Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson thinks people wearing masks are "repulsive" and told his viewers last night that they should even call the cops when they see children wearing masks.

And knowing the yearning, empty vessels that make up the bulk of his viewing audience, you know it will happen. 911 operators will be diverted from actual emergencies so the intellectually lazy prep school boy can revel in the extent of his power.

Mind you, it's children wearing masks in Walmart that so disgusts him. Not the oppositional defiance bunch that so proudly sports semi-automatic weapons in Walmart.

“Masks have always been incompatible with a free society. We used to know that. Masks strip people of their identity as individuals, transform people from citizens into drones. They isolate us and alienate us to shut us off from one another, they prevent intimacy and human contact. If I can’t see your face, I can’t know you.”

How sad, that Tucker won't get to meet his apparently bottomless need for intimacy and human contact. (Like when he is said to have invited Fox contributor Cathy Areu back to his hotel room, and after she declined, so did her appearances. But I digress.)

“The rest of us should be snorting at them first. They’re the aggressors. It’s our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in. So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, ‘Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.’

“We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro on an elevator. It’s repulsive. Don’t do it around other people. That’s the message we should send because it’s true.”

Not semi-automatic weapons and the mass slayings they so frequently inflict on the rest of us, mind you. Pieces of cloth or paper that prevent Tucker from knowing you, from filling the endless, gaping hole that is his soul.

“As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal. Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re looking at is abuse, it’s child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it.”

I've known a lot of prep school boys in my time, and when they were sober, you could usually count on them for lovely manners. Tucker, on the other hand, is telling people to call the cops on children wearing masks. In a pandemic. Where children can't yet be vaccinated.

Those of us who aren't heirs, who don't cavort merrily through life skimming the surface of existence, those of us who are, yes, neurotic about our children in the age of a virus that causes systemic damage, the extent of which is still unknown, are the kind of people who actually read science-y things, like this:

We don't know yet what this finding means, but since it turns up in every child who had covid, it might mean that any child who gets covid will always be at a higher risk of blood clots. Maybe a good reason to have your child wear a mask, in other words. Seems like a rational response -- unless you're Tucker, and you're always wrestling with that emptiness, staring it down. Maybe that's why he careens from one attention-grabbing tactic after another: "You will not replace us!" When people are angry at him, it makes him feel seen.

He wants so much to be seen.

That's why these sad, empty barrels make the most noise.