We’re still hearing a lot about “mask mandates” in COVID-19 era America, but my experiences (and those of acquaintances) over the last few days suggest that the supposed mandates have functionally become mere advisories.

In my opinion, that’s a good thing. Generally speaking, we’re all better off when personal health decisions are left to individuals than when government presumes to make those decisions for everyone.

Many Americans began voluntarily donning masks when “public health authorities” were still yelling at us not to, and drastically reducing our outings and interactions before governments started trying to put us all (well, all of us toffs who could stay home and watch Netflix while “essential” peons delivered our groceries) under house arrest. Policy is a trailing, not leading, indicator.

Grain of salt warning: “The plural of the word anecdote,”  Kenneth Kernaghan and P. K. Kuruvilla wisely noted in 1982, “is not data.” I’m not equipped to conduct a nationwide, well-controlled, peer-reviewed study on the subject. I can only tell you what I’ve noticed and what others I know have seen.

New Mexico blogger Kent McManigal notes at  “Hooligan Libertarian” that, although that state’s government has re-imposed its previous mask mandate, about 25% of shoppers seem to be ignoring it, and that stores aren’t hassling those shoppers about it.

I follow the news closely by profession, but I didn’t even notice when my county’ s government (Alachua County, Florida) re-imposed its mask mandate. My wife mentioned it to me just as we were about to walk into our neighborhood grocery store.

I didn’t have a mask with me, and was about to return to the car, when I noticed two things: First, the store hadn’t put up signs at the door advising shoppers of the re-imposed mandate. Those signs had been there throughout the first mandate. Second, looking through the door, I could see unmasked shoppers inside, and nobody appeared to be giving them any trouble. So I just went in. My experience matched Kent’s. More than half the shoppers were masked, but nobody gave the unmasked so much as a cross look.

On our next outing, I brought a mask with me, just in case.

At one store, the proprietor had been clear through the pandemic that it was not his job to enforce county mask mandates. The county government sign wasn’t back up, and the “masks optional” sign still was. I shopped unmasked without incident.

At another, the county government sign WAS up, but I saw not a single employee, and only a few customers, wearing masks. When in Rome …

A third store had its own — not government-printed or referencing any law — “masks required” sign. I masked up, went inside, and noticed that most (not all) customers were complying, and that nobody was beating anyone up over it.

I don’t much care whether people choose to wear masks or not. If it makes you feel better, knock yourself out.

But it’s good to see Americans deciding for themselves instead of just doing as they’re told.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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George Orwell’s classic dystopia 1984 describes a future (as of 1949, the year of its publication) in which a totalitarian state attempts to control both present and future by modifying the past. The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth, “rectifying” past news accounts:

“[T]he Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise … that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”

Disturbing, yes, but a prediction fail on Orwell’s part. The political class’s openly stated desire for a Ministry of Truth to suppress “misinformation” on social media notwithstanding, there’s little evidence that it needs any such brute mechanism to let it have its way with the facts.

Circa 2021, mainstream media spend most of their ink and bandwidth uncritically regurgitating, and affirming their faith in, the political establishment’s preferred narrative of the moment.

The collapse of Afghanistan is a perfect example.

How many cable news talking heads have we watched nodding at each other like chickens pecking corn as they discuss how, well, of COURSE the US had to invade in Afghanistan in 2001, because the Taliban wouldn’t turn over Osama bin Laden? Quite a few.

How many of those same talking heads even mention that the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden upon presentation of evidence that he was behind the 9/11 attacks? Or that then-President George W. Bush declined the offer and chose to invade anyway? Any?

It’s not just Afghanistan or foreign policy.

From the delta variant panic-pandering of “public health authorities” and mainstream media, one wouldn’t know that COVID-19 deaths in the US are at a quarter of their pandemic high. Or, given the constant emphasis on “the chillllllllllldren,” that COVID-19 has killed fewer than 400 Americans (out of a total of nearly 625,000) in the under-18 age bracket since the pandemic began.

Those “public health authorities,” with the aid of compliant media, have given themselves whiplash over the last 18 months from constantly reversing themselves on policy and science, entreating us all to trust them and hide under our beds.

No Ministry of Truth had to “rectify” the public record to put these whoppers over on us.

The information is freely available and easily accessible.

But the mainstream media either don’t want us to know it,or can’t be bothered to know it themselves. And, for the most part, the same is true of the rest of us.

As Orwell’s language framers would put it, “doubleplusungood.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are due the thanks of a grateful nation.

The obvious reason: Trump negotiated an agreement to end 20 years of war in Afghanistan, and got things rolling on fulfilling that agreement’s terms. Biden finished the job, albeit belatedly.

Slightly less obvious, but at least as important: Trump and Biden finally stood up to the “Deep State” we’ve heard so much about in recent years.

That Deep State consists of a permanent, long-term bureaucracy, both military  (careerist officers who need long wars to put stars on their collars before they retire into other branches of government or cushy positions with “defense” contractors) and civilian (careerist employees in the State Department, CIA, etc., who consider themselves entitled to administer an eternal global empire, actual US interests be damned).

During his single term, Trump sometimes feinted in the right direction before crumbling and doing as his Deep State masters ordered (his supporters always blamed them, not him). But near the end of his time in office, he finally made a stand. And Biden followed through on that stand.

The “Saigon 1975” re-enactment in Kabul is the result of Deep State failure and/or Deep State tantrum, not of presidential dedication to the task of ending the war.

After nearly 60 years of unquestioning obedience from presidents (the last to defy them on this scale died in Dallas in 1963, probably not coincidentally), the ghouls at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom assumed they’d be able to bully either Trump or Biden into reversing the decision to withdraw. It’s possible that the Kabul fiasco is merely a consequence of foot-dragging — not using the ample time they were given to prepare for the withdrawal because they didn’t expect it to actually happen.

The other possibility amounts to “never let a crisis go to waste.” If we’re not going to get our way, let’s at least make the withdrawal as ugly, tragic, and politically damaging as possible so that future presidents go back to giving us our way rather than risk similar embarrassments.

It’s one, the other, or both. What it’s not is presidential failure.

Eight months to the day after Pearl Harbor, the US Navy landed 16,000 Marines on Guadalcanal, in the middle of a hostile ocean.

In five months in 1990-91, the US armed forces moved half a million troops to the Middle East for Desert Storm.

The claim that 13,000 troops, plus embassy and Afghan support personnel, couldn’t be evacuated from Afghanistan in 18 months without the operation devolving into a deadly circus doesn’t pass the smell test. It didn’t happen because those ordered to make it happen didn’t want it to happen.

For that failure and/or betrayal, Biden should take some Deep State scalps.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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