I’m about to board yet another flight to Philadelphia to take care of my grandson while the au pair is back in Columbia for a two-week vacation. This time there may not be a mask mandate in place to protect passengers like me who need to be extra careful. Because of the rising numbers of Covid cases, both Los Angeles and Philadelphia have reinstated indoor masking. So, the airports will require masks, but not the airplane if the “Trump-appointed and unqualified” federal judge’s ruling against CDC mandates isn’t overturned.
Like others, I was quick to write to President Biden when the ridiculous ruling came out, urging him to appeal such an irresponsible decision that completely ignores science and public health. How is it that nearly a million U.S. deaths from a surprise virus apparently isn’t enough to support future government disease control mandates in the interest of saving lives? I’m glad the DOJ is appealing the ruling. It sad to admit, but Americans have shown that they can’t be trusted to protect themselves nor others without mandates. The notion of “freedom” has become distorted in the minds of too many.
We’ve seen firsthand that too many Americans are either too selfish or too ignorant to follow the science and adjust their behaviors in the interest of brotherly love and care. Allow me to restate most of what I wrote in a previous post:
Perhaps we need to return to kindergarten where we had our first introduction to society. Kindergarten is where we learned to share and to take turns. We learned that we were not an island unto ourselves and that the needs of the group have to be considered. We learned to wait for our turn. Kindergarten gave us our first taste of the concept of fairness and orderliness. Of course, the way we learned the consequences of inappropriate social behaviors in kindergarten depends on the reader’s age. Anti-social behavior was met by either a slap on the hand or a time out. Sometimes parents were informed. The point is that the disruptive class clown and the bully were not rewarded for their antics. However, social media has upset these necessary social lessons.
Today, our society gives free reign to clowns and bullies who are hellbent on acting on their character deficits to our collective detriment. The insecure, the selfish, the inconsiderate, the ignorant, the power hungry, the greedy, and the hateful people have always been among us. It’s just that we have allowed their voices to be amplified through social media and then their outrageous antics attract news media coverage. I recall how Donald Trump’s ridiculous lies, racist and sexist comments and insults hurled at his political opponents became big news. Then candidate Trump was calling into the Today Show almost daily and they took his calls on air. The bully was no longer given a time out nor a slap on the risk, but a multifaceted platform on television, Facebook, and especially Twitter. All manner of lies, misinformation, and nastiness were elevated.
We collectively failed to secure the guard rails around our social contract with one another and now the anti-social among us are running rampant, clothing themselves in a false narrative of personal “freedom”. Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Rand Paul, Congresswoman Margorie Taylor Greene, and Governor Greg Abbott all fit that bill and are causing great harm to social and public health efforts. The Republican Party itself has been co-opted by this minority of anti-social/anti-democratic people who are loud, belligerent, violent, and largely uneducated. The My Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell, is a perfect example of how an individual can spread lies that threaten to co-opt our democracy. However, the most ridiculous example I’ve seen to date are the parents fighting and threatening school board members over school masking requirements. I’m hopeful that these parents against masking in schools during a pandemic are simply ignorant and not homicidal. Whichever it is, no parent has the right to endanger the lives of others under the guise of their parental rights. Apparently, this commonsense notion that brought us laws against drinking and driving and smoking in public places is lost on these short-sighted individualists.
Bible readers know that when Cain killed his brother Abel, God asked him where his brother was. Cain cynically replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” We know from God’s response to Cain and from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that the clear and unequivocal answer is, “YES!” The answer is yes because we must live in community together and we affect each other. We share the earth, the air, the water, and every other resource necessary to live.
So, it is time for those of us who recall our lessons from kindergarten to restore the guard rails to curtail the behavior of the ignorant, the selfish, the power hungry, the greedy, the inconsiderate, the bullies, and especially the homicidal by A) refusing to vote for them B) calling them out publicly on social media C) refusing to support media platforms that amplify their voices and D) boycotting their products.
Am I endorsing what some have coined a “cancel culture”. I guess I am. And honestly, I’m inclined to believe that the trend toward labeling demands for reasonable social guard rails as “cancel culture” is a ploy by the clowns and bullies to silence their detractors so they can run rampant. Those who are actively banning books and silencing teachers with regard to sexuality and history are engaging in their own form of “cancel culture”.
It’s time to reclaim a civil and social society where we recognize that to some extent, we are in very practical terms, our brother’s keeper. I just hope that happens before I board my plane next week.