Thread by @MattGlassman312

I have a hunch that voluntary outdoor mask-wearing drives a certain slice of conservatives crazy because they themselves do a lot of small but symbolic public acts of political affiliation, so they assume masks are just that, political symbols, rather than earnest health choices.

To be clear, I don’t wear a mask outdoors in public, and I think at this point I’m generally against mandates to do so. But it would never occur to me to be bothered by someone wearing one voluntarily, and I find it quite intriguing that a sizable number of conservatives are.

I think the error here is that for many people—maybe even a majority of people—there’s no conscious political content to the decision to wear or not wear a mask. It’s literally not a dimension of their thinking on the subject.

But for a tiny fraction of mask-wearers, it *has* become a sort of political statement, of affiliation with progressives. Which in turns leads to many overtly political conservatives to see the politics first in all outdoor-maskers.

I’m sure there are plenty of issues where we could observe the opposite phenomenon—overtly political liberals finding symbolic conservative politics in things normal people just choose to do. I don’t think this is exclusive to conservatives. I just find it interesting.

As @RevGrey points out, owning a gun is a big one in the opposite direction, as is, to a lesser degree, just going to church.