A modest rebuttal to these unpleasant days.

A CONVERSATION

On Saturday, Rebecca and I walked into a Decorah gift store to check out a throw blanket for a couch. As we wandered masked-up around the store, we noticed the only other customer talking with the salesperson behind the counter. Neither wore masks. Both were young women.

A few weeks ago the Decorah City Council passed a face-covering ordinance that applies to most local businesses. The measure passed 6 – 1. I thought about this mandate as we took a throw blanket we liked a few steps to the counter. The conversation went as follows, with each person speaking without defensiveness, in calm tones.

• Paul: If you don’t mind I’ll be standing back here because you’re not wearing a mask.
• Salesperson: That’s OK.
• Rebecca: Unless you can just put a mask on?
• Paul: I thought the city ordinance said you had to wear a mask.
• Salesperson: I have a medical condition.
• Rebecca: Yeah, that same thing is true at Fareway, with a couple of employees having a medical condition. Since you have a medical condition you might be at a higher risk.
• Salesperson: I just don’t don’t want to live in fear..
• Paul & Rebecca: We don’t either; that’s why we wear masks.

THE ESSENCE OF POLITICS

There it is. In a nutshell. The essence of politics. Politics is always about difference & conflict. In this case, it is opposition between two different but reasonable expressions of what one should fear. Rebecca and I fear getting COVID or getting it and spreading it to others. The salesperson fears a life constrained by one’s fears. In this post, I will not describe the merits of each perspective, one I share, the other I oppose, but only will suggest the value of acknowledging the reasonableness of each and the importance of not seeing one’s adversary as an enemy.

TWO STORIES

Last week Rebecca traveled back to Clarinda to go on a 30 mile bike ride with about 15 Clarinda friends. She felt safe as her friends all protect themselves from COVID through masks, social distancing and isolation. Their destination on Taco Tuesday was a bar in a small Iowa town. When the group arrived at the bar, they discovered one group member had made reservations inside, on this 97° day. No one inside the bar was masked, nor was the server.

Yesterday Rebecca and I decided to return to Decorah’s B-Fit kettle bell workout studio, for the first time since January. B-Fit follows a strict protocol regarding cleaning and distancing but we knew people did not wear masks during the workout. To our knowledge, there had been no COVID cases connected to B-fit since it reopened in April. We weighed the pros and cons and decided the health benefits of these workouts outweighed the COVID risks.

Rebecca drove 646 miles to join her bicycle-riding friends. Despite seat belts and other safety features of a 21st century car and bicycle helmets each trip was fraught with danger. The same is true for returning to B-Fit workouts.

“I JUST DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN FEAR”

To the store salesperson, wearing a mask is giving in to fear. To Rebecca, not getting in her car and driving on country roads, to truck-filled Interstates 35 & 80 would be giving in to fear. To Rebecca and I, not going back to B-Fit until a vaccine was available, and we are 100% sure we will not get COVID, is letting our fears limit our lives.

Are masked Rebecca and Paul really so different from the mask-free salesperson? Of course, we are differ on the mask issue. And perhaps our salesperson friend is supporting the ‘other’ candidate. If that is so, we may differ in other ways, really important ways. Our differences are real but not the only reality.

OUR DIFFERENCES ARE REAL, BUT NOT THE ONLY REALITY

And we ought not let our differences define each other as the enemy. Perhaps a first step down another path is to uncover inside ourselves a bit of what we find distasteful in that human being across the counter. It is possible, as James Baldwin puts it

To create ourselves without finding it necessary to create an enemy.

It is so easy to think of that salesperson behind the counter as an enemy. Baldwin knew this, about other counters, about lunch counters in Birmingham. He knew the very human temptation to define ourselves against the other.

Lincoln knew it as well. Which is why in his Second Inaugural he offered the words below, to the people and leaders of the Confederacy, once actual enemies who were now defeated friends, once again part of the United States of America.

With malice toward none, with charity for all.

Baldwin and Lincoln, complicated men who knew better than most the human cost of hatred, offer us words of wisdom, from their times, to ours. So that our time does not become like theirs.