THIS IS HOW MUCH RIGHT-WINGERS HATE YOU

I thought the vilest take on the Neil Gorsuch-Sonia Sotomayor story would be at Gateway Pundit or some other den of iniquity, but it's actually at the semi-respectable Washington Free Beacon:

Not all heroes wear capes, but some of them regularly don robes (but certainly not masks) while fighting to make the world a better place—heroes like Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, an early frontrunner for Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year.

When the Supreme Court justices returned from the holiday break earlier this month, all of them were wearing masks on the bench. Well, all of them except Gorsuch, who refused to cover his handsome face. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who typically sits next to Gorsuch, wasn't there. The Obama appointee took part in the proceedings via remote microphone set up in her chambers.

NPR reports that Chief Justice John Roberts had asked his colleagues to wear masks to placate Sotomayor, who did not feel safe around people who were unmasked. Gorsuch, a pro-freedom legal scholar appointed by former president Donald Trump in 2017, was the only one who declined to coddle his colleague.

Sotomayor, a diabetic, has consistently worn a mask to work since the Supreme Court resumed in-person arguments in October 2021. The Food and Drug Administration considers diabetes to be one of the "highest-risk comorbidities" involving COVID-19 patients.

Sootomayor, who's 67, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 7 years old. To Andrew Stiles (whose age I haven't been able determine, but who got his B.A. from the University of North Carolina in 2009), it's hilarious that a frumpy old crone whose diabetes diagnosis came decades before he was born worries about her health in the midst of a pandemic that's killed 800,000 Americans. Justice Roberts wants to "placate" her, but "hero" Neil Gorsuch won't "coddle" her.

This isn't just aimed at Sonia Sotomayor. It's aimed at you -- if, like the majority of Americans, you're still concerned about the pandemic and believe people should wear masks when congregating indoors. It's aimed at you if -- laughably, contemptibly -- you're of advanced age or have a chronic health problem. How dare you! Why don't you just die, and decrease the surplus population! Your endless fretting over your pathetic infirmities is messing with other people's "freedom"!

This is how the right feels about people it considers inferior -- and that's nearly all of us.