We Are Not In This Together
In the weeks after 9/11, we saw a unity across typical dividing lines that hasn't repeated since. And as we continue marching on in the midst of a global pandemic, the battle cry "we are in this together" rings hollow. It makes for a powerful feel-good moment for selling cars/cell phones/streaming services/etc or for sports teams and politicians to buy cheap goodwill. But it's not the least bit true.
This pandemic isn't an equalizer. Sure, it impacts all of us, but in strikingly disproportionate ways. In the most literal biological sense, the virus knows no boundaries in who it infects, but even the way it overwhelmingly harms the most vulnerable while taking advantage of asymptomatic transmission among the young who are convinced of their invulnerability only highlights the disparities in our culture and our worldview.
And instead of finding ways to support, love, and encourage one another, the fault lines in our culture have widened to an entirely new level.
From the first day these stay-at-home orders were enacted and schools were closed, battle lines were being drawn. Homeschool vs schooling-at-home and the "schedules are necessary" vs "too much structure is bad" rhetoric lit up social media feeds. And as the arguments piled up, riding in on the white horse came the "have grace for each other" camp like Gandalf the White crashing the party with a flash of light to drop some wisdom.
People have been at each others' throats since. We each find THE article that will prove our point about how to look at the data or how we were right all along or how things would have gone differently if we had been in charge. We are masking our self-righteousness under the cloak of information. We chose our teams and camped out on the hills we intended to die on. We are all now epidemiologists/constitutional scholars/activist warriors/social distance enforcers/freedom champions/civil disobedient citizens/geneticists/journalists/etc/etc/etc. The tendency to declare ourselves self-made experts, the curse of the information age, is on full display as we disparage true, trained, capable experts whose recommendations don't sit well with what our side of the political aisle has declared as non-negotiable.
And this is just among us people with the resources to have constant internet access and the time to spend reading these articles and having these debates!
But many are facing impossible decisions and crushing circumstances, some of which is new as of COVID-19 and some of which is decades old but amplified as never before.
Business owners are deciding to make temporary closures permanent as the ink on the books turns more red. People are losing jobs, while others deemed "essential" are forced to make difficult decisions between those very jobs and risking exposure (not just to themselves, but to the many people who might be hurt by these asymptomatic carriers). Some businesses and employees are trying to step back into a world that still feels shaky, wondering if they'll be okay.
Politicians try to compromise to find a path forward at every level, from the federal down to the town, but instead are constantly criticized for every part of every decision. Frustrations boil over because bills and decisions aren't passed fast enough, but these same interventions are immediately criticized because they were passed too hastily and are seemingly incoherent.
And these economic problems, as well as the virus itself, are striking disproportionately hard among those least prepared to experience it. Minorities and the poor, already a disappointingly tight Venn Diagram, are being crushed by the weight of all that is happening and often without the ability to complain loudly on social media.
We really aren't in this together. But I wish we were.
I wish we were quick to listen and quick to encourage. I wish we were quick to support and slow to speak, slow to anger, and slow to comment. I wish our natural bent was to assume the best in others, all while recognizing our own flaws. I wish we prayed for leaders, challenged them to the highest standard of character, and supported their genuine efforts to make progress, even if we don't agree with how they would accomplish that.
My prayer is that we, myself included, would be struck by a sense of our shared humanity.
I pray that empathy would define our approach to others to such a degree that we would bleed when our brothers and sisters are hurting.
I pray that we would truly all be in this together...
