So much safer today

[bill_schubert]

I went to the grocery store at about 8AM today (Sunday) and it was all different.  First, it was just not busy but the shelves were mostly stocked with some ongoing stocking still in the works.  Secondly, masks are required now.  But for that bozo who has it under his nose either not smart enough or sufficiently arrogant to prove he doesn't have to wear it in a usable fashion to meet the requirement, everyone was onboard with saving each other.  I felt comfortable for the first time in a while.

I've been watching the news about mask protests and have noodled it a lot.  I'm no sociologist or psychologist so my opinions are generally worthless.  But they are free.

The last pandemic resulted in mask protests in the U.S. and the creation of the Anti-Mask League.  Sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story. 

Americans (at least those born on 3rd base, the majority of white Americans) are raised that they are special.  Exceptionalism.  We are the best.  We built this country on spit and pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps.  I heard the head of the Chamber of Commerce in Georgetown (a guy in his late 60's who was pretty smart) say that Georgetown was the best city in the best state in the best country.  I was pretty shocked by that statement.  My first thought was it isn't true, which it is not.  My second thought was that he had to know that it isn't true but said it anyway.  With conviction and damn near a tear in his eye.  

I've lived in about 30 different towns and cities and rode Navy ships into maybe another 40.  A lot of them were more exceptional than Georgetown.

But the American dynamic is we're the best.  It is the drum beat sounded through the country today and through history. As my father would say, "If you're not the lead dog, the scenery never changes".  I'm not so sure that other countries believe that of themselves.  On the one hand it gives Americans an edge.  Nothing succeeds like success and nothing breeds success like belief in yourself, blind or otherwise.  So we've sold the world on how great we are but that system is collapsing under its philosophy in an event that requires individuals choose others over themselves.  

What we all see every day is people who don't wear masks, who scream and push and fight for all their worth that they 'don't have to' feet stamping like a child in tantrum.  What I hear is "I am unique".  "It is my right to be exceptional."

And I'm not sure that is true.  

One of my favorite quotes: "You are unique, just like everybody else."

It is the very essence of the American philosophy of manifest destiny that is working against us.  And the leadership (NOT just federal.. .that is a given) but day to day leaders, people of privilege who should be saying "Let's band together and fight this thing" are saying "I know better than Fauci, the papers are making it up.  It is just a cold." 

I suspect that we'll have the roaring 30's just as the last one kicked off the roaring 20's.  There will, I suspect, be a time when we can hug and shake hands again and be in crowds and run around maskless.

But I wonder how much the US will have lost before that happens, how much the foundational premise of the country will undercut our healing, delay our return to the world.

Comments

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Well said! Jingoism is at a new peak ... Anyone who has traveled extensively knows there are many places around the world that are more exceptional than the US. It has become unfashionable to point out we are a part of a global economy. One friend of mine in Palm Springs wrote a post today that he lost 2 friends to Cover-19 over the weekend. He made this comment which particularly resonates with me: "it's about caring enough to change your behavior so that you're not the cause of someone's getting sick." He thinks Americans no longer have that ability. So very, very sad ...

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, like global warming, it is a self regulating process. Those who live without regard to others, without supporting others, without contributing to the herd will slough off the body. And as an entire human race overpopulating and overusing the resources we'll be reduced to manageable numbers by the very environment in which we live. I don't see that as overly dramatic, just reality. So it goes.

I'm sorry for your friend. My family remains healthy and I actually communicate with them more now than before all this. I've not yet known anyone who has gotten sick. Part of that is statistical in that I do not know that many people. Not an island but not exactly a continent.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

My experience as a non-American is that most non-Americans are baffled, not convinced, by American exceptionalism. America has many fabulous points and many drawbacks, like most places. The idea that one country is the obvious best is just weird to me. Personally I put it down to the lack of exposure a lot of Americans have to anywhere else. I remember an American online telling me that she was more free there than she would be in any other country. I asked her why she thought that. She named some freedoms common to most Western democracies and was completely discombobulated when I told her that was the case. If you don't know what you're comparing it to it must be easy to believe the party line.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Easier for you to see it from a distance, I think. And you're right. There is a fairly strong link between provincialism and perceived exceptionalism. Having not only traveled a lot but from an age so early I don't remember not travelling I have a hard time understanding, much less relating, to people who have never left their home.

There are a lot of people who pride themselves for having never left Texas. Their egos were tied at an early age to the myth that is this state and they are personally sensitive to anything less than a full throated endorsement of the wonders of Texas. These are otherwise intelligent, purposeful, effective people.

It is one thing to be a cheerleader. Another to be blinded by the legends of Texas, the American west, and America itself so that something like wearing a mask becomes a symbol of all things that threaten the brittle beliefs engendered by those legends.

Sorry.. .I was thinking out loud. I'm really trying to understand what makes people so adamant that helping others impinges their rights. Such an insipid argument.

I heard a story this morning giving evidence not only for the medical reasons to have a national mask requirement but, more importantly, for the positive economic impact that having a national policy would create. There are numbers and they are overwhelming. And, yet, the vapid minority controls the stage and we watch the continued slide into national disaster.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

As I read somewhere, you can't fight faith with logic. And that's what we're up against.