(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)
(part 5)
Overlooking everything I'd shared with him at length in my note, about personally and professionally meeting the virus; about seeing to my mother's (and fellow frail seniors') needs under that virus; and about a possible ray of hope amid it all – even the just-passed (and for now postponed) Fathers' Day, let alone my family's grief at the recent untimely death of our cousin... overlooking all of this, Sparks had leapt onto a negligible, small piece of my brief afterword, rewritten and recast it, adding an incendiary layer on politics and racism. Where had that come from?
So I took a deep breath, and began the first of three further responses to him that would each be the product of many hours of hard thought, rewrites, and conscious effort to make sure I wasn't directly critical of him in any way – we'd been friends for quite a long time, and knew each other well... didn't we? Weren't we?
There must be no possibility of his mistaking my meaning again. So I took pains to lay out that viral-spreading worry of mine in far greater detail, stressing that I didn't – don't – "demonize" the most-recent protestors, and underscoring as well my full support for their cause. The timing of these protests was tragic, in that they were certain to lead to increased death. I explained that I did find the protests' swerve into violence greatly disturbing, unacceptable, and utterly at odds with protesting in peace for a just grievance – which the movement had. Had had.
Concluding my long note to him, I wrote – and I believe this with all my heart: "Black lives matter. All life is sacred and precious and must be protected and nurtured. The life of a helpless man of color whose neck is under the knee of a coldhearted bigot; the lives of each person in CoViD's relentless crosshairs; the lives of children in the womb; the lives of senior citizens warehoused and forgotten – these matter. And the loss of even one is indeed needless."
His terse reply came in the next afternoon. Once again, he ignored everything I'd worked hard to lay out and explain for him, instead shallowly seizing on a lone piece of one concluding sentence, twisted it utterly out of shape and context, and swung it hard across me like a steaming tarbrush:
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground, Without..."
How ironic. So many "good, conscientious" people of faith helped elect 2 monsters in order to theoretically protect theoretical life, but instead of protecting life, their words and actions have resulted in the very real death and destruction of countless lives of actual people. After 3+ years of daily increasing horror and debacle, will you remain a "good Catholic" and help re-elect them if your bishop tells you to?
Okay. Now I had to push back – without losing my cool, and my decades of respect for him. This outright rudeness and hostility was completely out of keeping with how we'd always interacted, and with how he dealt with other people; again, he truly has a big and compassionate heart. It took me over five hours to write and hone an answer that addressed his bitter, near-irrational, veering screed.
Where had it come from?
I was hurt, and worried... and had an idea about the cause behind his bizarre, unfathomable twist. I have never known anything to frighten him or even bring him heavy anxiety, beyond what each man – especially husband and father and breadearner – must confront. Here though, even in his tightly secure home, he was vulnerable to a killer virus that could not be negotiated with or beaten back, could only be – hopefully – held at bay with mask and gloves and buckets of sanitizer and a couple injections and an abundance of social caution. He could only hope it wouldn't catch him and kill him, or his wife, or his children, or all of them. Beyond that, and his few basic safeguards, he was powerless and impotent.
Our Spartacus spent years in the military. If he couldn't stop this direct assault, he could still track down and eliminate its cause, and save this country greater harm. And that's a noble line of response. Could he have concluded, in some bizarre, twisted way, that I myself must be the cause of all the "increasing horror and debacle", because I hadn't voted against the current administration, whose response to the virus had been woefully inadequate?
I signed off with an apt quote from Chesterton – a writer he's read and respects:
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 6:55 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: Tar Nation
Whoah, whoah; down boy!
Spark, please don't take your frustration and anger and justifiable rage at this administration out on me. My vote three and a half years ago was to keep a committed baby killer out of office; it wasn't a mandate for her opponent to kill some 125,000 Americans through arrogance and indifference.
The administration's bullheaded obliviousness to the virus, as threat and grim reaper, has been a heavy factor in all those deaths. So has our culture's, and individual people's, own stubbornness and wishful thinking in the face of the threat and its horrid toll. It is not okay yet to go back to the beach, the coffee shop, the crowded department store.
My daughters, my mother, my pastor, my bishop, my pope, even Jesus Christ Himself, does not pull my strings, let alone my election-booth levers. I vote by my conscience, which is informed by my faith, which holds all life as sacred and deserving of nurturing, protecting, and improving.
So: let's change the 2016 election, and put Trump's main opponent into office instead. Let's say she took heavy-handed steps against the virus early on, and kept the mortality rate closer to Germany's of some 5% – not bloody likely in our culture, so let's assume a 7% mortality rate, still, rather than the current almost-16% (as of 4:33 this afternoon). And let's assume half as many positive cases at this point – again, not likely; the lion's share of the vectors aren't under federal control, short of breaking out the brown shirts and goose-steps.
That would yield about 400,000 domestic positives so far (versus the actual 805,000+), and some 20-30,000 Americans dead. Is that a number you could be happy with? You'd be content that 30,000 Americans would now be dead under her administration? Or is your contention that a different backside in the oval office would have kept the virus out of this country entirely, and there'd be zero deaths stateside, while the rest of the world is bulldozed into mass graves?
125,000 deaths is unacceptable. 20-30,000 is unacceptable. 104 dead Australians is unacceptable.
During the prior administration, this country averaged over 2,700 babies murdered in the womb daily: nearly 8,000,000 from 2013-2018 – these are Guttmacher numbers... and gut-wrenching numbers as well.
That's what I voted against: a world where it's okay to kill a baby, and okay to kill a senior citizen, an invalid; where life is cheap, and is measured only by its convenience to someone else who has the power to take it away mercilessly and without a second thought.
Out of faith, out of valuing the lives of the oldest and youngest and most vulnerable, I made the only sane and compassionate choice I could make, short of withholding my vote entirely (and thus failing of my civic duty), or selecting a less-distasteful candidate, who hadn't a chance of defeating the pro-abortion juggernaut.
And I'm as aggravated as you with nearly everything Trump and his yes-men and -women have done with their executive power in the maddening span since. He has also defunded abortion organizations domestic and international, and pushed back prior regulations requiring religious organizations to provide abortion and related services, a violation of the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment.
All this does not excuse or make acceptable his willful ignorance in the extent of the death and damage this pandemic has brought our country. It does not; nor am I a supporter of anything he or his people do that is not good for Americans collectively and individually. To assume otherwise of me is to blindly wield a tarbrush as wide and indiscriminate as any that's disgustingly used on the far right. You are better than that, and I've always liked that about you.
Spartacus, my friend, please take a deep breath, and step back. I'm not Donald Trump; I'm not anywhere in his corner of lowbrow kowtowers. Please hold fast to your very own commendable words and outlook, that "the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue".
Nobody said it was easy. It's not; I know.
Mïchael
The world pays a compliment to the Catholic Church by not tolerating in her all the transgressions that the world willingly tolerates everywhere else. — G. K. Chesterton
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