One of my Bill-friends (I have several of them) just sent me a link to a Guardian article on the German and Austrian weakness for what I call homeopathic silliness, and others call thinking outside the box. It's worth a read.
The past couple of weeks I've been preoccupied with the news from Germany. The number one topic is Covid and the number two topic, what will the new government be like, usually ends up centering on Covid, as well.
In my personal life, I find myself fighting despair over all the evidence that Americans, to an alarming degree, have surrendered to fear, circus, and conspiracy theories, and I have looked to Germany to pick my spirits up. Their approach to science and truth has long been a counterbalance to American folly, for me. That is no longer the case. I now find myself reflecting over and again on how similar the two populations are.
In the midst of this struggle to juggle each new piece of insight into German and American behavior and thought, I am deeply saddened by the fact that I've lost a friend over my approach to taking things in. He insists Americans are fools, plain and simple, and there is no such thing as an honest politician. I've lost his friendship over protests that he focuses too little on the donut, too much on the hole. I persist in thinking - it's my reaction to despair - that we should live by the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant, that none of us ever see the whole picture. And I conclude from that that we can be our own worst enemies by believing we know more than we do, that we need to keep nuanced thinking at all costs, and not throw in the towel prematurely on what appears to be ingrained folly as a national characteristic.
This is a philosophical orientation, and it's based on faith, something I rail loudly against much of the time. I don't like ideological thinking, but at the same time I recognize I cannot rid myself of the notion that the insane, the Republicans, the Christian nationalists, the white supremacists - carve out whichever section of the population you will, are running the asylum. My friend's ghosting of me is ironic. I actually agree with him much of the time. We're all doomed if we go on like this!
Particularly discouraging is the fact that while I want to focus on the John Lewises and the Pete Buttigiegs and the Stacey Abramses and all the many politicians standing up to American political folly and not let the Ted Cruzes and the Rand Pauls and Ron De Santises stand in as representative, I feel the left has pulled the rug out from under me. In the U.S., our tendency to tout individual rights over collective responsibilities is a chronic disease. A co-morbidity with the Corona virus, this anti-vaxxer ("I got my rights!") nonsense. And in Germany, particularly in Saxony and Thuringia, where they are still fighting the ghost of intrusive statism, the mistrust of government spills over into mistrust of science. Otherwise decent, smart people are ignoring what I take to be common sense medical advice. They are not listening to the clear consensus. Even as Angela Merkel is celebrated and praised for her "steady hand" and "desire to get everybody around the table" she's criticized for inaction in preparing the country for the pandemic. One can't win for losing on that front.
And what can we do other than stand by and hope we continue to survive long enough to gain even more benefit of hindsight. Those who listened to the business sector and opened things up at the earliest sign the pandemic was waning now have egg on their face. They are now justifiably criticized for failing to realize a drop in the number of Covid cases was only seasonal and would rise again, and opening up too soon would lead to disaster. We know that now from the German example. But, as Merkel is fond of reminding us, "You can't do much without a majority."
Watching the debates on German television, watching politicians and social analysts rage at each other over their different approaches to fixing things, is heartbreaking sometimes. We simply lack the ability to see the future, and we make bad policy all the time. It's not that the Germans are stupid for being anti-vaxxers, as so many of them are; it's not that Americans are stupid for not being able to see that collective responsibility is as important as individual freedom. It's that the human race is lousy at long-term thinking. The chief freedom of democracy, I've always believed, is the freedom to be stupid. We see that in that marvelous assertion, "I disagree with you totally, but I'll fight to the death for your freedom to express yourself." But at the moment, in a life-and-death situation, we see the advantage of enlightened, as opposed to democratic, rule. It's a time to be smart, not a time to be free.
Let me restate that. It's time to remind ourselves that our right to swing our fists stops at the end of your nose.
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