There’s a continuum.
On one extreme of it are people who’ve completely locked themselves down, refusing to go anywhere or do anything until COVID-19 is declared dead and buried. On the other extreme are people who have decided that this current pandemic is little more than the common cold.
The rest of us lie somewhere between the two extremes, but few occupy the middle. That’s not because there’s something wrong with us, it’s simply hard to find balance when things get complicated. And scary.
And so there are many who lean towards the “this is real” side of the continuum, and a lot who lean in the other direction. To the former, mask mandates, social distancing, etc. are a good thing, and to the latter, they’re unneccessary, overreaching, and little more than a product of fear mongering.
Last week, a friend posted about an encounter she had with a masked woman in a grocery store. My friend was walking along one of the isles while the woman, travelling in the opposite direction, went out of her way to create as much space as possible as they silently passed.
“Why live in so much fear?” my friend asked on Facebook.
It should interest us that liberals flock towards one side of this continuum while conservatives tend to occupy the other. Complaints about mask mandates, lockdowns, vaccines, hoaxes, and government overreach are much more common from right leaning folk, while those begging us to take things seriously, pushing for lockdown, etc. come from the other side of the fence.
So it’s no surprise that complaints about “fear mongering” tend to come from the conservative world, aimed specifically at liberals. Conservative media outlets like The Federalist, The New York Post, Fox News and others have plenty to say about liberal America’s attempt to leverage COVID fears for things like political gain, getting rid of Trump, etc.
As a liberal leaning Christian, I prefer that nobody live in fear, but I think we’d all agree that fear is sometimes necessary, and healthy.
My kids and I wear seatbelts when we get in the car. We drive the speed limit. I don’t smoke. I limit my alcohol intake. During a walk in City Park with my wife the other day, some rando on a bike screamed an insult at me. I didn’t respond.
Years ago, the president of a skydiving club asked me to be their jump pilot. I went to inspect their plane but the mechanic who certified it for operation told me that it was dangerous. “But you passed it,” I retorted (I really wanted to log some extra time). “Don’t fly that plane” was the only response I could get out of him, so I passed.
I make a ton of decisions out of a desire to be as safe as I possibly can. When asked, I advise others to do the same, sometimes not when asked.
Is that fear mongering?
If you say, “My speed limit is my business, you drive yours, I’ll drive mine,” I’d have some concerns about your respect for public safety. I certainly wouldn’t want to occupy the same highway as you.
Is that because I’m paralyzed by fear?
It’s the same with smoking in public, indoor spaces. While our country had a difficult conversation here, we decided that smoking in public is not a “personal” thing; it involves everyone who’s exposed to second-hand smoke. As you can imagine, the American smoking community was livid. We used to allow smoking in airplanes for crying out loud, now it’s banned in 99% of indoor spaces.
What aided in these much-needed transitions was data. We had compiled some numbers about the risks of smoking, and there seemed to be some compelling correlations between driving too fast and traffic accidents, so we made some laws intended to give everyone as much freedom, and safety, as possible.
That’s what laws do. We are not a nation of laws, we are a nation of freedom, and freedom requires healthy restrictions, and none of our restrictions will be healthy apart from access to comprehensive data.
Our problem is not fear, or government overreach, or even politics. It’s data, or more specifically, our posture towards what’s available. Nobody’s contesting smoking or speed limit data (anymore), so we’re not having any(more) discussions about the veracity of their associated laws.
Coronavirus, however…
Folks on the left tend to see the CDC infection/death numbers as legitimate, while folks on the right tend to have an opposing perspective and can, understandably, question any effort at mitigation. Why go through all of this trouble if Coronavirus is better battled by going back to business as usual?
I have no problem understanding why a southern, conservative evangelical in a supermarket would feel that her fellow shopper is overracting by giving her some space. Her tribe has decided a) the data is flawed, which leads to b) there’s no need to panic, and finally c) people who don’t think like she does are simply paralyzed by fear.
And fear can be dangerous.
Change her posture towards the data and everything else changes. Speed limits have nothing to do with fear mongering because we have hard data to back up the idea that fast driving causes accidents. And smoking? White conservative evangelicals don’t smoke.
But let’s say, just for a brief moment, for the sake of argument, that liberals are guilty of fear mongering, of perpetrating a narrative that’s intended solely to keep the nation gripped in anxiety.
Liberals aren’t the only ones doing that.
Perhaps you’ve heard:
“They’re coming for your guns.”
“An election was stolen.”
If you’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of reading 20 or so Donald Trump speeches, “Liberals are trying to destroy America.”
