As I’ve been writing for a while, it’s not about the masks, but about the power to tell you to wear masks. Or then tell you not to wear them.

As David Horowitz often quotes the SDS, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

And these days that’s always the issue. 

Revolution is another way of saying power. Masks are just another form of power. The forms of power are unlimited.

Being able to tell you to recycle, to check your privilege, to check this box on this questionnaire are all forms of power.

There are legitimate policy issues that are important for their own sake, but it’s also important to recognize a larger trend in which manufacturing compliance and getting people to do anything is itself the point. A lot of the things that the Left wants people to do really don’t matter in and of themselves. They matter because they can get people to do it.

Compliance is a pattern. Totalitarian societies drift that way because people become used to obeying. They don’t ask questions. And they learn to resent those who do.