Mondays with Mike: Life in the Time of Covid

If they can have fun wearing their masks, can’t we all?

We Americans are largely failing at our jobs as citizens. We, myself included, are prone to taking personal insult to things that are not personal, and we argue about stuff in ways that make no sense at all. It’s cultish. “If Hillary Clinton was for it, it has to be bad.” “If Donald Trump is for it, it has to be bad.” OK, bad example, because the second is true:)

You get my point. My friend Greg puts it this way: “We never talk about the plumbing.”

Which is to say, we don’t have substantive and comparatively boring conversations with our friends and family at the dinner table or barstool about what works and what doesn’t work. We argue about third parties and which of them is worse. We can still have our leanings and orientations, but sometimes, a cigar is a cigar, and a P-trap is a P-trap—doing a good plumbing job doesn’t have to be linked to some broader ideology.

We also confuse privileges with rights. We forget that with rights come responsibilities. Freedom is not an absence of responsibility or obligation.

As a society, Americans simply are not pulling our weight right now.

We are flunking the very simplest of tests: Wearing masks when we can’t be more than 6 feet away from people. Or when we are doing something that means we can’t count on being 6 feet away. It really isn’t that hard. This has nothing to do with rights. The word “mask” doesn’t appear in the constitution.

Masks work. If we all, across the country, were religious about masks for a month, we would crush the virus. But we’re too spoiled.

Wearing a mask, simply put, is what we should do for ourselves and one another. It is a moral imperative. It is a character issue. If you don’t wear one, you have low character. OK? Yep, I’m judging.

Fortunately, there are lots of Americans who rate high on character. We need to stay the course, and push our fellow citizens to get on the mask train. I wonder if Cat Stevens could rework Peace train…. Maybe not.

With all that, I give you an example of young Americans with golden character. Check out this video (hint, the audio alone is worth it),  and here’s to the future.