I am writing today’s letter from a Toyota dealership. What started as a routine oil change has turned into a three-and-a-half hour oil change, alignment, and tire change. I’d say today’s letter is sponsored by Toyota, but the money is flowing the wrong way for that. Does this mean it’s a reverse sponsorship?
Yes, it pains me to be changing tires at a dealership. Everything in my being distrusts car dealerships and maintenance shops in the same building as car dealerships. However, we bought an all-wheel drive minivan, it needs run-flat tires, it had two holes in one tire, and the price looked more than reasonable. The reasonable price was a big surprise, and while I still distrust their tire-wear measurements it seemed prudent to just get it done before going on a road trip to Arkansas next week.
Swagger Wagon
The Consumption
I wonder why I write a fair bit about consumable media? Maybe this week I should just say what I’m consuming?
Watching: The Morning Show, Kim’s Convenience.
Listening: Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Natalie Prass’s The Future and the Past.
Reading: Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift.
And when I seek nostalgia, it’s time for My90sTV.
This really is starting to feel like a blog from 2003.
Common Good
In the beginning months of the pandemic it became clear that masks were going to be an important tool to cut down on the spread of the virus. I remember in the first weeks of lockdown saying, “If we could find something that cuts down on even 10% of the deaths, we should and we will do it.” Masks were that thing. In a year that saw more than 1% of Americans die for the first time since 1947, who knew that saving way more than 10% of lives would be so controversial!
There was argument. Then there was entitled griping about the tyranny of telling people what to do. Then there were absurd and offensive comparisons of wearing masks to a number of historical happenings, such as wearing a “Jewish star” during World War II.
Some counterarguments sought to reach back to a time in America’s past where all Americans collectively did what was right for the common good. With no sense of irony, these folks were hoping to make America great again. A common emblem of this effort was sharing pictures of masked Americans during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
At the time I wondered if these pictures were really the truth of America during that pandemic. Why in this one thing would the old America have been any better than modern America? The most striking example that this was not a collective American effort came from the stories about the varied attempts to enforce a sort of social distancing at the city level via having or not having parades – Philadelphia had one while St. Louis did not. One mayor helped their city sacrifice for the greater good while the other did not.
If you thought there had to be some moments in our history where we all came together because the threats to our existence were just too acute, you might think the revolutionary war was that moment. Every day I visit what I call “my Twins forum,” a place where baseball is only a small part of the discussion. The founding member of the forum is reading consecutively the biographies of every American president. He has been sharing what he’s learned, and yesterday he wrote:
I’m coming around to the idea that the US has almost never had the will – even when fighting a War for Independence – to sacrifice collectively to make things happen. While our troops were dying in winter camps in tatters, the general population seemed to carry on as if it wasn’t happening. We were unable or perhaps the proper word is unwilling, as a fledgling country, to provide food and clothing for the men fighting for the existence of the country. It could have been done. It wasn’t. It was more profitable to sell food to the British (it was probably more complicated than this, but the idea that we left our troops to starve was disgraceful). We will see if this continues as a theme throughout our existence. As I continue through my book on [John Quincy Adams], this idea that it was only a few who sacrificed to make this country go is continually driven home. The 2020 pandemic response, to me, seems to be consistent with Americanism back in 1800 or thereabouts.
I expect when our grandchildren or great-grandchildren learn about this pandemic they will learn about the great sacrifices made for the collective good. They will be shown pictures of empty stadiums, social-distanced voting, masks, masks, and masks. Some national or international issue will be facing them and they will be called to come together with their fellow humans to do what is right for the world at large, just like we all did in 2020.
We sit in the midst of this global pandemic and it is hard to see it that way. It is hard to feel like we all came together for the collective good because we didn’t. Yet many millions of us did sacrifice for what is my perception of the collective good. Many millions of others came together for their versions of the collective good. While many people did not do what I may have wished for them to do, they did change their behavior to a degree. In a global pandemic, degrees matter. Of course we’d make a change to save 10% of the deaths.
When this version of Covid-19 is past, perhaps that is all worth celebrating even if it is in a sugarcoated sort of way.
And let us never forget that sitting atop all this consternation is the amazing response from the world’s scientists, medical professionals, and front-line workers. Thank you!!!
The Attributes of the Sciences by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin