Partial recap: friend Spartacus hadn't heard from me in a few weeks, so he dutifully checked in to see that I and my family were okay... after all, a very, very deadly pandemic had seized the world – the nation – and many, many people were dying: family, friends, helpless strangers. Though there was no cure, there were still very sensible precautions we simply had to follow, and an antivirus vaccine that had made tremendous headway in protecting and saving lives. How had his friend, A. Gene Childe, and Gene's family made out? I reassured him that all were well, and laid out for him how our medical practice was facing down this great threat to our patients and staff.
And yet – counter to prudent, sensible precautions – people unmasked had been gathering en masse to loudly and very-visibly protest recent brutal killings of unarmed African-American citizens by Caucasian members of city police forces. These gatherings, and the anger and hurt and sense of betrayal behind them (besides added frustration at unending quarantine and self-isolation), were very understandable... yet foolish and downright dangerous, in that thousands of people were thereby exposed to frightening illness and death for themselves, and for loved ones they'd convey this unrelenting virus on to.
Worse, their to-the-streets justice-seeking movement had clearly been – can I say "infiltrated" without sounding conspiracist? No? – had clearly been alarmingly and unacceptably redirected by criminally-minded opportunists bent on looting and destruction... hardly a protest against race-based police brutality anymore. My heart being solidly with the original protests, and the families of the victims of those brutalities, the destructive turn of the protests sickened me.
Just for a moment in my reply to Spartacus, I shared my worried thought, first at the violent detour these protests had taken, in particular the threat they thus presented (regardless of intent, good or bad) in providing a rich and ripe means for the virus to spread even further and more quickly, and kill even more of us. And not just the protests themselves; too many fellow Americans – self-focused, and fed up with restriction – were casting aside their antiviral precautions and getting together for parties, vacation destinations, and so on. And the grim reaper would soon swing his sickle even more vigorously and viciously.
So in closing my note to him, I wrote to Sparks: "how much have the protests, and the merrily oblivious rush to beaches
and parklands and bistros, caused the virus to spike once more, maybe even nurture
a second wave? We'll see in another week or two. So stay masked and wary, kids!"
His reply came in a few days later... and took a disturbing shift:
From: "Spark" le Klaus
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 4:34 PM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: Cheese pasta?
Glad to hear you and yours are doing well. I hope that continues.
Do we really need to further demonize the protesters? Please let’s not forget that if justice actually existed in Amerikkka there would be nI need for protests. Meanwhile, your boys in the Whitehouse, in addition to fanning the flames of racism, have only exacerbated the pandemic. In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue.
Spartacus
Please reread the last two or three sentences in my email to him, and feel free as well to look over my note's full text in Part 4 here. Where had I "demonized" the protestors at all? I was baffled, and reread that note, and just couldn't find that such a slant anywhere in it. I'd simply very briefly expressed my concern that unmasked gatherings like theirs, and others', could well have spread this nasty virus even further and wider. That's a reasonable, prudent worry; it's not a condemnation – let alone "demonization" – of their just cause. Nor had I made mention to him at all of the protests' alarming violent detour. (And besides with the viral-transmission risk to bunched-up marching people, was he in fact okay with the risk to people crowding into stadiums and bars and shopping centers? He hadn't shared a word on that.)
I definitely like his respelling of "America", and agree with his closing sentence, that "In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue."
Very troublingly, however, Spark himself had himself quite starkly climbed onto and proudly ridden out on that "perversion... into a partisan political issue", in firing away at the Trump administration. Yet I'd written nothing at all about politics, or politicization. Friend Spartacus is very intelligent and incisive (he has at least one more degree than I do!); how could he possibly have so poorly misread me? Especially two quick sentences in a much longer missive? He had skipped over almost everything else I'd had to tell him – in a polite and upbeat answer to his earlier questions to me – and had seized harshly onto something... I hadn't even written.
Out of respect and friendship, his words – his (mis)impression, and bizarre recasting, of what I'd written (and hadn't written) – of course required an answer from me... and not a brief one; this had somehow twisted into a very serious and sensitive matter. So:
From:
Aging Child
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 8:06 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground,
Without..." Sparky, I apologize if anything in my wording even suggested an
impression that I demonize our protestors. When I wrapped up my last note, I
was wringing my fretful hands over the likelihood that the virus had been given
fresh vulnerable victims, with so many short-sighted people rushing back to the
pre-CoViD status-quo world of close physical association (especially
unprotected). And: too many marching folks have been shoulder-to-shoulder
without masks and with too little caution, even while pushing hard to resolve
and redress a long-overdue injustice.
I strongly support this hard thrust against racism in our
country and culture, and my heart is marching with our brothers and sisters out
there in the street. I'm also apposed to disbanding police forces en masse, and
to the use of a legitimate social demonstration as an opportunity to smash and grab.
You and I know that this is utterly antithetical to the committed method of civil
disobedience that Martin Luther King insisted on. Just by association, that
violence dishonors both the movement itself, and specifically King's values and
teachings.
Much of the violence has been instigated by a) arguably criminal
opportunists; and b) anarchists seizing a spotlight and soapbox. Both groups,
especially the latter, care far more for their own personal (and/or collective)
gain than they do for generations of bloodied racial and social grievance long
in need of resolution.
The timing – regardless of any commendable objective or
execrable antisocial agenda – is absolutely lousy, with our being in the midst
of an incurable plague/epidemic/pandemic. This morning's number of forty-some
thousand new U.S. cases of CoViD was the highest single-day jump we've seen
since the beginning of the health nightmare. And much of the cause of that huge
spike lies in just what I was feeling very edgy over: protest-mobbing, and
social-center reopening.
Most certainly a hefty chunk of the blame lies in Trump's
pathetic response, in his arrogance and determined obliviousness; I'm with you
there, and my blood truly heats up at the opportunities he and his
administration have had to do great good and achieve profoundly wondrous
results… and done nothing with those opportunities, or/and made the
worst-possible response when those opportunities were clearly there
(underscoring how he and his backbone-less boys aren't my boys). This morning,
I saw a big fat pickup truck that was flying a huge Trump flag, and I was
disgusted.
I'm totally with you, too, in how "the most horrific thing
about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all
of humanity into a partisan political issue" – even where some of our
words, mine and yours alike, themselves veer into the partisan political; we
need to remain on guard against that. This virus and its great threat to every
one of us on this globe most decidedly isn't political. It could unify all of
us in goal and purpose and ultimate achievement. But we've grown too
inflexible, divisive, and entitlement-focused. We have become a stupid people,
sheeple and lemmings.
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. These
lives I treasure and support and pray for and march for, and with… even when
the current viral world requires us to march socially distant, march while
sheltering in place.
Stay healthy and vigilant, my friend! LeRoux was right: nobody said it was easy.
Regards,
Gene
By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion; and we hung up our
harps on the aspens of that land. There our captors asked us for the lyrics of
our songs, and our tormentors urged us for joy: "Sing for us a song of
Zion!" But how could we sing a song of the Lord in a strange land? — Psalm
137:1-4
More soon; again, I did have to point out to him – very, very, gently, and just in passing – that his political comment had made the high standard of his last sentence profoundly hypocritical. His next reply would shock me with its direct and unprecedented hostility; we've never been at odds, all these years… although he had chewed me out over my vote in the previous election.
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