Something I’d like to investigate is this very right-wing phenomenon of defending granular “freedoms,” like saying slurs in public with strangers, or not wearing a mask during a pandemic etc.

The easy explanation as to why they do this so often is that the boot rwers lack the intellectual capacity to reason about what “freedom” really means and how it’s not a matter of being able to do whatever small atomic action that their overlords, the tie rwers, tell them is important. The thing getting in my way of believing this easy explanation is that it’s kind of heartbreaking to think people can be that stupid.

RE: boot and tie terminology: see here