Over and over, I've meditated upon the specific connection between anti-mask entitlement, and the sort of xenophobic, anti-Arab tirade displayed in this horrifying video from Florida—both of which are on display here—(complete with central-casting white female victimhood, and ending with a weepy "Please don't do this to me!" plea to the cops when they arrest her for terrorizing an Egyptian woman and her husband, who were just trying to shop.) The best I can come up with, regarding the connection, is a sense of nearly sociopathic entitlement, an expectation that literally everything occurring in their personal space should be pleasing to them—what they see, what they hear, what other people expect of them, where other people are from, what colour those people are, what they wear, what they say, who they are. When it's not pleasing to them, they've been taught, by politicians and churches, that their "rights" are being infringed upon, and they're entitled to act out in any way they see fit, and that doing so is wholesome and patriotic, even noble. And if it comes down to it, that they'll be acclaimed as justified for this obscene behaviour, and/or forgiven, whether it's murdering an unarmed person of colour in the street, or terrorizing one in a Walgreens. If that's "overthinking" on my part, so be it. It's a way of counting down from 100 until the craving for retributive violence eventually dissipates, because that's no way to be in the world either.