This isn’t fear mongering?
Rest assured that all of these are backed up by some data — these claims are not without evidence. But because my conservative friends consider data differently than I do, they land on a different planet when it comes to guns, conspiracy, COVID-19, and who it is that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about our country.
Who’s right? Who has the correct posture towards the mountain of data that’s out there?
With regards to Coronavirus, again, the vast, vast majority of world epidemioligists, virologists, and public health experts are in general agreement about the steps we’re taking to mitigate death/infection rates. Sure, we’re figuring out some things along the way, like maybe it’s ok to mask up indoors, or go completely maskless outside, but there are very few exceptions to the idea that science has declared the pandemic to be real. Meanwhile, conservative America shakes its head, sometimes taking offense when a Burger King employee asks them to put their mask on.
With regards to guns, conservatives tend to believe that there is an anti-gun movement among liberals and that the government is on a gun-free trajectory. That’s been on the table for years now, by the way, but somehow the right to bear arms has been stripped from nobody. Assault rifles are a different story, but that’s not because liberals want to take them away so they can have more power over the unarmed, it’s because people are abusing their right to own assault-type rifles, many times at risk to the life and safety of others. When that happens — boom — laws. Every time.
The same thing happened with speed restrictions. People abused their right to drive as fast as they wanted, many times at risk to the lives and safety of others, so we made some laws. That’s also where smoking laws came from.
But the fear mongering argument states that assault rifles and background checks will merely open the door to further restrictions. Referencing current proposed background-check legislation, The Federalist calls this an “opening salvo” against gun rights. According to this narrative, any and all gun control ends up with an unarmed America. “Then they’ll come for us,” they say.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this on my Facebook feed.
No fear there.
With regards to election integrity, I’m aware of the data that supports the idea of a stolen election, and I’m aware that, if you’re a conservative, you’re 1,000 times more likely to believe that Trump was cheated out of office. I’m also aware of the data that supports the idea that the election — no more tainted by fraud than any other election — was fair.
What strikes me is the phenomenon that occurred to 147 conservative lawmakers who, in January, voted to overtune Trump’s election loss. Now, according to Reuters, 133 of those folk, for whatever reason, will neither endorse nor repudiate Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen.
You’ll have to forgive me on this one, none of my favorite media/data/info outlets — Time, Reuters, The LA Times, The New York Times, USA Today, Christianity Today, The Boston Globe, NPR, etc. — have any support whatsoever for the claim that Donald Trump is America’s rightful heir to the throne. I have a hard time heading over to Brietbart or Fox News (though I’ve done so many times) for a counter-perspective when the world’s leading media outlets are calling this whole thing a farce.
Christianity Today is the most influential evangelical Christian media outlet in the world, calling for its readers to accept the truth, get over it, and move on. That’s big, folks.
With regards to data in general, it’s a bit like the Bible, confusing and complicated enough to read anything you want into it. If you want to find Biblical support for slavery, for example, and are willing to cherry pick the stuff that supports your perspective while ignoring the passages that don’t, it’s in there. If you want to view the non-Christian world as some kind of a threat, or that you’re more holy than someone who doesn’t believe like you do, boom, that’s in there too.
Data is an all-or-nothing proposition. If we’re going to cherry pick, as I’ve done so many times and will most likely continue to do, we’re going to end up with the wrong perspective. And the wrong perspective, especially now, ends up with the bearer being afraid of the wrong things.
I don’t think that I’m ever going to be able to rid my life of fear, although Jesus invited me to reconsider. But, if I’m going to be afraid, I’d like to be afraid of the right things. As a twice-vaccinated-said-to-be-fully-immune American, I’m afraid of Coronavirus. I’m watching as it rips India to shreds, for example, while some of my conservative friends still question the veracity of infection/death counts.
Still.
People who so posture themselves towards the available data frighten me.
What’s more, Christians, who’ve forgotten that the success and failure of a country hang on the Almighty’s whim and nothing else, are frightening to me. They are fighting to be heard, fighting to be right, fighting for a seat at the table, fight, fight, fight.
Jesus addressed this crowd on a few different occasions, inviting them to repent, or “turn” to an alternate understanding of their world, one that invites us all to relax, to do the work that Jesus called us to, and leave the fighting to Him.
In this, the data that threatens to call us “wrong” is no longer something to be feared. And the fear mongering that comes from being afraid of the wrong things is laid to rest.
I’ll let you know when I get there. 😀
Photo courtesy of Kristine Wook at Unsplash
Wise words. Wise perspective. Thanks.
You bet! Thanx.