Thread by @WatTylerRising

Don’t think it’s Trumpism gussied up - it’s another example of liberals recognizing that there’s an emergency that needs to be responded to but that should not - and in fact definitionally cannot - change any of the present social relations.

https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1463504112679591941

The basic liberal position here starts with the premise that people cannot live under a perpetual state of emergency, especially one that prevents socializing, etc. i agree with the premise. But the solution liberals present is a return to normalcy - a restoration of order.

They forget that for many people, “normalcy” was already a perpetual state of emergency, and for working class people in the front lines of service and retail industries, a return to normalcy creates another perpetual state of emergency in these industries.

It’s certainly not possible to eliminate every possible risk of COVID to every single person, but the inverse of this statement is not to pretend that there’s nothing that can be done to mitigate COVID beyond masks and vaccines.

Masking is a good example - there are a lot of liberals who are wondering when we will end masking and that masking is increasingly unnecessary and just making people angry. They then paint the other side as basically calling for forever masking.

This isn’t accurate though. Mostly, the “other side” here isn’t a cohesive group arguing for one specific policy, but rather individuals expressing disagreement with “return to normal”. And we actually aren’t limited to only 2 options.

And it is actually as absurd to think that we can pick a date when everybody just stop wearing masks for good. There will be some times that we can go maskless, some times we cant. Some places you have to mask, other places you don’t. That’s what the new normal is going to be.

Schools need to be able to go remote if necessary, but there’s a lot we can do to make the schools safer than they are (hello air filters).

I don’t have the all the answers but I know we’ve got more options than just “time to get back to normal” and then whatever is painted as it’s inverse.