Try to dial up your empathy
Further to this whole vexed topic of sensible precautions to protect self and others versus batshit-crazy opposition to sensible precautions to protect self and others on the grounds of FREEDOMFREEDOMFREEDOM – the governor of North Dakota wishes people would just stop vexing.
“This is a … senseless dividing line,” Burgum said, according to a Washington Post report, “and I would ask people to try to dial up your empathy and your understanding.
“If someone is wearing a mask, they’re not doing it to represent what political party they’re in or what candidate they support. They might be doing it because they’ve got a five-year-old who’s been going through cancer treatments.”
They also might be doing it because other people might have children going through cancer treatments. They also might be doing it in the hope and expectation that everyone else will do it too and that fewer people will be infected as a result. They might be doing it because they’re adult, responsible, decentish people. (I say decentish because it really doesn’t take much generosity or virtue to wear a fucking mask.) They might be doing it for the same reason they don’t keep their foot on the accelerator when they see a child run out in front of their car. They might be doing it so as not to kill people, as well as to avoid being killed themselves or causing their children to be killed.
It’s one of those things you do when you live among people. Living among people has some benefits that make up for the inconvenience – like a regular food supply, clean water, electricity, communications, entertainment, education – quite a lot of benefits really. We live among people so we can’t drive our cars absolutely anywhere – into their gardens for instance, or into playgrounds, or down the sidewalk. We live among people so we can’t let our pet lions run free. We live among people so we can’t play our trumpets outside at 3 a.m. We live among people so when there’s a highly contagious pandemic raging we have to make certain changes to our everyday behavior once we leave the house. Yes that is in some sense a diminution of our precious freedom, but it’s a very god damn trivial sense in the circumstances. There’s no actual reason to refuse, and to insist on endangering other people so that your nostrils can get a sunburn. There’s no real principle at stake. It’s all just pseudo-political bullshit, and it relies on a disgustingly ruthless indifference to other people.
Sure, wearing a mask might not be an indicator of political affiliation, but purposely flouting physical distancing, protesting the wearing of masks, denying service to those who do wear them , and deliberately, agressively coughing on people almost certainly is.
I’ve said this elsewhere: if these lot had been our ancestors we’d still be beating each other with thighbones… No guns, no trucks, no country music, no churches. They’d never have been invented.
Human beings thrive due to enlightened self interest…
BKiSA, that is so true. Our ancestors survived enough generations to get to us because of cooperation, not stupidly flouting all attempts to save the species.
*Standing ovation*
Absolutely beautiful, every word and point made as beautifully as a Chopin prelude. This post is going up on my office door. Right across the hallway from the large room where a dozen women work in cubicles and had to be *ordered* (by the Surgeons for whom we work) to wear their masks. Because we have vulnerable, high risk patients coming into our practice. And because we all want to survive this pandemic.
Like the idiots here who open-carry handguns in the grocery store. They claim to be doing it to “exercise their rights”, but in reality they just don’t care about the fear they sow among the other patrons and just want to feel like Big Tough Guys. In fact, they get off on sowing fear, as do the maskless people grinning at everyone else.
My thought exactly; I know some of these people and they do it because it creates fear. People being afraid of them make them manly men (and womanly women? I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work with the women…)
On those occasions I have to venture to the grocery store, I have discovered that the unmasked will steer their cart as close to you as possible, even when they don’t need anything on that aisle. And for some reason as yet undiscerned by me, they love to cluster in large numbers in fresh produce, so they can manage to cover every last inch of the department with their unmasked selves. Maybe they interpret that as a place liberals are likely to hang out, and want to make sure to keep the “libtards” from their veggies?
Thank you E. Wiles @ 5, you cause me to blush an unbecoming shade of purple.