July 18, 2021
We watch in dismay as a dizzying number of our fellow citizens turn their backs on science in obdurate imbecility and send COVID case numbers skyrocketing upwards. The willful ignorance being encouraged by the right wing media is having deadly consequences. In the last week, the average number of coronavirus infections surged 70% and hospitalizations climbed 36%, (Source: “U.S. cases surge as delta variant takes hold,” by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Frances Stead Sellers, The Washington Post, 7/16/21). 97% of the hospitalizations and “almost all COVID-19 deaths” are among the unvaccinated. 40% of the new cases come from just four states, with 20% of new cases coming from Florida alone, (ibid).
Still death is no deterrent for the shameless hucksters peddling fact-free fear and hatred. As the latest surge shows, they are turning their credulous viewers from vaccine hesitant to vaccine hostile, despite the fact that many of them have, in fact, been vaccinated. Trump’s acolytes across the country are turning their backs, not only on the recent scientific advances represented by the vaccine, but on a century of public health best practices. Eight states have blocked schools and colleges from requiring proof of vaccination as a prerequisite for attendance and three of those— Arizona, Arkansas and Oklahoma— have banned in-school mask requirements, (Source: “COVID-19 School Mandates for Masks, Vaccines Are Blocked in More States,” by Lee Hawkins and Aydali Campa, The Wall Street Journal, 7/16/21).
It is hard to understand what the endgame is here. These laws will undoubtedly lead to needless and entirely preventable illness and death, not only among the stubborn and credulous who buy into these irrational conspiracy theories, but among schoolchildren too young to be eligible for the vaccine, and among Black and Latino frontline workers forced to interact with these people in their jobs. This lunacy is being propagated to foster distrust in an anodyne Democratic President who took the entirely reasonable position that his most important responsibility was to protect American citizens from a deadly plague.
Sadly, this behavior is consistent with the peculiar American proclivity for ignoring inconvenient facts and insisting on one’s own reality in the name of “freedom.” For many Americans, freedom doesn’t mean the pursuit of happiness, but the ability to assert power over the marginalized and more vulnerable, free from consequences. For these Americans, their freedom is meaningless unless there are others who are less free. They want, not only the right to live the life that they choose, but to choose the lives the rest of us live. That is the thread that unites these laws flouting common sense public health measures with draconian anti-abortion bills, and dehumanizing anti-trans bills. Their insistence on their own reality has led to a rash of bills banning “critical race theory” which the right wing has redefined so expansively that it would ban teaching students about Ruby Bridges,, whose heroism facing down angry mobs as a 6 year old girl to integrate the New Orleans public schools was memorialized in a painting by Norman Rockwell.
The people passing these laws know that their positions are deeply unpopular, but rather than moderate their views, their strategy is to disempower the majority. Since the January 6th insurrection, Republicans have doubled down on The Big Lie, using it to justify a spate of voter suppression laws targeting Black and Brown voters. Although activists and voting rights advocates have been steadily sounding the alarm, the response from elected Democrats has been hapless and ineffectual.
Their single minded focus on passing Biden’s infrastructure package suggests that they believe that the same people rationalizing the January 6th insurrection and supporting the passage of memory laws can be swayed by new roads and bridges. The Congressional Dems seem oblivious to the existential threat that elected Republicans and their supporters pose to democracy itself. Their refusal to get rid of, or even amend, the filibuster suggests that they think democracy can be saved with some combination of earnest speeches and Black Girl Magic. We need to follow the lead of Rep. Joyce Beatty, LaTosha Brown and the other Black women activists and descend on the Capitol to remind Democrats who put them there. We saved democracy once. We can’t do it again without their help.