When Good People Go Wrong

In a (properly distanced outside) discussion with good friends about the COVID19 pandemic, one person mentioned how he had gone to Lowes recently and that it was quite busy. He continued that many of the patrons weren’t wearing masks. I find myself in some awe at that reality, which I have seen in other places as well.

I then volunteered that if I were an employer, for the sake of my employees, I wouldn’t allow customers in without a mask. One who is a fine and caring person (and a very good friend), looked at me and said “are you some kind of Nazi?” I was taken aback. Defensively (I hope calmly) I told her she’s been watching too much Fox News. She retorted that I hadn’t been watching enough. Exchange fini.

What troubled me as I left, without malice, was the fact that I had been watching plenty of Fox Cable News, probably too much, in my attempt to understand the sources and motivations behind the manipulative messages they convey. I also find it informative since our POTUS puts into action and policy much of what he watches on Fox, since he feels it reflects his so called “base”. That in itself is extraordinarily sad testimony.

Most masks, especially the homemade t-shirt variety, don’t do squat for keeping micro monsters from sneaking in, but they help immensely from keeping wet splatter from flying out. The fact is much of the general population doesn’t understand that the purpose of wearing masks during a mostly airborne viral pandemic is to cover the mouths of infected individuals who don’t know they're infectious. The metaphor on the (obviously facetious) Nazi comment was more about perceived (via Government) social intrusion into personal “liberty”. That a mask somehow inhibits my liberty is (pardon me) on its face…ridiculous.

This whole encounter, like others, drew me back to 2003-2006.

My son, graduating from high school, had been recruited to join the Virginia National Guard, which he (and I) thought an opportunity for the limited service and benefits. At the time we had no idea that Bush/Chaney would decide to use National Guards across the country as a backdoor draft to carry out their plans in Iraq. My son ended up spending two years in Iraq, risking his life to varying degrees every day (I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it literally).

Less than one percent of the American population was directly impacted by that War, as he and our family was. He was wounded in year one. No one even had to pay for the conflict, it being totally financed by borrowing. I knew it was ill-conceived before it started and a fiasco soon after. Yet I had to listen to the clap trap Conservative echo-sphere go on continuously about the honorable mission, the patriotism, the American retribution for 9/11, the heroic sacrifice to Flag and Country, and, of course, the despicable nature of those that dissented the actions of that Republican Administration, the Liberal Deep State conspiracy.

Conservatives no longer defend the Iraq war given the waste, the tragedy, the devastation, and futility of that meaningless and contrived adventure. You never saw any retractions on Fox News. They also don’t remember it much either, which is easy when it’s lived as a passive news feed.  I haven’t forgotten it. I never will.

Now that same son is a nurse, working long hours in a COVID19 bio-containment floor at the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore. He and his co-workers are the bottom line dealing with the impact of this pandemic. As this disease plays out either over time or by vaccination, many Americans will never have to face much more than inconvenience and their fears. Many will not care to understand that by acting collectively we could reduce the need for medical intervention. They will not bother to question why, adjusted for population, our death rate for COVID19 is 35 times higher than South Korea’s, which was on an identical timeline.

Too many good people will immerse themselves in Fox & Friends, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity, e.g.  They will not listen to other sources of information (nearly all other sources) of which they have been convinced are “fake”. There is currently a drumbeat in the Conservative echo-sphere promoting behavior in this pandemic to compliment a dangerous and erratic President on the hope that enough ‘good times’ will emerge before November. So fearful are they that “Liberals” are coming to take their money, kill babies, ban their religions, and confiscate their weapons.

I suspect that a year or three from now the 100,000 or 200,000 American dead will be forgotten, possibly considered just as a cycle of life by some of those who considered collective behavior as antithetical to perceived American “Freedom”. It will fade, just as Iraq has turned virtually invisible.

Those that are currently knee deep in the crisis working to save lives will not have forgotten. Perhaps they will have the courage to wear masks in the future when they are ill and out in public, as is already done in many parts of the world. They may just think of that as kind, and the right thing to do.