This started as a Twitter thread, but I wanted to get it down in my blog for the longer term.
There seems to be this weird myth going along amongst the anti-maskers, anti-distancing, anti-treating-#COVID19-as-a-serious-public-health-threat crowd, that their “opposition” are getting some special joy out of forcing people to obey all these restrictions, regulations, and shutdown activities that they are doing themselves.
The idea that we’re all chortling over people being forced to wear masks, shut down businesses, and juggle questions of safety for ourselves, our kids, our parents, our friends, our communities … that idea is not just wrong, not just insulting, but this is maddeningly offensive.
I hate this. I hate all of this. Wearing masks. Treating my mom and in-laws like precious china and restricting myself to things that won’t, in passing, threaten them. Not traveling on vacation. Not having folk over for game day, or BBQs, or (99% likely) Thanksgiving. I HATE it.
And I say that as an introvert who, normally, would just as soon cocoon from the world and recharge my batteries. That little green “recharge is complete, better unplug or else you’ll damage the circuits” light is blinking.
This needful isolation is driving even me bats. So I sympathize with those who hate it even more than I do.
Y’know what I hate more? People taking the measures I feel are moral imperatives to protect my family, my friends, myself … and spitting on them as some kook conspiracy, as some libtard craziness, as a hoax, as a political ploy.
Spitting on science AND my own sacrifices as some unbelievable plot to steal some kindergarten sense of FREEDUMM! from people. And, in so doing, making this problem worse, and last longer.
I have screen savers and digital frames of photos of the cool things our family has done: fun travel, enjoyable parties, get-togethers and the like. And I love those pix for the memories they recall, but they also taunt me because I can’t do things like that right now, because they are DANGEROUS to myself and my loved ones.
And, again, introvert talking here. I am not the party-three-nights-a-weekend type. But even I need more direct social contact than I am getting.
For various folk to take having to wear a mask to visit their local Costco as some intolerable personal offense, when I am watching the clock run out on being able to travel with my mom to some of the places she’s always wanted to go … is infuriating.
Or worse, those who encourage such irresponsible behavior in their words and deeds, to politically benefit themselves at the cost of goddamned freaking HUMAN LIVES.
I am an adult. As such, I acknowledge I cannot do everything I want, and, in fact, am at times morally restrained from doing things that are attractive, things I want to do, things that would be fun, because the cost to myself and (most importantly) others would be too high.
And sometimes, when temptation is too high or the risk too great, we actually restrict people from doing things. Sometimes temporarily — closing a road because of a possible slide, taping off a crime scene, check-points to find drunk drivers on a holiday weekend — and sometimes permanently.
That’s what being a mature adult is about. Not about stamping one’s foot and demanding “FREEDOM!” from restriction. That’s what six-year-olds do, because their worldview is strictly about them and their wants. Adults are supposed to be different.
Liberty is not libertinism. Freedom is not about ignoring the freedom of others. We live in a society, not some Libertarian / Hobbesian war of all-against-all. Unless we want our lives to be nasty, brutish, and short.
Argue, if you care to, about the facts. About what is actually needed. About how we get to the point where the survival-needful restrictions on our liberty (and economy and convenience and pleasure) can be eased. Have an honest, serious, greater-good discussion about that.
But don’t act like this is a cosmic battle between the Defenders of Liberty and the Right to Party Hearty vs. the Cackling Evil Hordes of Burka-Mandating Authoritarianism. Because you are not only profoundly wrong, but you are being profoundly insulting.
