on, but if you sat down in the same spot, you didn't. But, on the other hand, there were people who obviously were relishing their role as enforcer and were exhilarated by their authority. They seethed with righteous indignation and luxuriated in their pretense of power as they wrathfully barked their commands. In doing so, they gave the impression that they are precisely the type of people who eagerly look forward to anger and the opportunity to abuse those people in their lives who do not gratify them.
The funniest part of it all is how the people at whom they were barking just looked at each other with that knowing expression of surprise, recognition and resignation. I am certain that almost everyone who attended would have preferred that no masks would be necessary, but I am sure that everyone there would have agreed that no Mask Nazis were needed―except for the Mask Nazis themselves who took every opportunity to pour out their apoplexy at anyone who didn’t comply.
But I also want to draw your attention to some distinctive features of the myriad ways the tyranny compulsion manifests itself. Sometimes when you're nice to mean people they stop being mean. These are people who possess an inner check and a conscience. But that is not how sociopaths and often narcissists work. Sometimes when you are nice to mean people they only get meaner. Their first salvo of meanness was really only a test to see if you are going to permit them to be a bully. And once they recognize your compliance, they're off to the races. When you let these people slide, they end up ice-skating all over you. They are probing for weakness, and this is why anyone who knows the basic truths of the axiom "weakness invites aggression" understands that it is as applicable to the playground as it is to world affairs and relations with belligerent nations. This is why the projection of strength is such an effective deterrent.
So, on one hand, many bullies are just looking for weak people to lord over because these bullies are overcompensating for their own weakness. Rudeness is a weak man’s imitation of strength, Eric Hoffer presciently saw. These people are pathetic and almost pitiable if there weren't so many victims in their circle of influence. But, on the other hand, there is the kind of bully who will not see another's strength as a deterrent but rather as a provocation because it is a threat to their own power. This is illustrated by the axiom "the two biggest bullies on the block are bound to fight." They are trying to protect their turf so that only they can be the bully.
But there is also a third kind of bully, one that is even more sinister than the one trying to hide the little man inside; one that sees and feels another person's strength not as a threat but as a reproach. This is the bullying spirit of the egalitarian who wishes to eradicate excellence and level everyone down to a level at which nobody can make anyone else feel like a lesser person. They will try to cowl all of those who rise above their fellows. It’s almost always the people below you who try to tear you down. Theirs is the kind of impulse that comes from envy combined with impotence.
Now, when I describe the egalitarian bully, I am not describing necessarily the man filled with ressentiment; that special kind of resentment that combines envy with impotence in an unquenchable vengeful thirst to disparage those he sees as his superiors. Scheelsuchtig (the need to constantly disparage and smear anything that seems better than one’s own) can happen without the aggressive actions of the bully. “Those who care [about you] criticize where necessary. Those who envy [you] criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.” Your haters and frienemies jump at the opportunity to draw attention to your flaws and mistakes, and will never even begrudgingly recognize your strengths. But that doesn’t mean they are going to try to bully you. They are often far more comfortable in the cheap seats hurling derisive insults from afar than actually getting in the ring and competing against you. They just want to see their betters brought down to their size.
Surely many egalitarians fit this mold, but some of them do truly wish to bully but lack the courage, so they have others do their bullying for them. This is where the nastiest bullies come in. They are often people who actually possess a great deal of power. The amass their power by being a surrogate bully for those who cannot do it themselves. These people thrive on giving commands, and they realize that with every command that they give which is obeyed, their power grows. These are the corrupted souls who are drawn to power and become more corrupt as their power increases. These are the bullies who join forces so that each has more power to bully everyone. They are stronger united. Evil people reinforce each other; that is their greatest strength, C.S. Lewis explained. He also saw:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Albert Camus (who wrote a terrifying novel about the Plague) would add:
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience."
Now that we’ve had a year to observe and consider the actual data, we can conclude that the so-called “science” which supposedly guided the tyrants’ dictates is really just weaponized ideological argument. Now that sixteen states have rejected the mask mandates, we have ample evidence to show whether Mask Nazis are correct. If they were correct then the places where mask mandates were abolished should have had demonstrably worse outcomes, and people who were constantly going into crowded places should have had demonstrably higher rates of contracting serious cases of the disease. There is no empirical evidence that demonstrate in any way that mask mandates have reduced the spread of this disease. And looking back at the data from last year with fresh eyes, we can also conclude that the rise in Covid cases actually increased most dramatically AFTER the mask mandates were universally imposed.
Furthermore, what is astonishing is how Mask Nazis bitterly deride those of us who are "advocates for personal freedom and personal responsibility" don't want to permit a public realm of personal freedom any more than they are willing to take on the personal responsibility themselves which they then turn into a weapon against us. Most of us would prefer, based on the evidence, to do away with the social distancing and mask mandates altogether as has happened now in sixteen states. But we are not demanding that nobody wear them in public. If the sheeple are still too frightened to go into public without their masks, then they are welcome to wear a mask, or stay home; nobody is forcing them to do a darn thing. But notice how the reverse is not true. Mask Nazis and the sheeple they shepherd might be too afraid to go out in public without masks but they are also demanding that those of us who aren't frightened wear the mask against our will.
This widespread desire to bully others into submission despite the overwhelming evidence that masks don’t stop the spread of the virus is why this conflict is unlikely to recede until one side has vanquished the other side. In this respect it is analogous to the battle against Marxism which has shown itself to continue to spread despite the overwhelming facts and sound philosophy which exposes its errors, not to mention the clear history of destruction that lay in its wake. Like the Branch Covidians, the people who embrace the Marxian ideology are impervious to facts. Their motivations are not based on fact or reality, but rather on the dark stirrings of their psyche and the emotional need to bully others. The failures of both these draconian Covid dictates and of Marxism "are so numerous and blatant that it is astonishing that the underlying theory seems to digest these failures without losing prestige. It is even more astonishing that the protagonists of this approach are so utterly unrepentant," Wilhelm Röpke foresaw half a century ago. But the hundreds of millions of lives destroyed by Marxism last century and the tens of millions of livelihoods that have been destroyed by these Covid lockdowns and restrictions (not to mention the exponential rise in the deaths of despair due to them) are not enough to cause the Mask Nazis to pause and be circumspect about where their mandates are leading us. The facts don’t interest them. It’s the power to bully that irresistibly entices them. As the great, late Sir Roger Scruton has said:
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on pseudo intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought”
The world has always been full of things that would-be bullies and tyrants can be tempted to use to amass power for themselves to lord over others. So long as we stay unified, stand up to them and deny them their wicked wishes, we stand a chance of remaining free, happy, prosperous, peaceful people. The moment we surrender en masse to them, we open the gates of hell and unleash the hounds of war. Fortunately, it appears the tide has turned and soon these bullies will be sent back to the place to the dark place from which they came, the crippling prison of their own ego, where they will have nobody to bully but themselves. But beware; in that dark and lonely cell of the psyche, their hatred and resentment will grow and their venom will become more toxic. They will eagerly pounce at the next opportunity to strike fear in the hearts of their fellows, for they have turned fear into a weapon, cowardice into a virtue, and bullying into benevolence.