Window Dressing: Time for American leaders to graduate
It’s car window painting season. A time of year marked by distracting other motorists with the driver’s most pressing thoughts. Usually, this messaging accompanies high school graduation. However, the typical messages of “Seniors 2020, H.A.G.S., see you never!” are being replaced with “Death to tyrants!”
So, it’s a bit of a different message this year.
And for obvious reasons. In the midst of a global pandemic, the federal government and many states mandated that citizens shelter in place in order to flatten the curve. The narrative is well-known at this point and people’s reactions are understandably strong and mixed.
Social distancing relies upon individuals shouldering the burden of isolation to protect each other. Fighting a pandemic relies upon a collective response to a communal threat, realizing that one’s actions can contribute meaningfully to the safety or harm of the polity.
Yet, sheltering in place means lost wages and/or jobs; limited access to family and friends; and foregoing some of the basic pleasures of life. Anger and frustration are natural reactions to this imposed loss of freedom.
Thus, communal sacrifice squares off with individual freedom.¹ And while the responses across the nation thus far fall more towards the communal sacrifice side of the spectrum, the push for individual freedom grows stronger. The published unemployment rate is just shy of 15% (that number lags reality by a month), many states and cities are flattening the curve, and many areas of the country do not feel the same trauma experienced in New York.
It is too simplistic to say that one’s political allegiance defines where one falls on the debate of communal good vs. individual freedom. In general, Democrats lean for the former and Republicans the latter. And polling supports that one’s belief that the COVID-19 related deaths are over or under-inflated does track with one’s political allegiance.
So the gun-toting, petulant right isn’t taking science seriously and the deep state left hides big brother ambitions in a trojan horse of “public good.” Lovely.
Political sparring is not new to the American polity. Hamilton and Jefferson did not shy away from name-calling and inflated (if a bit more nuanced and eloquent) public attacks. So, a generous view of these developments says that this makes our country stronger. A healthy debate contributes to the polity, does not detract from it.
And, on both sides, American exceptionalism is frequently cited. No matter your political persuasion, America is “so star-spangled awesome” that we will pull through this crisis as the world’s best nation, whatever that means, and continue to be awesome.²
Yet a virus does not care about one’s nationality or one’s political party. For all of the passionate debate in this country, a virus is a dispassionate killer. If we cannot effectively argue the communal need while also addressing the concerns of individual liberty, we will muddle our way forward, not doing enough while doing too much.
America has been so “star-spangled awesome” because of the leadership exhibited during crises that elicits the best from citizens: leadership that builds off the American spirit but also guides it. The transcendent quality that allows not for the navigation of frothy political waters but for the turning of these tides all together. This requires a bit more than just window-dressing.
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[1] And, for another post altogether, it makes one think about how applying the Difference Principle and Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance might change the policy outcomes stemming from Congress and the Administration.
[2] in the words of Will McAvoy (said sardonically). And, no, I do not think the message from Will McAvoy’s speech is “make America great,” or any other chest-thumping nostalgia. Nor is the point of using this phrase to give credence to his rant. I just like the quip star-spangled awesome.
