Mask-use: rule of law vs. liberty

Rule of law and liberty are both important social-political concepts. Should individuals be entrusted with their own liberty to make decisions for themselves in their own best interest and the best interests of others and the greater good; or should government make rules and laws that ensure individual liberty won't be abused to shirk the best interests of self and other OR the greater good?

The current issue of mask-use is bringing this timeless tension between rule of law and liberty into a new context. Proponents of mask use see it as a simple equation: masks prevent people from spreading pathogens, therefore it is in everyone's best interest for everyone else to wear a mask. But then what happens when you have a reason not to wear a mask, such as concern that it can make you sicker, or if you believe that light pathogen-load transfers between people actually help them build up immunity against a large number of normal diseases without getting sick?

As with everything, this mask issue has become politically polarized. Trump is of course the target for those who want to see rule-of-law imposed universally with no exceptions. Trump thus represents the big shot (rich, president, and totally self-confident) who dares to think his own personal liberty outweighs the power of the group to bring him into line. His defiance of group-authority makes his submission into a holy grail for authoritarians. "They have all fallen into submission to group-authority," they reason, "so why shouldn't he?"

So now Trump has toured the Ford plant with a mask in part of the tour and without a mask in another part. He claims that he doesn't want to give the media the pleasure of capturing him in a mask. And the question then becomes why the media and its audiences would derive pleasure at all from masking Trump, and the answer, I think, lies it its/our fetishization of the power that comes with the ability to watch, react, and comment/ridicule individuals and thus bring them into submission to the mostly-invisible collective chorus of minds and voices that are watching.

We, the media audiences, are the collective 'big brother.' The media and its journalists serve us in some ways and lead us in others; and maybe they do both at the same time in many cases. But the question is why do we seek to drive individuals into collective submission instead of recognizing the importance of individual liberty? Are we so convinced that mask-wearing is without negative effects that we can't imagine doing any harm by coercing everyone into wearing them?

What if we're wrong and masks are causing harm? Who bears responsibility for that harm, then? After all, doesn't everyone just voluntarily comply with the social pressure to wear them? And if we recognize that it's not actually voluntary, but rather submission to diffuse social authority and only secondarily to rule-of-law where legal codes have been implemented; are we free to question such authority and take the liberty of believing and acting not in accordance?

If we do choose independence of collective submission, who has our backs? The courts? Does Trump's resistance to wearing a mask, at least sometimes, promote individual liberty over collective submission and rule of law, at least a little? Or are most people so consumed with contempt for Trump's deplorability-compliments-of-the-media that his exercise of individual liberty only works to demonize the exercise of liberty that much more in the anti-Trump public mind?

We should also wonder whether the mask issue is even a health issue for most people at this point, or whether they just see it as an issue of compliance and submission? Traditionally, pragmatists view social-submission as a question of expediency. "Just do what's expected to make the line move faster," is the guiding ethic. Liberty is a waste of time and money to them, so whether mask-wearing promotes health or harms it, they just don't want to be bothered with dealing with uncertainty and making an independent decisions. They just want a hard and fast rule they can follow, and if the people who make the rule turn out to be wrong, they will somehow be held accountable and it will all come out in favor of the little guy; or will it?