Echoes....and Grace
With apologies, and thanks to Foo Fighters for nipping from their album title...
On election eve, I am writing because I am not overtly political. In college, I leaned left and when I started working, I leaned right. In my 30’s, I became rather overtly political. But after my daughter was born, I’ve simply not cared to engage on discussions of politics. I remain center-right. I have many friends who are center-left and even more left-leaning. And that’s just fine.
In every election, winners and losers can count their costs and make choices they need to make. My life largely never changed radically under one party or another. I still worked, lived, loved, laughed—insert your cliche here. I had friends that got very worked up over elections, proclaiming the end of democracy this and the beginning of tyranny that. I listened—sometimes engaged, but largely got in my car and went home not all that concerned about any of it.
In 2008, I kept a blog and I wrote a few posts about politics dealing with President Obama. I wasn’t happy with the direction he was taking us and I said so. I realized that a number of friends were happy with that direction and I thought to myself, “what good is it for me to write about what I think regarding politics? I’m not an engaged activist. I’m not going to make a difference. People who know me generally know my opinions—there’s no need for me to do this.” Above all, and this is still the case, I really do not like to create conflict. I don’t like arguing with people. I’m not a milquetoast, but I’d rather find harmony than division…my vote will be my opinion and that’s good enough.
In that context, the deep wound of the past two-plus years has scarred me ineffably. Have you ever been in the middle of doing some physical activity or labor—gotten wounded, cut or sore—and just dealt with it? “It’ll hurt tomorrow, but this needs to get done…” or, “I’m less than a mile from the finish, I’ll ice the ankle when I’m done…” When our government (left and right) imposed restrictions on our liberty, it was the first cut. We all knew it would hurt, but within a week or so—people baked bread, made beer, explored hobbies and shared them on social media. There was this idea that “oh, this will make us stronger and we’ll appreciate our lives more when it ends.” That simply did not happen. The wound they dealt was far worse than anything we’d ever been through before.
People who could work from home decided that was pretty good—and they want to continue. The division is no longer a political one—it’s a class one. People who can stay home and tap on a keyboard to make a living, continue to do so. People who cannot, get up and go to work. Sure, the election is highlighting blue and red, Democrat and Republican—but that’s the surface, not the core of what’s happening. The economic slowdown brought on by years of printing too much money (and both sides have done that…) has cut a serious line through the country, and belt-tightening is occurring as a daily habit. Food prices have followed fuel prices through the proverbial roof, and after more than two years of degradation and deprivation, we are now in for more. There is occasional reporting on the wrong-headed government imposed restrictions, but by and large, the media is ignoring it—as they do so many things.
I wish that I could put my shovel into that paragraph above. But even the economy, which is absolutely the daily issue for most of us, pales in comparison to the complete loss of faith and trust in our public health system and the continual diet of lies, myths and soul-destroying “orders” they served up. From “social distancing” to masking to “safe and effective vaccines to “the virus is naturally occurring” to the most onerous and objectively dangerous portion of the entire period, “lockdowns,” every single thing they said is wrong—a lie and has been proven as such. It wasn’t that they did not know this—they knew, and they did it anyway.
It’s no longer possible to look at any of the events of the past two-plus years and say that we did the right thing. The basic understanding of epidemiology, long understood by physicians and scientists, was stolen from the people who actually practice those sciences. Indeed, the head of the NIH and the NIAID publicly denigrated three of the most prominent epidemiologists and scientists of our time when they disagreed with the approach, and those scientists are now suing the heads of those institutions for their libel and slander. Good.
But back to those of us who are simply trying to live our lives, yes? So we have an election tomorrow and both sides are plaintiff and vitriolic, claiming the country will collapse if you don’t vote for them. I don’t profess to have an answer. I know what I’ll vote, but I am not interested in talking about every issue. I am a single issue voter and that issue is: “Did you support lockdowns and public health lies?” It’s the only question I care about—the only one that matters to me. The answer to it is, for me, an answer to everything else. I can accept someone who says, “at the time I did support them because I didn’t know. Like you, I was ignorant about the impact…But now that I see what has happened, I want to see to it that it never happens again.” I’m good with that.
And I will reiterate here—-I am counting up costs. I lost so very much in 2020-2021. And my family and I will continue to work, spend achingly large amounts of money, and sacrifice a great deal of our lives, our earnings, our hearts and souls to help our loved ones back to health, all while we mourn the loss of my mom, whose death impacts us every single day. Some day, I’ll be able to tell the whole story of what happened here—but it’s not entirely my story to tell and I won’t dishonor that trust. Suffice to say, this election, like so much of politics, is mostly noise and echoes. It takes laser-like focus to cut through that and find what matters—and even that, a sense of revenge as Emily Burns put it, isn’t the final goal. Eventually, I’m going to have to find some grace. I am absolutely not ready to forgive and forget as Emily Oster has asked—without apologizing or taking responsibility for her onerous overreach. But I know the long-game must tend toward justice—and mercy. It is indeed a long arc, however—and I’m not yet even over the hump.
Onward.