Mask mandates are STILL in effect in Illinois??? Holy moly...
I guess I should consider myself blessed in that things have kind of returned to normal where I live; which is in a PMC neighborhood within fairly blue rust belt city, within a purple region, within a consistently blue state. Luckily blue collar people and other practical-skilled workers outnumber PMCs in the metro area overall.
Thankfully our statewide mask mandate expired back in May and hasn't been renewed since. Now businesses merely 'suggest' that people wear masks, i.e. anyone with half a brain ignores the suggestion and goes maskless in public places. Still lots of maskurbating, fear-driven, and virtue-signalling sheep though and I can safety guess they're all thoroughly vaxxed. I haven't put on a mask in public since the day the statewide mandate expired, and there's no way in hell I'm letting any gene-editing serum needle get anywhere close to my body.
I've been grocery shopping (among other ordinary errands) maskless since May and no one has given me any trouble or even any funny looks. Yesterday I dined out for the first time since the panicdemic started. My brother and I walked into a neighborhood restaurant, maskless of course. None of the staff were wearing masks; very few of the patrons were either. We sat down, had a very pleasant meal, was treated well by the establishment, no muss, no fuss. It felt like normal. Let's see how long this lasts. Our new governor (very recently assuming office to take the place of the meglomaniacal psycho-creep who was just forced to step down) could institute a new mask order at any time she feels like it and all the obedient sheep will dutifully comply.
I'm soon selling the house and moving to an outlying area where right-leaning and libertarian values are more the norm, in anticipation of our hopelessly-corrupt and compromised state government going full authoritarian again; at least in a less s-lib/PMC area, local officials and the people themselves are magnitudes less likely to comply with draconian mandates, much less enforce them or tattle-tale on neighbors and businesses for failing to comply. I really hope I don't have to end up moving out-of-state altogether. Western NY is my home and I really don't want to flee like a coward with tail tucked between legs. I think this is a modern American problem in general; when the going gets tough, people just up and run to somewhere else instead of making a concerted effort to try and fix the problem locally.
BTW, I absolutely love what you've been doing in your area. the "Speakeasy" name is very powerful and carries multiple meanings. Even though we don't have it so bad here (not at the moment, at least), I still think it might be a good idea to help create public awareness and help sympathetic people in my area avoid maskturbator/vaxturbator establishments in favor of their patriotic counterparts, as you put it above. Right now, as far as I can tell it's only the real bougie-trendy/hipster businesses that are still all-in on this insanity, but it would still be nice to develop a basic idea of where NOT to patronize.
Sorry for the run-on rant. I just don't have very many people I can talk about this stuff with in confidence.
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I guess I should consider myself blessed in that things have kind of returned to normal where I live; which is in a PMC neighborhood within fairly blue rust belt city, within a purple region, within a consistently blue state. Luckily blue collar people and other practical-skilled workers outnumber PMCs in the metro area overall.
Thankfully our statewide mask mandate expired back in May and hasn't been renewed since. Now businesses merely 'suggest' that people wear masks, i.e. anyone with half a brain ignores the suggestion and goes maskless in public places. Still lots of maskurbating, fear-driven, and virtue-signalling sheep though and I can safety guess they're all thoroughly vaxxed. I haven't put on a mask in public since the day the statewide mandate expired, and there's no way in hell I'm letting any gene-editing serum needle get anywhere close to my body.
I've been grocery shopping (among other ordinary errands) maskless since May and no one has given me any trouble or even any funny looks. Yesterday I dined out for the first time since the panicdemic started. My brother and I walked into a neighborhood restaurant, maskless of course. None of the staff were wearing masks; very few of the patrons were either. We sat down, had a very pleasant meal, was treated well by the establishment, no muss, no fuss. It felt like normal. Let's see how long this lasts. Our new governor (very recently assuming office to take the place of the meglomaniacal psycho-creep who was just forced to step down) could institute a new mask order at any time she feels like it and all the obedient sheep will dutifully comply.
I'm soon selling the house and moving to an outlying area where right-leaning and libertarian values are more the norm, in anticipation of our hopelessly-corrupt and compromised state government going full authoritarian again; at least in a less s-lib/PMC area, local officials and the people themselves are magnitudes less likely to comply with draconian mandates, much less enforce them or tattle-tale on neighbors and businesses for failing to comply. I really hope I don't have to end up moving out-of-state altogether. Western NY is my home and I really don't want to flee like a coward with tail tucked between legs. I think this is a modern American problem in general; when the going gets tough, people just up and run to somewhere else instead of making a concerted effort to try and fix the problem locally.
BTW, I absolutely love what you've been doing in your area. the "Speakeasy" name is very powerful and carries multiple meanings. Even though we don't have it so bad here (not at the moment, at least), I still think it might be a good idea to help create public awareness and help sympathetic people in my area avoid maskturbator/vaxturbator establishments in favor of their patriotic counterparts, as you put it above. Right now, as far as I can tell it's only the real bougie-trendy/hipster businesses that are still all-in on this insanity, but it would still be nice to develop a basic idea of where NOT to patronize.
Sorry for the run-on rant. I just don't have very many people I can talk about this stuff with in confidence.