You knew it was going to happen. Someone was going to claim in court that current public health restraints on behavior are denying him his constitutional rights to assemble, worship and do business as he pleases as a free American.
Such a suit has been filed in U.S. District Court by the president of the Albuquerque Tea Party against New Mexico’s “shelter in place” and “social distancing” directives, according to KOB news last week. The suit struck a blow for social irresponsibility and profit over the rule of safety, precaution and the public good. The suit reflects, I’m sure, an underlying attitude of many who resent government and refuse to comply with public health measures and advice on how to slow the spread of coronavirus in the United States, now the country with the worst outbreak of this pandemic anywhere in the world.
As if the spread of this unpredictable, often lethal virus weren’t traumatic enough, the local Tea Party has added a new element of anxiety to the situation. When they actively advocate disregarding public health directives, those of us who are particularly vulnerable to the fatal aspects of the disease, which essentially can suffocate its victims, feel more pressure than ever to stay at home and disengage.
Ours is, indeed, an Age of Anxiety, to quote the British-American poet W.H. Auden, who published his long poem of the same name in1947. His poem describes the emotional and philosophical reality of a historical era that started more than 90 years ago with the Great Depression and continues right to this very moment in Donald Trump’s America – a modern catastrophe that Auden, of course, knows nothing about, having died in 1973.
During those years, we have confronted anxiously one question presented in many guises. Will leaders around the world exercise humanitarian restraint and a devotion to the public good, or will they pursue power, privilege and profit with unbridled willfulness?
The Age of Anxiety now adds the coronavirus pandemic to the litany of traumas and horrors we’ve had to live with, including the Bomb and the on-going threat of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the existence of rogue nuclear states, the constant threat of anti-Semitism and Jim Crow violence, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, the health menace of smoking tobacco, the still horrifying cancer epidemic, corporate environmental pollution threatening public health (more a danger now than ever with Trump dismantling of the EPA), the pesticide plague, terrorism of all kinds, the dire warnings about climate change and the coming ubiquity of pandemics and mass extinctions, the profound never-ending crises of misogyny and racism, the inflaming of xenophobia, gay bashing and now this pandemic and those who write off public health directives as a government intrusion on private life and business.
Ours is surely an Age of Anxiety.
Fear and apprehension permeate every layer of our society and are reinforced by panic-mongering advertising that drives our consumer economy and makes the health and wellness industry, including pharmaceuticals, a dominant player in our financial lives, so much so that being without health insurance is seen by many as tantamount to a death sentence, which is why Medicare and Medicaid are such genuine godsends to the elderly and impoverished.
How does one keep one’s sense of reality in times like these? How does one keep a humane perspective and stay not only free of this truly nasty, painful and sometimes fatal virus but also of the fear of it? Equally important, how does one best exercise restraint and keep from infecting others with this stealth virus that often has no outward symptoms, but is still lethal to those who are vulnerable to its predations?
The coronavirus pandemic turns out to be a defining moment in our sense of public-spirited responsibility and precaution. To whom are we responsible if not to our families, neighbors, friends and the people who make a living serving our needs?
We seem to be moving, very anxiously right now, to an open conflict between public health common sense (such as in social distancing and the banning of even relatively small congregations of people while this pandemic is raging) and the personal liberty to do as we please and go about our own business as we see fit, no matter what. This clash between staying healthy and making money has to be as fundamental a conflict as any in our anxious age, which so often pits public health science against politics of profit growth. And we are now seeing how frail all mighty science is when facing a mob mentality motivated by greed rather than conscience.
That’s the moral crux of this moment in the Age of Anxiety. What percentage of us can live with the thought of infecting and potentially killing someone else while exercising our “right” to make a living by doing as we please though endangering others?
The central moral tenant of a free society is that you are free to do as you like as long as doing what you like doesn’t impinge on the freedom and well-being of others.
The grounding question, then, that we must all ask ourselves is this: “Is exercising my financial and personal freedoms worth potentially causing someone else to suffer an agonizing death?”
At some point, perhaps not precisely now, the fate of humankind could well depend on how the majority of us answer such a question.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
Once again you are correct. Hard to imagine the ignorance and selfishness of the live free and die crowd. No sense of civil society and all attention on the personal.
Now more than usual we depend upon our neighbors to show solidarity and consciousness. I am very moved by the social solidarity I see all around. Kindness and concern over fear. I am encouraged by how most people are trying to follow and exceed the directions of our governor, whom I am so happy to have at this time.
Such protesters tend to change their tune when the danger touches their own lives. This is an important column. Thank you, V.B.