by Richard Cameron

“Liberty is the power to do everything that does not interfere with the rights of others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every individual has no limits save those that assure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights.”

Thomas Paine, Plan of a Declaration of Rights, 1792

National Compass reported yesterday that a segment of the population is throwing caution and respect for the safety of others to the wind and taking relaxed COVID-19 public health directives as license to conduct their affairs as though such a thing as a still active nationwide pandemic is not real.

There Will Be A Second COVID -19 Wave Due To “Freedom” Without Responsibility

What we didn’t touch on in that report, but which is a related aspect of the psychology of mass sociopathy revealed by the coronavirus pandemic, is the emergence of violent, physical assault from people who have concluded that they will not even respect the social conventions that private businesses have seen fit to impose as a condition of patronage. 

Retailers’ COVID-19 Health Mandates Are Met With Violence

Here are just a few of the most extreme examples:

• A security guard was shot in the back of the head and murdered in Flint, Michigan by relatives of a shopper who refused the Family Dollar store’s requirement that she don a mask as a condition to shop:

• In the San Fernando Valley city of Sherman Oaks, California, north of Los Angeles, a security guard was assaulted and his arm broken as he escorted two shoppers from the premises for rebuffing store policy at a Target location requiring a protective mask as a condition for shopping.

FACE COVERING FIGHT: A security guard was left with a broken arm following a physical confrontation with two men who refused to wear face masks inside a Target in Van Nuys. Full story: https://t.co/CMq5LBHIQ2 pic.twitter.com/YL6FwOgi2P

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) May 11, 2020

• In Stillwater, Oklahoma, city officials were forced to suspend municipal orders requiring residents to wear face coverings when in public areas such as retail establishments, because the city received an avalanche of threats of violence in response.

“In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse,” City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. “In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm,” McNickle added.

Stillwater’s Mayor, Will Joyce also commented that:

“I knew there would be some objections, but I did not expect physical confrontations with employees and threatening phone calls to city hall.  I hate that our businesses and their employees had to deal with abuse today, and I apologize for putting them in that position.”

• Also in Oklahoma, a state that never imposed a stay at home order, a woman, Gloria Woody, shot McDonald’s employees after entering the premises despite a sign posted that only drive through orders were being served and that the dining area was closed. 

Police report that when she was told she had to leave, she engaged in a physical altercation with one of the employees and after she was successfully ejected from the restaurant, re-entered with a firearm and began shooting, firing multiple rounds, one of which struck a worker in the arm, two others with shrapnel and a fourth sustained a head injury . Woody, was arrested and charged with felony assault.

• Back to Michigan. Police arrested a man they identified as Rex Howard Gomoll, who disregarded the Dollar Tree store’s policy requiring shoppers to wear a mask. Not for refusing to wear the mask, but for assaulting a store clerk at the Holly, Michigan retail location.

The man was strolling through the store, when informed by a worker that customers were not allowed in the store without face covering and that the store had posted an advisory on that policy at the front entrance.  Local law enforcement said the man reacted in a belligerent manner, walking directly up to her and telling the employee, “Here, I will use this as a mask,” before he wiped his nose and face on her shirt. The incident was caught on surveillance video.

Rex Howard Gomoll has been charged with misdemeanor assault and battery.https://t.co/Q7vh0WD2QC

— WXYZ Detroit (@wxyzdetroit) May 5, 2020

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The attitude of certain malcontents in our midst is so militant that U.S. airlines, despite publicizing a requirement of facial covering in the terminal, the gates and before boarding – have advised their employees that they will not enforce the policy once the jet is in flight.

That means if the sort of individuals we have described, decide to declare emancipation from the imposition, they can freely launch aerosolized microbes into your personal space. The notion of “flying the friendly skies” has long been the subject of ironic humor, but now the facade will have been entirely demolished. 

Businesses such as bars and tattoo parlors are using armed militants to defend unlawful re-openings in Texas and except in rare instances, the local officials and law enforcement are shrugging their shoulders and reasoning that if the governor won’t even make an arrest of a beauty salon owner stick, why should they risk armed confrontations attempting to enforce the restrictions. 

The takeaway from this and a multitude of incidents in which residents of communities across the United States are, either dismissive, openly hostile or in some instances, committing violent acts in response to the efforts of public authorities and private businesses to curb the transmission of COVID-19 – is that a second wave of infections and deaths are inevitable.

Because multiple generations have not been exposed to instruction in either ethics or civics, we have substantial segments of the populace that believe some inalienable right exists in our system of laws that makes obeying emergency based mitigation orders, optional, not mandatory.

No such proviso exists. They parrot what they have heard from carney barkers of freedom minus responsibility. 

There is no prospect for a civil society in America – particularly when the occupant of the highest office in the land, Donald Trump, commits daily attacks on the fabric of our social order, signaling to citizens and even government agents, that they should rebel against anything and anyone that imposes upon them to participate in mitigation to limit the suffering and the deaths – now at 86,774 and which may likely top 100,000 by month’s end.       

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