The pandemic has revealed a deeply toxic truth about our society
A meteorologist in Northern Michigan was recently fired from his television station after 33 years for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Predictably, his response was to spew forth the same verbal excrement that so many of his persuasion have been spewing ever since this all began:
Freedom liberty tyranny my body my choice! Liberty freedom my body tyranny my choice! Freedom my body! Tyranny! Liberty my choice! Freedom! My body! Tyranny! Liberty!
As if to underscore the spirit behind this line of thinking, he used his departure message on Facebook to assert that since he had concluded that he personally wasn’t likely to die from COVID, he was justified in his decision not to get the shot. (Haven’t we heard that argument before, by the way, from any number of folks who are no longer around to defend it?)
And there you have it in a nutshell: Me. It’s all about me. Me, me, me.
Pandemic deniers, anti-vaxxers, and anti-maskers who cite “freedom” and “liberty” as justifications for their awfulness really aren’t talking about those concepts at all. Instead, they’re using them as euphemisms for something else entirely: unearned entitlement.
To be sure, this paradigm has been around for as long as America has: groups of people who think they’re entitled to a position of supremacy—to be comfortable all the time; to profit; to never be inconvenienced or challenged in the slightest; to essentially do (or, in this case, not do) whatever they want, no matter how hideous the cost might be to everyone else.
Pandemic deniers, anti-vaxxers, and anti-maskers who cite “freedom” and “liberty” as justifications for their awfulness really aren’t talking about those concepts at all. Instead, they’re using them as euphemisms for something else entirely: unearned entitlement.
America’s streets and public places have been turned over and over again into bloodbaths and war zones, just so that the gun lobby can continue to make lots of money from human carnage and a small group of the paranoid and fearful can use firearms to pretend that they’re strong, all under the guise of Second Amendment “liberty.”
Countless lives have been turned upside down or destroyed by our criminal scam of a “health care system,” which has always prioritized obscene profits for the few over the well-being or “care” of the many.
A political party that has devolved into a haven for white nationalists and domestic terrorists is working in overdrive to dismantle democratic norms, delegitimize free and fair elections in this country, and suppress or disenfranchise eligible voters in any number of key states—all because they think they’re simply entitled to power all the time, whether they have public support or not.
And now, headlines like this. (By the way, if you’re a health care worker and you refuse to get vaccinated, you need to find another line of work immediately—and never work in medicine again.)
What’s ironic about all of it, though, is that even if these naysayers really were talking about “freedom” or “liberty”—which, again, they’re not—their arguments still wouldn’t hold any water. That’s because as a society, we’ve clearly always had at least some level of agreement that there is no such thing as absolutes on those fronts, and there never will be, as long as one’s so-called “personal” choices impact many others, often profoundly, and sometimes as a matter of life and death.
If you’re a parent, your kid already has to get any number of vaccines just to go to school, no matter what state you live in. Is that tyrannical?
You can’t yell “fire” (or, these days, “gun”) in a crowded movie theater, and you can’t yell “bomb” on an airplane. Nor can you carry a firearm on one (isn’t that a violation of your Second Amendment rights??), nor, after 9/11, even so much as a pocket knife. Hell, most people still have to take off their shoes at airport security checkpoints, because of that one time all those years ago when one guy tried unsuccessfully to detonate a shoe bomb on board a flight.
You can’t just drive whatever speed you want, and you can’t run red lights just because you’re running late or don’t feel like stopping. Nor can you drive drunk. Sure, it’s your body, so it’s your business if you feel like downing five tequila shots in one sitting. But as soon as you get behind the wheel of a car, it absolutely becomes everyone else’s business—in the same way that it’s everyone’s business the minute you leave your private residence as an unvaccinated or unmasked person who could spread deadly COVID to anyone you encounter.
States all across the nation have enacted various levels of indoor smoking bans. They’ve also placed strict regulations on any number of public establishments, such as bars, where in most places you have to prove that you’re of a certain age in order to visit one—which actually sounds quite similar to the notion that you’d have to prove that you’re vaccinated for the same purpose.
Shall I continue? Why are all of these infringements on our “liberty” okay—and so very many others that I didn’t mention at all—but mask requirements and vaccine mandates amid a deadly global pandemic are somehow the final stop on the highway to totalitarianism?
As a society, we’ve clearly always had at least some level of agreement that there is no such thing as absolute freedom or liberty, and there never will be, as long as one’s so-called “personal” choices impact many others, often profoundly, and sometimes as a matter of life and death.
I have zero sympathy for the tenured meteorologist from Michigan. I hope he can’t find another job for as long as his mentality remains unchanged.
Why? Because he is the reason we are still drowning in this disaster. Contrary to the weatherman’s self-righteous professions of personal and bodily autonomy, people like him who refuse to get vaccinated also present a grave risk to everyone else—even the inoculated, because those who claim to love “freedom” and “liberty” so much are actually fertile breeding grounds for even deadlier variations of this scourge that, given the freedom and liberty it’s being generously given, could eventually find a way to evade the vaccines altogether.
This is not a matter of personal choice. Period. End of story.
What it is, however, is a moment of clarity: There is a small but significant and very vocal group of people who regularly remind everyone else that they want to reap all the benefits of participating in civilized society, but without any of the responsibility or accountability. That’s completely unacceptable, and it doesn’t work, unless our goal is anarchy.
It also reveals a deeply toxic truth about American culture: Our proud but dubious tradition of “rugged individualism” has morphed into a poisonous mentality where it’s just generally okay to be an asshole who infringes on others’ rights, puts them in harm’s way, or makes their lives worse, as long as you’re doing so under the pretense of your “freedom” and “liberty.”
It is neither of those things. It is unearned entitlement.
There is a small but significant and very vocal group of people who regularly remind everyone else that they want to reap all the benefits of participating in civilized society, but without any of the responsibility or accountability.
I’m not saying there’s absolutely no legitimate reason to be skeptical of or nervous about vaccines that were developed at lightning speed under emergency conditions. If your reluctance was predicated entirely on the benefits and risks of the vaccines themselves—and nothing else—then we could at least have a conversation about it. I’d still likely disagree with you, but at least there would be a starting point for discussion.
But as soon as you frame this in the context of your constitutional rights, we’re done. Because that’s absolutely not what this is, and when you speak that way, you declare in excruciatingly explicit terms that you are thinking about no one but yourself.
Yes, there should be mask requirements for indoor public spaces everywhere. Yes, there should be vaccine mandates for workplaces and venues of public accommodation, and yes, I’m entirely in favor of vaccine passports and all of the things that Republicans are demonizing for short-term political profit (because, again, they think they’re entitled to power no matter the costs to everyone else). And yes, those who willfully put others at risk and contribute to the perpetuation of this pandemic should face consequences.
Not just because thousands are still dying needless deaths, but because this has implications for civilized society that extend far beyond COVID-19.
