Whether or not anybody likes it, wearing masks in public or private to fight a viral outbreak is a Democrat thing that Republicans resent.  Masks show stupidity and a backward approach to science that thoughtful people find objectionable.  To put all your trust into experts in a field only to discover they are corrupt, stupid, superstitious, or worse—truly up to no good is a party-line thing that has stoked the fires of division, and that’s only going to get worse over time.  People’s unity under governor-driven executive orders under emergency conditions was a cry wolf moment that will never come back.  And that has left public schools since they are government institutions on the front line to do what they always do, hide behind children to evoke some progressive cause.  This is precisely what happened to Lakota, the school district in my neighborhood.  They have been one of the first to implement a mask mandate in the schools, which has angered parents. I’ve gone to school board meetings for years, and I’ve never seen one as contentious as this one, shown in the video included.  Of the five school board members, only one has done what the area Republicans expected. That is to refuse to wear the mask during public meetings. That has caused the union labor socialists to isolate her to direct their anger.  I have known Lynda O’Conner for several years, and she represents most of the people who reside within Lakota.  At the meeting, I intended to speak about how much I appreciate that Lynda was not wearing a mask and showed that someone on the board hadn’t been suckered into the mask mandate nonsense.  But after the parade of angry parents took turns criticizing the school board, it was clear I didn’t need to say anything.  Finally, in Lakota, other people were willing to do that, which was good to see.  If anything good came out of the mask mandates, it was that it had brought these divisions to the surface so that we can finally have these arguments.

I could talk all day about how wrong masks are from an individual point of view. I’ve traveled to Asia, and I saw the mask-wearing that went on well before Covid ever hit.  In eastern cultures, they are compliance masks because the intent was to make the wearers superstitious to the mysteries of science and place the government ahead of all spirituality to become like a religion.  I figured while traveling that some bone-headed idiot in government would try to implement mask-wearing in the United States, which I was sure would be a problem.  There are always submissive types, too lazy, too stupid, too scared to think for themselves, who will do what a government says and put on a mask to fight a viral outbreak.  But in an area like the Lakota school district, many people are pretty smart Republicans and can think critically who think such an approach is one of the dumbest things anybody could do.  There are treatments for Covid, in hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, that are science and should be used to treat any outbreak.  But it’s evident that there is politics behind the virus, and not everyone is willing to play along.  Masks have become a symbol of submission to a sickness that Republicans find inconceivably stupid because scientific treatments could have ended Covid a year ago.  Instead, Democrats are using Covid to drive progressive needs, which has exposed school boards all over the country into playing along and forcing children to put on masks to get an education.

At the beginning of the Lakota school board meeting, you can hear it in their voices; the members had been planning to explain away all their problems with Covid to the local and state health department.  The ridiculous quarantine periods for anybody coming down with Covid or being near someone with the virus were missing many days of school. It was impossible to plan for teachers who would be out or bus drivers and other staff members.  So to appease the government, Lakota instituted a mask mandate for students, teachers, and staff, and magically the quarantine periods were minimized.  Because the health departments got what they wanted, the schools implemented a superstitious mask policy based on no science.  In effect, it was a bunch of Democrats who could suddenly boss around a bunch of Republicans and making them submissive to the party line.  When it comes to electing people to run things on our behalf, we elected the school board, and we expected them to put up more resistance on our behalf.  We didn’t elect the health department people who had no power to do anything, not even decide the quarantine period.  No legislation will hold up in court backing a health directive on quarantine periods, mask mandates, or mandatory vaccines.  Only stupid, lazy people would fall for such a thing, so the parents that night at the school board had a right to be angry, and that anger isn’t going to go away.  People pay a lot of money in taxes to Lakota, so for it to turn toward the Democrat superstitions of virus management is something most Republicans aren’t willing to do.  And of the school board members, only Lynda O’Conner stood firm and represented the people of the district adequately. 

At the end of the meeting, Lynda spoke about the pressure she was feeling by not wearing a mask on the board as one parent had attempted to get her in trouble over her position.  The mask shaming is a problem that Democrats brought on themselves.  The attempt to use peer pressure to invoke actual policy has not forced compliance; it has instead brought out intense anger.  When people wonder why we are so divided as a nation, Democrats have attempted to drag Republicans into socialism and communism.  And they have tried to hide those attempts behind health directives.  Most health officials could easily be working in communist China because their ideology is aligned with such dictatorships.  I admired Lynda for being the only member not to wear a mask.  Sure, I understand peer pressure.  I feel it too, but I’m always the only one of the first to do things in my life.  If there is a room full of a million people with masks on and I’m the only one not wearing one, I wouldn’t feel a moment’s pressure to put one on to conform.  Conformity to peer pressure is a largely Democrat thing.   Republicans tend to think on their own, so as long as Democrats try to shove Republicans into some blind compliance, there will be a fight or many fights.  A school board like Lakota should know better and strive to represent the community they are functioning in.  But most of the board and their employees are progressive types, so they quickly adopted the mask mandates to drive the social narrative.  And now they have been caught on it and are on the hook with the rage of the community.   No matter their personal feelings, they should have known better and respected the community they were operating in and pushed back against the health departments as our elected representatives.  Instead, they caved quickly and forced compliance on the rest of us, which is what the anger showed at that meeting was all about.

Rich Hoffman