As I have said in
previous posts, I am not particularly impressed by the kind of protesting that devolves
into mindless violence and destruction regardless of how the perpetrators try
to justify it. After several incidents involving firearms, in which one person
was killed, the “kids” are finding out that setting up your own “autonomous”
playground free from oversight by grownups is not a “game.” The city of Seattle
has decided to “take back” the “CHOP” zone in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district,
and frankly let’s hope that both sides have learned an important lesson: “freedom”
doesn’t come “free.” For police, they are not “free” to abuse their authority,
and for the citizenry, freedom to go about their daily lives is threatened when
confronted by people who feel “free” to act on impulses outside the usual
societal norms (like arson and looting)—which in turn has a tendency to lead
people who feel the victims of that kind of “freedom” to feel themselves “free”
to act out in their own way to defend their “freedom” to feel and act the way they want.
Such “freedom”
can be acted out in domestic terrorist incidents, or the “imagining” of such
action, such as the Associated Press
report on the firing of three police officers in Wilmington, North Carolina—one
of whom felt that “a civil war is coming and that he is ready” to buy an
assault rifle and “we are just going to go out and start slaughtering them
(expletive concerning blacks). I can't wait. God, I can't wait.” The officer
went on to say he couldn’t wait to “wipe them off the (expletive) map. That'll
put them back about four or five generations.” Probably not the kind of police
officer you want to give the “freedom” to have a gun.
The reality is
that there really isn’t anything that can be called true “freedom” to act in any way
one wishes; the lyric in the song “Me and Bobby McGee”—“Freedom's just another
word for nothin' left to lose”—isn’t just a throwaway line that sounds good. It
suggests that to be truly “free,” your actions no longer have any meaning to anyone
or even to yourself; the only true “freedom” is to be dead to the world, or simply
death itself. But there are other kinds
of “freedoms,” such as those of purposeful ignorance, inaction or indifference.
Look what happens after yet another mass shooting; we see inaction from those
who think we should have gun laws, and the indifference of gun fanatics
concerning the carnage. This country’s infrastructure is in desperate disrepair,
yet bridges continue to collapse after decades of inaction. “Fenceline”
communities suffer from environmental hazards because better-off white
communities are indifferent as long as the suffering is “NIMBY.”
In this time of
the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are demanding their “freedom” to get sick if
they want to, although generally in the belief that they are personally immune
from the virus. It may surprise some people that the Constitution technically
allows people the “freedom” to ingest any substance they choose to inside their
bodies, which is why drug laws are tailored to make it illegal to manufacture
and sell certain “recreation” chemicals, and thus the purchase of such
chemicals for personal use is also made illegal. The requirement of wearing of facemasks, on
the other hand, attempts to get around “constitutional” freedom rights by making
an individual accountable for actions that harm another person; being sick by
the COVID-19 isn’t a “crime,” but being sick and deliberately acting in a way
that makes another person sick is an “actionable” offense.
Thus Washington Governor
Jay Inslee promulgated an order this week to take effect on Friday requiring
everyone over the age of five to wear face coverings in any indoor or outdoor
public space. The order exempts people who are outdoors and can maintain a six
foot distance—which of course many people will take as license to walk about
city streets that are not too crowded
without masks simply because they do not want to wear masks at all, anywhere. I
was riding the bus home last night when I noticed that most of the usual
passengers had decided not to wear masks, despite the fact that Metro had not
changed its policy requiring the wearing of facemasks while riding the bus;
they apparently decided to use Inslee’s order as an excuse to take a holiday
from wearing them until Friday.
I pointed out the
incongruity of not wearing masks when the governor’s order was instigated by a
rise in COVID-19 cases, and was intended to get into people’s heads that they
needed to start wearing masks now, and giving hardheads a chance to “prepare”
themselves. On Friday, people who are not wearing facemasks in public spaces as
required will allegedly be subject to tickets for a misdemeanor offense, but
whether this will actually be enforced, or arbitrarily enforced subject to how
a police officer is feels at the moment, is another matter. But what this shows
is that even in “liberal” cities like Seattle, it is very difficult to force
people to do the right thing if it infringes on their “freedom.” When I arrived
in Seattle to go to work today, I encountered 233 people on the sidewalks in an
area encompassing downtown toward Capitol Hill; only 88 were wearing facemasks.
Unless there is real enforcement, this won’t change, protests or not; since the
lockdown began—and Inslee’s order will probably lengthen it—Seattle police seem
to be avoiding being seen by (let alone having contact with) the citizenry at
any and all times.
Meanwhile, in
California, Arizona, Florida and Texas where there has been record spikes in
virus cases since lockdown rules have been eased have forced the governors of those
states to reevaluate moving too rapidly toward “normalcy,” but “requiring” the
use of facemasks has predictably led to anger among certain constituencies who
simply cannot abide by “restrictions” on their “freedom” to act without regard
to their fellow humans. That is the incongruence of “individualism” that is
supposedly one of the trademarks of American culture: by acting in accordance
to their own sense of “freedom,” some people simply do not care about how their
own actions reduces another’s person’s freedom.
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