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Mask rage in a Cambridge ride-share car

Cambridge Police report that a ride-share driver and his vehicle were attacked after he picked somebody up at Mount Auburn Hospital around 11:15 p.m. on Saturday.

The customer refused to put on a face mask and a verbal altercation escalated. The customer spat in his face and damaged his vehicle (rear view mirror, driver side mirror and passenger mirror).

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death of the American empire, I expect that rampant, howling stupidity of the sort exhibited by this passenger will be cited as the leading cause.

The Uber app makes you check a box signaling your agreement to wear a mask as a precondition to summoning you a car. WTF is wrong with this asshole? Anyone wanna bet who he voted for in 2020?

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Historians still don't agree on why the Roman Empire fell, so I doubt they will come to any quick consensus on the end of ours. Why do empires fall? The growing imbecility of the populace is always a favorite theory, especially among those who like to denounce the degeneracy of the young, but as a theory it lacks explanatory power. Were the Romans under Valens more stupid than they were under Augustus or Trajan? That seems doubtful. Did British intelligence decline between the 19th century and the 20th? To me it seems that it might have improved somewhat. At least by mid-20th century a majority of Brits had attained the wits to doubt that an empire was doing them any good.

What rampant, howling stupidity will destroy is the nation, not the empire. Historians won't agree about that, though, because many of them will be howling fools themselves.

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At the present rate I wonder if the "American experiment" will even rate a footnote.

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He was at a (expletive) hospital, so he must have had a mask on his person, which makes this especially dumb.

Judge LaTulippe sentences him to 30 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.

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Remember the theme song to Reading Rainbow hosted by Levar Burton. Butterfly in the Sky [Magoo] can fly twice as high… Magoo luved that show. Levar was quite good as Geordie LaForge in Star Trek, the next generation as well. Point is Magoo thinks we all need to chill. Magoo.

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unless Uber or Lyft for some reason refuse to give the police the customer's name?

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Is there a criminal law allowing the police to arrest someone on an allegation of non-masking based upon a driver giving a name to the police?

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The customer spat in his face and damaged his vehicle (rear view mirror, driver side mirror and passenger mirror).

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You are correct, I did not read the full account

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Why is this happening all the time now? Constant fights on airplanes, nurses being attacked, people going wild in Ubers. I don't recall this uncivilized behavior previously happening with quite the frequency it does now. The civilization would seem to be in decline, but I'm not sure why. Simply saying "Trump" or "Covid" is way too simplistic.

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I'd wager. Not an excuse, but being separated from the ordinary everyday interactions inherent in living in a normal society makes some folks forget how to behave in the presence of others. I think the greater amount of time spent online and public masking also contributes -- because the sense of empathy one should feel when looking at someone in the face isn't necessarily there when interacting from behind a keyboard or when a mask is covering their face.

And there are a lot of people who are pissed off that mask requirements are back after many assurances that vaccines would mean a return to pre-pandemic normal life. You may not agree with their attitude, but it's real and it's not going away.

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And there are a lot of people who are pissed off that mask requirements are back after many assurances that vaccines would mean a return to pre-pandemic normal life. You may not agree with their attitude, but it's real and it's not going away.

the people who wouldn’t take the vaccine are mad that the vaccine didn’t work?

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These aren't your "logical thought" kind of people.

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that mask requirements are back

Weren't mask requirements never "away" for modes of transportation like the one involved in this story?

I'm not terribly thrilled myself that I have resumed wearing a mask in all of the places I am told to do so, after a couple of months (was it even that long?) of basically not having to wear a mask anywhere I was going over the summer. But I do what I have to do, and don't assault anyone in the process. "Some people are just going to respond this way" has a lot more to do with the people than the masks.

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A certain orange turdball playboy spoiled rich kid modeled and enabled entitled tantrum behavior, normalizing it among certain wannabe special people.

You are over thinking this.

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Trump was a symptom, not the cause.

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Look up the meaning of "normalized" and "enabled".

