YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME

What unites these positions is the total absence of civic feeling & an anti-government sentiment. "No one is going to tell ME what to do, whether it's wear a mask or get vaccinated!" Plus magical thinking about contagion. "Sure, many are sick but I won't be one of them." https://t.co/XrJIvCkzWJ

— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) April 18, 2021

And what combines the "total absence of civic feeling" and "anti-government sentiment" is adolescence. The whine of the self-centered child: "YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!" You hear it in Rand Paul refusing to wear a mask, and Ted Cruz declaring he won't wear one anymore because he's been vaccinated and that's what matters.  And they don't just act this out, they declare it in Senate proceedings, and in front of TV cameras.

As low as they sank, I don't remember Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms whining like little children before TV cameras at any point in their Senatorial careers.  Something about the Baby Boom generation is making adolescents of our right-wing public figures.

I think it's one more reason people as so approving of Joe Biden, and why the GOP has so much trouble coming up with a narrative to bind him in.  After four years of the Adolescent-in-Chief identifying the entire GOP with whinging and mewling, "liberty" is now equated with "you can't make me!" It is as childish a reductio ad absurdum as the idea Trump lost re-election because everybody cheated him.

The country is done with that childishness.  In this, Biden is the anti-Trump, and we are all the better for it.