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The partisan culture war over masks

   One conservative writer’s viral rant explains how a basic public health
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   Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune/Getty Images

   Wearing a mask is one of the easiest ways to contribute to the fight
   against coronavirus.

   Infected people wearing masks are less likely to spray virus-containing
   droplets onto others, which means that universal mask-wearing should,
   in theory, make everyone safer. There’s some evidence from across the
   world that suggests the widespread use of masks has played a role in
   reducing coronavirus transmission. Studies on mask-wearing generally
   support it, finding that masks generally provide at least some
   protection. At worst, masks are a low-cost intervention that might help
   at the margins.

   But in recent weeks, mask-wearing in the United States has become
   another flashpoint in the partisan culture wars.

   President Trump refuses to wear a mask in public appearances —
   including one at a factory that produces masks — or in his office,
   despite a recent outbreak among the White House staff. Vice President
   Mike Pence opted not to wear one when he visited the Mayo Clinic, a
   prominent medical facility in Minnesota that’s treating coronavirus
   patients. Many Republicans in Congress have opted not to wear masks on
   the House and Senate floors, despite several members of their caucus
   testing positive for the illness earlier this spring.
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   during the pandemic. They find that, after controlling for “a full set”
   of confounding variables, partisanship is a fairly strong predictor of
   one’s likelihood of wearing a mask.

   “Democrats are more than 20 percentage points more likely than
   Republicans to (75% versus 53%) to report wearing masks in public,”
   Pepinsky writes in a blog post summarizing their findings.
   “Mask-wearing levels are consistently lower across the board in states
   that voted strongly for Trump.”

   Why would Republicans treat masks as a partisan issue?

   A series of tweets from R.R. Reno, the editor of the conservative
   religious magazine First Things, is clarifying: In a diatribe that went
   viral on Tuesday night for all the wrong reasons, Reno praised Trump
   for failing to wear a mask when meeting a group of World War II
   veterans — and went on to describe the very idea of masks as a kind of
   surrender:

     By the way, the WWII vets did not wear masks. They're men, not
     cowards. Masks=enforced cowardice.
     — R.R. Reno (@rr_reno) May 13, 2020

     Just to reinforce. Talked to my son in Seattle. The mask culture if
     fear driven. Masks+cowardice. It's a regime dominate by fear of
     infection and fear of causing of infection. Both are species of
     cowardice.
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     Look, let's face it. There are those who are terrified, and those
     who are not. Where do you stand? Terror or a more reasonable
     position? Will you visit our mother? If so, the mask is a PC
     gesture. If not, you are a moral monster.
     — R.R. Reno (@rr_reno) May 13, 2020
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   coronavirus more broadly.

   The first thing that leaps out is that the anti-mask crusade reflects a
   particular vision of masculinity. Reno’s reframing of an obvious public
   health measure as a kind of cowardice, something tough World War II
   veterans would never do, is a thinly veiled way of calling protective
   masks unmanly. As my colleague Anna North argues, this strain of
   anxious masculinity is a consistent theme in anti-mask arguments on the
   right.

   The second is the argument that mask-wearing is a form of “political
   correctness.” Reno’s reasoning is incoherent — if you’re willing to
   visit your mother, presumably you should take mask-wearing even more
   seriously — but it illustrates the category of thinking he’s relying on
   here. The question in his mind is not “does wearing a mask contribute
   to public health,” but rather “what does wearing a mask say about where
   I stand in the culture war.” He sees the issue not through the lens of
   substance, but of symbolism.

   When you look at the broader Republican response to masks through the
   lens of Reno’s thinking, it starts to make a lot more sense. This is a
   political movement that has been built to wage a culture war; it has no
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   the like.

   The war on masks is a way of taking a public health crisis — a
   situation that demands political unity and best practices in governance
   — and reshaping it into a culture war competition. The question is not
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   movement to see political issues outside the lenses of partisanship and
   the culture wars. At a time when unity on public health matters is
   paramount, on issues ranging from masks to testing to the timing of
   reopening, this is dangerous.
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       spreading, it’s probably time to stop. Health experts say you
       should avoid optional trips whenever you can. You probably need a
       better mask, too.
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