THERE ARE NO RULES!

America is at 'war' over GOP lies — and Jim Acosta wants to know 'Whose side are you on?'
https://t.co/shICkagyt4

— Raw Story (@RawStory) May 15, 2021

So yesterday (or as it Thursday?) the CDC said masks are becoming optional. The AMA and FoxNews and tout le Twitter all went mad with anxiety ("WHAT??!!!???? CHANGE????!!!????") and you'd have expected anarchy and chaos in the streets today.

Instead, everyone was carrying on as usual.  Stores still had signs up requiring masks.  Pedestrians in parking lots still wore masks to and from cars.  Customers in stores were uniformly masked.  I saw one guy, looking smug and as if he dared you to tell him to put on one, and that was it.  Why? Mostly because I doubt any of them had heard the CDC pronouncement, or much cared.  Rather than strip their masks and leave them in their wake, or gather round a bonfire throwing them in, people acted like nothing had happened.

Because it hadn’t.

And now comes Jim Acosta to tell us America is at “war”.  Really?  Find 10 people you know and ask them who Liz Cheney is.  If they get as close as “related to Dick Cheney?”, ask them what her “leadership position” was in the House.  Ask them why it matters.  Ask them if it matters to them.

Then, for more fun, asked them who Marjorie Taylor Greene is; or Lauren Boebert; Kevin McCarthy; or. Mitch McConnell.  Then ask them that the “war” in America is; and then ask them which side they are on.

If they’re still talking to you.

Normal is returning after the pandemic. Masks will soon fade away (though in flu season I will still champion them, especially when I go to the doctor for my semiannual visit).   And democracy will survive the House GOP deposing Liz Cheney from the chair of their caucus.  Just as it will survive the clown car ballot recount in Phoenix (though I’d like the DOJ to tell the clowns who trucked off the ballots that they meant what their letter said.  Maybe next week….)

There are still rules.  And the majority of the country still wants to follow them.  Despite the expectations of bad movies, we aren’t all waiting to break out into chaos and mayhem just because the government made an announcement.*

*Or because Trump has declared the last election the ‘CRIME OF THE CENTURY!’  Yeah, I went there.  Hyperbole is hyperbole is hyperbole.  We’ve had enough of it.