NOPE    By Brett Nunn

Masks. Some people are wearing them.

Some are not.

Some of the people wearing them are proclaiming that maskless people are ignorant at best, and “Killing People!” at worst.

The people not wearing masks are confounded by the people who are wearing masks, while driving in a car solo with the windows rolled up.

We all can agree that it would be ideal if people who are sick with a respiratory virus should wear a mask so as not to spread disease from exhalations of the mouth and nose. That is what masks are designed for and how they function.

All of us aren’t sick. In fact, a great majority of us are not any more sick than we were before this all started.

A few months ago we were told millions would die and our health care system would collapse.

That hasn’t happened.

What has happened is that small businesses have been decimated and 38 million people have filed for unemployment because of two months of shut downs prescribed by the people that told us millions would die and our healthcare system would collapse.

Some in the population have been paralyzed by fear and demand that we keep everything closed, especially everything that might bring in outsiders even though the Jefferson County public health officer, Dr. Thomas Locke, has stated there is no evidence of tourists spreading the virus. But never mind and, just in case, everyone should be required to wear a mask under penalty of law.

Many in the population are watching their business or their employer’s business built with blood, sweat, tears, life savings, and second mortgages, burn to the ground in the flames of political dithering, while the authorities threaten to sue them and, or, pull their business licenses if they dare to open. The last thing these people are thinking about is wearing a mask.

If you are wearing a mask and it makes you feel better, then by all means don’t stop.

If you aren’t wearing a mask, just know there are many more of us than there are of them.

[Editor’s note: Brett Nunn’s family business, essential to that family’s lifeblood, was deemed expendable by Governor Inslee. See: Life in Port Townsend for a family with a non-essential business.]

HOPE by Jim Scarantino

Pro-democracy protesters wear face masks in Hong Kong. Those masks don’t make the protestors any less courageous or determined. They don’t silence their voices one bit. Indeed, they started wearing masks last year after the totalitarian Chinese government banned face coverings. They wear their masks not only against a virus, but also against tear gas.

In the United States, we’d be more inclined to accept masks if they had not been turned into a virtue signal, a sign of surrender to conformity and the Left’s agenda to mold all into their image and thought patterns. It certainly would also have helped if the experts had not lost so much of their credibility.

And it would definitely help if our Public Health Officer stayed out of politics. Dr. Thomas Locke has hurt his credibility in this county by stepping out of the role of an objective epidemiologist to make subjective and inherently political decisions as to whose job, business, and livelihood he sees as “high” value and whose job, business, and livelihood he is willing to trash because to him it just doesn’t seem as worthy.

He is also outside his proper role when he goes off about some politicians using masks “as a wedge issue”  and mocking the concerns of protestors, many of whom have had their lives destroyed while the politically privileged continue to get paychecks and large corporations escape the pain inflicted on small businesses. Not long ago he recklessly accused the state of Georgia of “recklessly” reopening, when data shows a resurging Georgia economy but steep drops in hospitalizations and deaths. He has yet to retract that accusation, nor has he acknowledged that the CDC has reduced by 13 times the transmission rate of the virus. If you want a job on MSNBC as a partisan pundit, go for it, Dr. Locke. But don’t think we don’t see you yourself using masks as a wedge issue when you spout off like that.

You told the County Commissioners you need to do a better job of messaging to break down the resistance to wearing masks. You certainly do.

Back to those Hong Kong protestors.

They are fearless. They don’t hide, they don’t accept censorship, they accept punishment for speaking out.

I would propose we follow their lead. Governor Inslee has made himself a dictator, let’s not deny that. We don’t face the same repression as the Hong Kong protestors, but we do strive for the same thing: democracy, recognition of individual rights, the rule of law. Inslee’s lock down order, his unilateral extension of his omnipotence, his arbitrary and unchecked power to declare who and what is “essential” or not, his constantly moving goal posts to further extend his unchecked powers…this is dictatorship. We should and must speak against it and push back, especially since our Governor has been so wrong and has caused so much unnecessary suffering, from destroyed jobs and businesses, to crippling the healthcare industry, to causing a tidal wave of health problems unrelated to COVID but directly caused by his vague, poorly drafted orders that prevented physicians and hospitals from providing urgent care to thousands.

Jefferson County is going to get a masking directive. It’s coming and we can’t stop it. I’ve been donning  a mask for the past months as I enter stores. I understand the theory that a mask will prevent one’s “droplets” from spreading. It’s not a perfect barrier but it is still a barrier.  A cloth mask will not protect me, hardly at all, I also understand that. And if a business asks customers to wear a mask, I don’t mind complying. I see that request as similar to a “no shoes, no service” rule.

I also wear a mask in sympathy with oppressed business owners. Inslee–and Locke, with the considerable powers granted Public Health Officers–can snuff out their livelihoods with a word or two. Inslee has weaponized the agency that issues and cancels business licenses to terrify their owners and employees against insubordination. If keeping them open, and getting more to turn on its lights comes at the price of me wearing a mask, that is a small price to pay to win some freedom for my fellow citizens and get Dictator Jay’s jackboot off their necks.

I don’t believe much of what Dr. Locke says anymore. I think he’s exaggerated risks, minimized the terrible costs of the lock down order, and overstepped his authority by engaging in inherently political decisions unrelated to medical science. I barely believe anything Inslee says, a long way from where I was in March when this started. Then I easily accepted losing a chance at urgent surgery in the belief that my hospital bed would be needed by someone struggling for life, a belief I have since learned was based on false information and wildly inaccurate scenarios being fed the public at the time.  That was before Inslee’s own mask came off to reveal him as an incompetent and base political operative abusing his self-proclaimed powers.

I intend to use the mask requirement to exercise rather than euthanize my First Amendment rights. Some time ago when I saw this coming, I bought a Trump 2020 face mask. Its blue and red letters stand out starkly against the nice white fabric. I think it will look great as I shop in the Co-op and along Water Street when King Jay lets our stores reopen–stores that he closed while allowing big corporations (political donors, all) to operate with very few restrictions.

I’ve got other masks on order that will be even more entertaining.

If we don’t wear masks those exercising dictatorial powers are going to close, or refuse to reopen businesses and throw more people out of work. They are going to destroy entrepreneurs, the backbone of our economic freedom.

So fine, we’ll wear masks but let’s use it against our oppressors. We don’t have to face clubs and guns and fire hoses–yet. This is nothing, so let’s have some fun with it and use our masks to speak for freedom.