A sickness is crippling us, and it’s not just COVID-19
On one thing we can all agree right now: There is a sickness afoot in our land. And it isn’t just COVID-19. It is division — angry, bitter, passionate division. It starts with politics but spills over into everything we do. The news, and social media, are filled with it: road rage shootings, protests against continued killings of unarmed Blacks by police, anger against athletes for kneeling in support of racial justice, folks losing it in Walmart when asked to wear a mask. Just last week, the feds arrested a man in Columbia accused of participating in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
With one kind of leadership, you might have thought a deadly pandemic could’ve brought us together as a nation, but it has only divided us more.
Let’s start with masks. Back in June, when President Trump backed out of the GOP’s Charlotte convention because he refused to abide by Gov. Roy Cooper’s requirements to wear masks and maintain social distancing, I contrasted Cooper’s policy to that of South Carolina’s Gov. Henry McMaster, who refuses to mandate masks. At the time, South Carolina, with half the population of its neighbor, was recording far more new cases of COVID-19 and a much higher infection rate. Today, the two Carolinas have recorded almost the same number of deaths, and South Carolina’s tested infection rate is twice that of North Carolina.
Masks work. Virtually all qualified epidemiologists, from Dr. Anthony Fauci on down, have implored us to wear them because they save lives. Yet our president, himself infected with the virus, continues to host mask-free events. His now-infamous Rose Garden reception (dubbed a “superspreader event” by Dr. Fauci) has infected at least 34 in attendance.
Then there’s testing, one of the three elements — along with masking and contact tracing — singled out by scientists as key to controlling the pandemic that has killed more than 214,000 Americans. Despite earlier claims, President Trump appears not to have been testing until he became sick, and he now refuses to say he has tested negative for the virus even as he prepares to host more live events. The White House initially declined the Centers for Disease Control’s offer to perform contact tracing on the Rose Garden reception, and now only two CDC epidemiologists are helping track down people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus.
Last week, South Carolina voters weren’t able to see their sitting senior senator, Lindsey Graham, debate his challenger, Democrat Jaime Harrison, because Graham refused Harrison’s demand for pre-debate testing.
No matter the subject, the lines are drawn. Even when his own FBI uncovered the plot to overthrow Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Trump and his surrogates responded by saying the governor “sows division,” implying that she got what she deserved. Earlier, after a group of so-called “militia” occupied the state capital armed with long guns, Trump had tweeted out “Liberate Michigan.” Where on earth could these guys possibly have gotten the idea that kidnapping the governor might be a good idea?
On the issue of race, which underlies much of America’s divisiveness, Trump constantly pours gasoline on the fire, belittling the NBA for its overt support of Black Lives Matter, for example, or refusing in a presidential debate to condemn white supremacists, just as he declined to do with Charlottesville and Kenosha. Whatever you thought of vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s performance in last week’s debate, did you think Trump’s assessment of her as a “monster” seemed fitting?
I could go on. But you can fan these flames (and load up on disinformation) just by hanging out 24/7 on Facebook or watching your favorite partisan cable channel, or listening to angry talk radio.
Trump and his acolytes did not invent this division in our society. The seeds of the divide are substantive and two-sided, with blame to go around. Whatever you believe on this issue or that, you cannot possibly deny that this president thrives off amping up the conflict, fueling the hostility, elevating the discord. He’s behind in the presidential race, but he is winning that war. We are not just a nation suffering an epic infection; the toxicity of our politics is crippling us as well.
If you have grown weary of living with this tension, have a heart-to-heart with yourself as you fill out your ballot and ask this question: which of the candidates from whom you have to choose stands the best chance of figuring out a way to cool down America so that we can all get back to the business of trying to live peacefully among ourselves?
This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 12:00 AM.