The transparently disingenuous attempt to weaponize ADA/HIPAA seems clever to anti-maskers because they’ve convinced themselves that ADA somehow means disabled folks are getting cool perks & freebies & other great stuff they enjoy pretending to resent being denied. ...
It’s the welfare-queen lie, except with disability. It’s a LARP, not a “real” belief. They enjoy pretending to envy those lucky-ducky poors or disabled people and enjoy pretending to resent & envy SNAP or LIHEAP or the ADA, but part of them knows that’s a crock. ...
They know better than to actually want to trade places with someone who NEEDS welfare assistance or ADA accommodations, but they enjoy pretending that they resent such people as, somehow, having it easier & better than they do. ...
And they enjoy being around others who also enjoy pretending this, reinforcing the fantasy and better enabling them to savor the weird pleasure of resenting those whose lives are harder & more challenging than their own. ...
Those fellow LARPers also reinforce for them that it’s clever to lie about ADA exempting you from mask hygiene. Inside the fantasy of that resentment game, it SEEMS clever. Tables turned! Checkmate, lucky-duckies! ...
Outside of that fantasy, though, normal people do not find this to be a clever lie or a master stratagem. Normal people — those who don’t go into a frenzied rage whenever they see reserved parking for those with disabilities — just see this bit as a stupid, bad-faith lie. ...
This bewilders the LARPers. They had a script all planned for how this was gonna work. They’d rehearsed it in their heads. All the other LARPers had said it was brilliant & flawless & certain to play out just exactly according to their script. ...
But no one told the rest of the world about the script and it never goes the way they hoped & planned. No one outside of the LARPing resentment game shares or understands the weird premises that make it make sense to those inside the fantasy. ...
This is why they lose it & have such total meltdowns when they really try to do this crap in the real world and it goes so off-script and so wrong. We’re ruining the game for them & that’s unbearable because the game has become their whole basis of identity & source of esteem.