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Instances of bad behavior are not confined to Trump people (before you attack me I am not in any way a trump supporter).
There have been instances of “tantrum behavior” in every part of our society over the last 18 months.

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Trump, his election, and his antisocial behavior both before and after that event, have all normalized this kind of behavior, empowering people who'd been suppressing it to let it out. He's done enormous damage to the social fabric. It's going to be a huge task to put that stinky genie back in the bottle.

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Are we to assume that EVERY person misbehaving now on planes, Ubers, hospitals, etc is a Trump supporter or otherwise took a cue from Trump? Nobody who despises Trump is one of the people who got into a tussle on a plane, in an Uber or in a road rage incident? Or are we to assume that Trump also gave license to Trump haters to act this way as well as his supporters? Do you see what a slippery slope this is? Something was brewing in society whether Trump ever existed or not. On this very site there are some who use quite salty and aggressive language and who come off as somewhat combatant, yet it is clear they hate Trump. Were they still "enabled" to act this way because of him and him alone?

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Are we to assume that EVERY person misbehaving now on planes, Ubers, hospitals, etc is a Trump supporter or otherwise took a cue from Trump?

Not every one is a Trunce, but he did so much to erode the civility of our society that restraints on misbehavior have been lessened everywhere, so you could say that they took a cue from him.

Something was brewing in society whether Trump ever existed or not.

I disagree, to a large extent. Although I have long bemoaned the rudeness trend marked by Don Rickles and his ilk, Trump singlehandedly caused an explosion of nasty. It's on him.

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Everyone is under a lot of pressure. On top of that, about half the populace is under the additional pressure of maintaining a state of denial of easily verified facts, e.g. who won the last presidential election, or how contagious diseases work. People can only maintain so much cognitive dissonance for so long before it becomes intolerable.

Not that that excuses this (alleged) ride-share-driver-puncher. Play stupid games, etc.

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Likely from people feeling like control is gone. I'm not, in this post, making a judgment- but it is quite understandable.

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propaganda media outlets that have been undermining faith in medical science for years, and have particularly focused on casting doubt on vaccines and mask-wearing in recent months.

Fox News and its ilk are a deadly pox on the republic.

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Individualism vs collective responsibility.

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One of the major political parties in the country, comprising about half its voters, has spent the last 25 years waging war on the truth. Not specific truths, like ideas that are politically motivated (though it's also done plenty of that), but big-T Truth, the actual idea that things are knowable and that expertise is to be trusted. It's been a multi-front war, and it's been remarkably successful: you can now say absolutely the dumbest and most easily disproved things you want on camera, and it's not a liability in the slightest. People with advanced degrees in specialized areas are treated with exactly the same credibility as dudes in sunglasses driving pickup trucks and making Youtube videos telling you "do your own research." And now a significant minority of the population gets its news exclusively from places with an active interest in spreading politically convenient lies, and are so disconnected from objective reality that they think that a totally reasonable response to being asked to wear a mask inside a car they're sharing with a stranger is "attack this person and his car."

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For drivers and customers. Not to mention pedestrians and cyclists.

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i remember in the 1990's, four of us couldnt take a cab back home from the airport becuz all passengers must be separated from the driver via bullet-resistant glass.

does cambridge allow non-medallioned gypsy-cabs ? i'm glad the victim isnt seriously injured.

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In the early 2000s, I have def sat in the front with the cab driver in a party of 4. Been in a cab of 4 on more than one occasion.

Seems like one of those arbitrary policies that are enforced/not enforced based on the whim (or the racism) of the driver.

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I think more of the question is would you want to sit in the front seat.

I remember cabs from this era and many of these cabs, the front passengers seat was like their second home. Food, newspapers, laptop, trash, etc etc all on the seat.

The few.. very few times we had more than we could squish into the back (you know 4 skinny people or 3+1 on a lap).. the driver was very hard pressed to let one of us sit in the front.

You'd get lewks if you asked.

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