Call it a civil war if you must. American’s are pitted against each other in heated battles throughout this nation as tensions flare and tempers boil over. While some citizens are quick to fall in step with whatever the government asks of them, others prefer bucking a system they have little trust or faith in. Whenever the two sides meet there’s trouble, just usually not to the degree we’re now seeing. To mask or not to mask may be the largest history-making squabble to ever permeate the land of the free.
Along with the parents of school-age children, top Republican lawmakers are firing heavy artillery at school board members who are attempting to enforce mask and vaccine mandates as a requirement for returning to classrooms. Thus far most of the fighting has been concentrated in Democrat-controlled rural areas where the sheep, as always, insist on being obedient to their liberal herders.
If anyone should be recognized for leading the Republican charge it would without question be Florida’s highly outspoken Republican Governor Ron DeSantis who doesn’t believe in pussy-footing around. DeSantis pulled out all of the stops by threatening to withhold state funding from any school district that dared to issue a mask mandate.
DeSantis took his threat a step further by saying he would also consider withholding the personal paychecks of any school superintendents who allow such a mandate to be issued.
DeSantis’s action motivated South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to go and do likewise. If Democrats in Columbia move forward with their proposed mask mandate, this year’s funding will have to come out of their pockets since it won’t be coming from the state.
Two of the largest school districts in Texas, Austin, and Dallas, despite warnings, are thus far sticking to their plan for requiring face-coverings while on school property. If they continue, Texas Governor Greg Abbot who fiercely opposes the mandate has promised to follow through with his threat of “no state money for you!”
School meetings around the country, once poorly attended, are now packed with concerned parents. To say the rooms become argumentative would be a grotesque understatement. Fires are raging. In Williamson County Tennessee just south of Nashville, threats were tossed out like confetti. “We’re coming for you.” “We know where you live.” “You’ll pay for this.” Of course, all of the threats were heavily peppered with obscenities of the foulest variety. The arguments even carried into the parking lot.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., busted into a school board meeting in his district after learning they passed a school mask mandate. Screaming and pointing his finger he made certain they were aware of how their decision was “nothing short of psychological child abuse.”
Democrat Governor Andy Beshear received a rousing round of applause from Decomrats when he mandated face coverings for all Kentucky schools. Republicans in the state weren’t so thrilled. In just one of the many voicemails Beshear received, he was called “liberal lunatic.” Another caller said, “the professional opinion of your superintendent doesn’t matter. The opinion of your school board doesn’t matter.”
Glenn Youngkin, a Republican gubernatorial candidate from Virginia, summed up Democrat Governor Ralph Northam’s mask mandate in one sentence. “This should be a decision that parents can make.”
In a poll conducted by Monmouth University, 85% of Democrats fully support mask and social-distancing mandates in schools, while 73% of Republicans adamantly oppose the idea. Unexpectedly, Independents almost split down with the middle with 42% in favor of mandates and 55% saying “no way.”
Numerous polls have been conducted with the outcomes being all over the board. Like any poll, it depends on who you ask on any given day. But this much is certain, the divide in America is growing deeper by the day and it isn’t just a mask or a vaccine issue. It’s just another log on a fire that’s being stoked to death.
The Democrats know that enacting mask/vaccine mandates is poking the lion in the ass and that’s why they’re doing it. They want to flex their muscles while they still have some to flex. But in doing so they’re underestimating the conservative free thinkers of this nation who would just as soon regulate their own lives rather than let the government do it for them. And they’re getting more pissed by the day. All most enough to…say…fight a civil war…
