Utah County made national headlines this week due to a crowd of roughly 100 people who attended a county commission meeting to speak out against masks.

According to a Fox 13 freelance reporter, Adam Herberts, the meeting was canceled because most of the attendees refused to wear a mask.

The Daily Herald’s Connor Richards got some good footage of the meeting. You can see that even those who wore masks mostly wore them under their chins. I’m not sure why they bothered in the first place, but it made for some excellent footage and photography.

I’d like to think that at least some of those who attended wanted to speak out in favor of mask policies, but it was clear from the footage that most of the people there came to represent the loud minority of anti-maskers and not the larger group of pro-mask citizens or the even larger group of mask-apathetics who just don’t know what to believe.

County Commissioner Tanner Ainge, a man I didn’t vote for but have since learned to respect for making the right decision even when it’s unpopular, tweeted that the anti-maskers were organized by his fellow commissioner Bill Lee.

One day I suspect that a least one of these photos will find its way into the history books of, if not my children, my grandchildren.

It feels like we’re once again on the edge of a proverbial cliff. I don’t know if these denialists want to usher in the first Purge, or if zombies are going to start running amok, or if they’re simply saying there’s no war in Ba Sing Se, but whatever it is, one day when we’re past this, those pictures will be a testament to an ugly era of American history.

When the meeting happened I knew I wanted to write about it, but I wasn’t sure how.

At first, I thought about writing about shopping cart theory. That theory essentially states good people who can self-govern put away their shopping carts when they’re done unloading their groceries, and bad people, or at least people who need to be governed to one degree or another, just leave their carts out in the open to crash into other parked cars and take up space in the parking lot.

But then I realized I already wrote about that.

I then thought I should point out that if you drew a Venn Diagram of the people who say, “If you don’t like this country then leave,” and the people who refuse to wear a mask during a pandemic you’d have a near-perfect circle.

I wanted to point out the hypocrisy and how nobody really believes you should just leave if you don’t like something. I wanted to write about how we all become activists when it affects us.

But I’ve already written about that.

I wanted to write about how the protesters nationwide are demonized and derided for daring to disrupt normal life to stand up for dead people of color, but the people at Defending Utah and their supporters see themselves as heroes for flagrantly putting people at more risk with their maskless grocery store flash mobs.

I wanted to write and ask why is it when someone dies at an armed standoff with Ammon Bundy or if Utah Business Revival puts people at risk of catching a pandemic-worthy disease that has killed and crippled hundreds of thousands that nobody tries to deplatform them, but one out-of-towner shoots someone and suddenly all of the cosplaytriots come out armed trying to cow the mostly peaceful protesters?

But I’ve already written about that (at least the Ammon Bundy part).

I wanted to talk about the Latter-day Saint General Authorities who are called to be the presiding authority over this state. I wanted to talk about how they sent out an official statement asking members to be good citizens and wear masks to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and how fellow congregants still refuse to do the least intrusive thing that would essentially allow us to restart the entire economy.

I wanted to write how it seems that Mormonism (in all of its “isms”) is only the second-largest religion behind Republicanism. I wanted to write a warning that the Latter-day Saint God is not a Democratic God or a Republican God and if you see him as either of those then you’re making God in your own image.

But I’ve already written about that too.

In the end, it looks like I’ve already written everything I needed to, I just needed to summarize some of the “Okayest hits.”

Some people make the argument if we take down the monuments that honor Confederates that we’ll repeat history over and over again.

Well, I’ve written columns for over five years and I’ve got to tell you, they could just reprint old op-eds of mine because history is repeating while most of those confederate statues are still standing.

I guess all I can write is this: I love this state. I love the people who live here. This is my home, and I don’t see that ever-changing. But sometimes cultural elements of Utah show themselves to be really disappointing. Nonetheless, I still love Utah.

Oh wait, I’ve already written about that too.