- To wear a mask or not to wear a mask: As the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep across the nation, health professionals are still fighting to get people to wear masks.
- This is in part because wearing a mask has become a partisan problem, with polls overwhelmingly complying with Democrats’ mandate, while many Republicans are fighting against it.
- President Donald Trump has also not helped with his inconsistent messages about wearing a mask is important.
- A psychologist told Business Insider that the mask has become a symbol of the fears and frustrations Americans feel, but perhaps it is also a window into the depths of American fear.
- Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.
Some think that American politics is about personalities. Others think it’s about policy. But in reality, it can be about pieces of fabric.
In the Obama years, the president who wore a brown robe became a flashpoint for traditionalism and patriotism – for lack of it, because the right wing criticized the perceived impotence of a Democrat in wearing such a casual suit color. But the couture in the Trump years has gone from the Confederate flag to the Blue Lives Matter flag to the face mask that could save your life.
In this pandemic, the mask has become a symbol of resistance and freedom for those who refuse to wear it. For those who wear the mask, it is a symbol of respect and responsibility. In turn, it has become perhaps the most polarizing and divisive symbol of the young decade, divided partisan, gender and racial lines.
Barack Obama in his tan suit, which in the aftermath was a turning point in the politics of fashion.
Alex Wong / Staff / Getty Images
Those who wear the mask overwhelmingly, according to various studies, are mostly democratic, feminine and minority identifying. These are people who are accustomed to dealing with laws, rules and regulations that hinder their personal choices: what young girls can wear to school, if women can choose to have an abortion, if Black men can wear brains to wear working, or, decades ago, if they could drink from any water fountain.
The evidence from the survey is clear.
In June, when Pew Research conducted a survey that explored how Americans felt about the coronavirus, it found that 53% of female respondents said that masks should be worn in public, compared to 42% of male respondents. And 63% of Spanish respondents and 61% of Black respondents reported feeling the same way, against 41% of white respondents.
A July 13 Gallup poll found that only 34% of male respondents said they wore masks all the time, and 54% of female respondents reported the same. (This question did not break race.)
Gallup found that 61% of Democratic respondents said they wore a mask all the time when leaving their homes, compared to 24% of Republican respondents. Pew’s findings were almost identical: 63% of Democratic respondents as Democratic-leaning independent respondents said masks should be worn at all times, while just 29% of Republican respondents said the same. Democrats who responded to Pew were more likely to say they wore masks most of the time, while conservative Republicans were more likely to say they wore no mask at all.
The mask as a symbol of American ‘fear’ and ‘frustration’
But the debate over mask-without-tone shows no signs of slowing as the nation barrels to 5.5 million cases of coronavirus.
While the people who agree to grow masked grew up in a nation where their personal freedoms were always up for debate, the maskless is told what to do, against their freedom of choice and personal freedom.
This side seems to be listening to President Donald Trump and his inconsistent messages about wearing a mask is important. In a June interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said he believed some people wore masks just to show their disapproval of him. Then maybe the opposite is true – not wearing a mask proves that you support Trump and everything he represents.
An anti-mask protest.
Sergio Flores / Getty
Or as Jonathan Swan of Axios told Trump in a recent interview, these mixed as negative messages about masks could give these people a “false sense of security.”
“I talked to your people. They love you. They listen to you. They listen to every word you say; they cling to you every word,” Swan said in the interview. “They do not listen to me or the media or Fauci. They think we are fake news. They want to get their advice from you. And so when they hear you say, ‘Everything is under control; do not worry about wearing masks. , ‘I mean.’
The message from health professionals has been rigid for some time: wearing a mask will prevent the spread of this virus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been the most prominent of these voices, which was a major reason Trump eventually sided with him, an analysis by The Washington Post said.
Another protest against anti-mask.
Michael Siluk / Education Images / Universal Image Group via Getty Images
Leela Magavi, a psychiatrist based in Newport Beach, California, told Business Insider that the mask has largely become a symbol of American fear and frustration because of uncertainty about the future course of the virus and the economic recovery.
“Individuals move their emotions all the time on inanimate objects,” Magavi said. “Many times it is very painful for people to just express, even their loved ones, that they are struggling. … And what happens when people have emotions, suppress these emotions, they disappear into other things.”
Magavi said she believed the mask had been transformed into a symbol representing the autonomy taken from so many people. People judging their choice about wearing a mask is an attempt to gain control over their lives, she said.
Their statements seem to echo well-known themes of “losing control” and “regaining control” that have swept the right wing and the Republican Party in recent decades.
This rhetoric was perhaps most prominent during the Tea Party era, which began in the midterm elections of 2010, two years after the Obama election. The Tea Party, demonstrably concerned about tax policy, was driven primarily by white conservatives, and Trump’s shocking victory threw his legacy in 2016 in a different light.
President Donald Trump breaks his habit of not wearing a mask when he walks into the hallway on July 11th.
Associated Press / Patrick Semansky
There was talk of immigrants taking jobs, the growing population of American whites alongside the growing population of minorities, and the nation became less and less Christian based. Trump came forward and was able to speak with some force about these issues, which his voters’ concerns have proved.
For example, in 2015, Trump spoke about the issue of illegal immigration at a rally in Phoenix, telling the crowd, “We need to take back the heart of our country,” and address the issue as one of dangerous social change.
He said the same thing in 2018 about footballers kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality: “You should be proud of the national anthem, or you should not play. You should not be there; maybe you would not be in it. the land must be. “
Last year, he made similar remarks about four female congresswomen of color, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, the self-proclaimed “Squad.”
“The Squad”, as reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley on July 15, 2019.
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
“These are people who hate our country,” he said. “They hate our country. They hate it, I think, with a passion … if you’re not happy here, you can leave … as for me, if you hate our country, if you are not happy here you can you’re leaving. “
Its ability to attack Democrats, minorities and women, within the conversation of ‘losing’ and ‘winning’ control of the nation, takes on a new meaning in the mask debate, showing that all previous categories most likely to adhere to the mask mandate.
For Trump followers, however, it just becomes another national conversation in which they have “lost” control.
“It’s come to a point where I see individuals in the clinic that” the Liberals, the Democrats tell me to carry [the mask] ” to stifle me and silence me, and I will speak and I will not do this to me, ” said Magavi.
On the left, she said that people say, “Republicans do not care about other people, they are egocentric, they do not wear masks, whatever they try to prove, they try to kill everyone.”
The day of a new era
In July, another Pew Research poll found about one-third of Republicans think coronavirus was planned by global elites, compared to just 18% of Democrats.
Other conspiracies reflect anecdotal claims that vaccinations will be given with tracking chips, to be activated later by 5G cellular networks. Others say the virus was exaggerated by Democrats to try and hurt Trump, or was even produced in a Chinese lab. Trump himself has said things that support the idea that the virus was created to infect us, as a nation.
Melania Trump visits arrested children on the U.S.-Mexico border in a memorable jacket.
MANDEL NGAN / Employee / Getty Images
The underlying themes of these conspiracies focus on the idea that there is someone, somewhere, out to replace and hurt someone or something. In these very emotional and fleeting times, perhaps believing such things helps people regain a little bit of the story that they no longer have control over.
But then again, perhaps these fears were best expressed by yet another piece of cloth: the coat that Melania Trump wore when she visited immigrant children on the U.S.-Mexico border: “I really don’t care, do U? “
