“Freedom” is the sleight of hand the profit-makers pull, because they have encouraged enough people to think that freedom doesn’t mean freedom from want, or fear, but being able to own an AR-15 and say racist stuff. “Freedom” is how they dump poison in a river. As long as most Americans don’t have access to those truer, less tangible, and deeply unprofitable freedoms—choice, education, destiny—then not wearing a mask will be what freedom feels like for some of them.
