In Manhattan, Kansas, on Monday, Riley County Commission Chairman Marvin Rodriguez once again spoke gibberish about the coronavirus, and once again did so in ways that were offensive.
This time, he compared being asked to put a piece of paper in front of our faces during this pandemic to, what else, the horrors of Nazi Germany.
This affront to Jews and outrage to all people who can see the difference between genocide and a minor inconvenience intended to save lives rather than extinguish them is, as we have unfortunately had reason to say before, both wrong and witless.
But there is also some good news out of Riley County: Rodriguez and the equally mask-averse Commissioner Ron Wells could have blocked the county mask order but, after saying how terrible it supposedly is, they did not do that.
Maybe that’s because both Rodriguez and Wells, who lost their seats in the recent election and will be replaced in January, do see that at least where they live, the public is no longer buying what they’re selling.
“The pandemic played a big role” in their ouster, said Manhattan Mayor Usha Reddi, and mask compliance is way up. “There was resistance at the beginning,” but that’s changed, and now she’s hearing few complaints. “I think they actually get it. The rural communities are all feeling staffing shortages in health care,” and business owners who want to stay open can see for themselves that masks help them do that.
It’s a temporary measure, until we get a vaccine, and we’re not throwing people in jail; we don’t even have a fine. There have been a handful of citations.”
Rodriguez sees all this differently, and catastrophically, of course. “We’re getting real close to pre-World War II Germany, where you didn’t obey what the Führer wanted, you could be reported by your family, by your neighbor, by your friends because you are not participating like the government said you should. That’s what it’s getting close to.”
We sincerely urge Rodriguez, and anyone else who feels this way, to speak directly to Kansan Sonia Warshawski, or any other Holocaust survivor. Warshawski, subject of the documentary “Big Sonia,” is quite a force, and can explain why being forced to shovel the remains of her people for use as fertilizer at Bergen-Belsen is actually not a very close cousin to being encouraged to wear a mask to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Rodriguez lost his Republican primary race in August, not long after saying that there wasn’t much COVID-19 in Kansas because there are few Chinese people in the state.
Wells, who lost his primary, too, said this week that Mayor Reddi and Kansas State University President Richard Myers have been pushing for mask-wearing not as a matter of public safety, but because “they want to be in control.”
In a letter to the commissioners, Myers said he supports a county as well as a city mask mandate because “Our communities, state, and country are at a crisis stage with the continuing spike in COVID cases. In fact, it has reached a critical point that has put our health care system and our communities in a dangerous position where there may not be medical staff, supplies, or hospital space to accommodate more patients.”
Rodriguez said that message from Myers, a retired four-star Air Force general, “kinda was threatening.”
No, it’s COVID-19 that’s threatening. But when the public is willing to do its part, as we see happening in Riley County and in all of the at least 50 of 105 Kansas counties that have mask mandates now, in many cases after initially balking, it doesn’t have to overwhelm us.
— The Kansas City Star
