by Charles Peek
On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless thousands who at the moment of decision, lay down to rest, and resting died.
(Harry Strunk’s version of an Adlai Stevenson phrase.)
Not so long ago, when she was much younger, our grand daughter could be heard almost any time of the day belting out the theme song from Frozen. Today, I’m listening to a CD (yes, that dates me!) which flashed me back to when I was her age. My parents took me to the McCook auditorium for a Community Concert in which a fine black baritone named Warfield was featured, and among his numbers was “Ol’ Man River.”
I suspect afterwards my endless repetition of the song must have made my mother think twice about taking me to another concert. Imagine a chubby 11 or 12-year-old boy belting out “Ol’ Man River,” just like he could even imagine what toting a barge or lifting a bale might mean, let alone being drunk. I would make up the drinking backlog later, have never yet toted any barges, but thanks to my late friend Merle Hayward, did eventually lift a few bales.
Seems like when we miss something from the past, it is just such memories that evoke the world we miss, a world about which we’ve conveniently forgotten enough to believe it was all a golden age. At least until, in our own times, we begin to discover its flaws and even its horrors. It was golden because we didn’t see it very clearly. We were singing “Ol’ Man River” or the theme from Frozen or whatever made us stars in our own imaginary world, too busy to notice lies and abuse and lies about abuse.
I’m sorry to add that I think there is not enough dream world in enough children’s childhood today, but what do I know? Maybe kids are still belting out songs they can’t possibly fathom, blissfully unaware of the maelstrom around them.
And maybe my recollection that we were then problem solvers rather than social dividers is faulty. Maybe it just seems that today we fabricate battles to fight rather than actually trying to fix anything that’s wrong, like a service economy that doesn’t provide service.
But, if we look at it squarely, we can see clearly: there are behaviors out there today so prevalent that they are robbing us all of anything like what we might call ordinary—ordinary troubles, ordinary joys, ordinary moments when we don’t have to be solving anything, a least for the space of a song.
I want to look at just one behavior and the mental, emotional, and ethical ills it reveals. First, a couple of anecdotes
A fellow at a kiosk at an amusement park handing out face masks. A couple stops, chit-chats a while, and quite sincerely commiserates with the employee—sad he will lose his job once the election is over.
Yes, you get it. Once evil politicians can’t use the club anymore, we’ll all find the pandemic was a hoax after all.
A woman substitute teaches in a public school. When some of the students aren’t happy about wearing a face mask, they tell her that as soon as the election is over they won’t have to wear them anymore.
Yes, ditto.
We are in a beautiful local park walking the trails when we come upon a large gathering assembled for a photo shoot. Not a mask on anyone but the photographer, no one moves aside, and one game fellow begins to make fun of us for wearing masks and edging as far away as we can.
To have egged people on to believe the pandemic is a hoax has all the elements of criminal behavior—this time the crowded theater is in fact on fire and the clown is assuring everyone to sit back down and enjoy the show. Since the clown occupies the Oval Office, it smacks of treason—the violation of his oath of office.
It seems to me, however, that the worse offense is seen in how many were so easily pied piper-ed away from truth and into error, enough numbers to make it worth thinking how we should think about their believing, echoing, and asserting the disinformation that the pandemic is a hoax—a belief that has led to much unnecessary pain, suffering, and death, and as I post this is on the cusp of causing more.
Covid-19 is, of course, not anyone’s fault; the pandemic, however, is not simply the existence of the virus—it is a whole host of other factors many of which, if not all of which are the result of human choices. When those choices are wrong, they are wrong with a vengeance. Aren’t there at least these three obvious factors?
Ignorance. The inability, the lack of the critical intelligence necessary to apply litmus tests to truth. Perhaps this is due to 50 years of concerted effort to make schooling—secondary or college—into how to get a job rather than how to think. Perhaps it is because our schools are asked to do too much with too little in the way of resources. Perhaps it is that lots of big money can create a louder, more persistent voice than that of teachers.
Whatever or whoever we want to blame—you may already be thinking of those who have come to mind—clearly this kind of ignorance—what in moral theology is called willful ignorance—is at work here. This time that ignorance didn’t touch the majority of votes; last time it did.
But ignorance doesn’t stand alone. The second factor is surely arrogance. I’m not an immunologist, a virologist, so I listen to people who are. If I won’t, then I am not only belittling their knowledge but belittling ‘knowing’ itself, asserting what is mere and unsubstantiated opinion in the place of knowing, belittling those in a position where their knowledge is needed, sought after, vital—and mere opinion is useless and often dangerous.
One screed I ran across during the campaign could be found on many posts, so you know it didn’t originate with the person posting it. It went like this: if you read page such and such of so and so’s tax plan, you’d know that he is going to increase the tax on your house. And you know the person never read the tax plan at all, let alone that page; and you know this because first of all you know federal tax plans are not how your house gets taxed. Which means it is not just ignorance and arrogance but pretense—the pretense to be knowledgeable when you aren’t.
But it is one thing more. Truth is not just an epistemological matter, an intellectual matter. Truth has a moral context, a moral role. In the case of not wearing a mask and scoffing at the need for it and belittling those wearing them there is the unconscionable assertion that I and my point of view are all that matter. It is all about me! My dislike of a mask trumps the plea of the ICU nurse more stressed than ever in his long career, the doctor seeing more heartache than in her whole practice. “Don’t tread on me” trumps caring whether a family can visit their dying mother or must look at her through a hospital window. It is the mentality of “I do, too, have the right to pee in the swimming pool.”
Like the poor, ignorance, arrogance, pretense, and self-centeredness are always with us and, in some aspect of our lives or another, a plague to all of us. But they have surely found a true champion in the sad boastful bully who can’t quite bring himself to pack his bags and cease standing as the champion of stupidity, vanity, and cruelty.
By the end of our city council’s deliberation of emergency measures one sentence seemed to captured both the truth and the falsehood. The truth: that measures to stem the pandemic evoke a sharp debate. The falsehood: that there has been lots of research on both sides.
Not so! This is precisely an issue of research versus misinformation and disinformation. Precisely an issue that the average person on the street can no longer discern one from the other.
But that same council unanimously voted in emergency measures despite the politically organized and sometimes rude speakers, whose refusal to wear masks meant their fellow citizens had to consider whether to show up or not. Nevertheless, our Council set an example of leadership, of knowing that government too plays a role in our health and safety.
The fellow who thought a mask mandate would change his view of the police might recall they are here to “protect and serve” and the pastor who didn’t want to tell anyone they could not come in without a mask might try recalling he is called to be a shepherd!
Now more than ever I feel the call of a passage Nancy ran onto just the other day: I Timothy 2:1-4, and I copy it here out of my father’s Bible:
I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all . . . and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior: who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of truth.
capeek 