Age has its Rewards!

 

You know the kid. He tells you that he is not three years old anymore; he tells you with pride that he is three and a half. It is likely that we did the same thing back when. At some point, we became irritated when the folks behind the bar asked to see our ID, especially if we were not of age, like college age. Later we bragged about being carded at the local watering hole or fancy restaurant – “I’m 32 and they made me show my ID. Can you imagine that?” Pride has many faces.

 

When I reached 55 years of age, AARP sent me my first invitation to join their efforts to ply for “seniors.” The invitations came almost weekly for some years. They really wanted me to buy their insurance. Now they send the invitations to people as early as 50 years. Can you believe it? They were calling a 55-year-old a “senior.” No way man! I still had a bounce. Seniors were people over 65 years old, weren’t they? You knew about them but they weren’t in your pod. Despite the continuous denial,  the discounts were too enticing. Why not take the senior-discount? Ten percent is ten percent.

 

Being a little older, just a little mind you, paid off last month. We got our first covid shot, and then the second. Age has its rewards! So now, we can be friendly closer because many other friends have had their two shots too. However, what of those who don’t have the shots yet?

 

President Trump initiated Operation Warp Speed, which urged pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines to squelch the covid-19 pandemic. That effort, in spite of fits and starts, resulted in new vaccines produced with relatively new science in record time, not years, but months. Scientists produced not one, but three vaccines to help the world eradicate the scourge. More are on the way. Pundits tell us that the new process for inventing vaccines may go down as the most important scientific effort of the last 100 years. We need to vaccinate 80% of the people in the US and billions across the world. Imagine how that would change the world.

 

Yet … I don’t get it, but nearly 50% of Trump supporters say they will refuse to take the vaccine when it is available to them. Are they crazy? Are they listening to the unhinged talk-radio folks again? One interviewee said she would not trust a vaccine designed by Biden. Come on lady, the vaccine was designed on Trump’s watch, tested on Trump’s watch, and initial plans for distribution developed on Trump’s watch. It isn’t Biden’s vaccine anyway is it? He didn’t make it. His administration didn’t test it or approve it. They are simply trying to get into people’s arms.

 

Age gives perspective. We remember what it was like before the measles vaccine. Public Health taped big red or orange “Quarantine” signs to the front door of the house. We remember life before the Salk vaccine for polio: friends, and relatives in iron lungs, legs crippled forever, lungs damaged forever. If the US doesn’t vaccinate enough people, it will not achieve herd immunity and the virus will be with us for years. Much like WWII, Uncle Sam needs you. He needs you to get vaccinated. He needs you to get it for your neighbor’s sake, for the nation’s sake.

 

Age has its downsides, but hanging out for a while convinces us that a deadly virus couldn’t care less about our political bent, our religious beliefs, our age, our race, our ethnicity, or sexual or gender preference. It attacks all who come in its path. In addition, it can kill you. Beach life during spring break is sure to be a super-spreader. Ballparks opening too soon will kill people needlessly. Age forces you to ask why people and their leaders blatantly disregard basic public health strategies. Ah, what the hell, only 534,000  people have died from the virus. That is only 15% above the normal annual death rate. Can’t be all bad! Off we go, no mask, no social distancing, and no vaccines.

 

Age has its rewards, but sometimes the things you see happening around you make it seem more like a penalty. After a year of sheltering in place, you can feel like you lost a year, missed friends for too long, missed visiting other places for too long a stretch. However, it also reminds you that all things end, and we will remember 2020-2021 as “those years.”

 

By the way, I'm not 81, I'm 81 and eleven and a half months. 

 

 

Two Good Shots!

 

If one shot is good, two must be better. Got it last week!

 

Most of the folks on our street have their second shot; not much millennialism on Dearne Way. Our Saturday morning coffee klatch might be unmasked in a couple of weeks. We meet in the driveway so that everyone can sit six feet apart. It’s been a long year.

 

Getting the first shot gives you a good feeling, the beginning of the end, maybe. Things don’t seem to be as bad as they once did. The second shot comes with a dash of euphoria, a small one mind you, but it’s there. With two shots, you can go to the grocery store without fear. With two shots, you can go to the local barista and sit around while you talk and drink. With two shots you can forget to be careful, not a good thing.

 

Some people may wonder about all the fuss. I’ve read articles about people who haven’t been following the CDC guidelines too much anyway. We see TV news reports of beach parties and crowded bars and wonder why.

 

Some state governors, many actually, lifted most covid-19 restrictions last week, even while their states experienced the highest covid related death rates per capita. Texas, Florida, Mississippi, and other high-death states are wide open for business and people are burning their masks. Free at last?

 

There is some good news at the national level, because we now have three very good vaccines and are jabbing over two million people a day and getting better at it. Over 50% of folks, over 65 are vaccinated and nearly 17% of the total population is vaccinated. We are making good progress.

 

The CDC issued new guidance for people who had their second shot and then waited two weeks before mixing with others. Folks with their second shot can now meet in homes with others who have had their shots, and with a family who isn’t fully vaccinated. Grandparents can now visit their grandkids. We might have some neighbors over for dinner one night.

 

While we are making progress in the fight against the virus, too many people are still contracting it, getting sick, or dying from it. So, outside the home, we should still wear a mask and social distance. I don’t like it! I don’t want to wear a mask all the time, but I’m convinced it is worth the trouble.

 

I suspect that many of us on the left coast are prospects for easy convincing by government leaders, so we hunkered down for the last year. Our news media convinces us that we are a bit more righteous than heartland fellow compatriots are. Republican governors in the mid-West garnered little positive publicity out here. They opened too soon, they made the mask a political statement, and they flaunted social distancing to get a drink and the beaches were major draws. We opened too soon too and paid the price, but we don’t talk about it much.

 

How people of several states approached the pandemic says a lot about the state of the country. We can stipulate that Americans are equally divided on almost any issue, except that we all agree that we are divided on almost any issue. Part of the divide is cultural, some of it is old vs. new thoughts about our creed and our soul. Some of the divide is caused by confusion strewn at the top levels of government and an apparent lack of appreciation for the civic duty of the individual toward the rest of the people and the country. “This is America. I don’t have to wear a mask if I don’t want to.” Yes, you do!

 

This is America. We wear a mask to prevent hurting other people and getting hurt ourselves. We wear a mask to help keep the ICU units open for those who need them. We stand apart so that we reduce the likelihood of spreading the virus. We take care of each other and we support each other.

 

David Brooks raised an interesting question in a recent column, “Maybe the problem is people have grown less passionate about a shared American identity.”[i] Are we less interested in who we are than what we are? Is it more important to support a political party’s take on public health measures than the CDC’s or the NIH’s? Is it more important to follow a political leader than the science of how viruses spread and mutate? Are we experiencing a collision of ideas about what makes America great or better? The pandemic will be over in a year or so. Will our political temperatures be lowered a bit in a year or so?

 

It is possible, maybe even probable, that when 80%+ of the people are vaccinated, when the kids are back in school and when folks are back at work in whatever shape that takes, perhaps the euphoria will spread and we will start to come together again, to be one country rather than two or three. Maybe when fear is dampened we will try to unite rather than divide.

 

In the meantime, I think it would be nice to have dinner in a restaurant again. What is the next higher level after euphoria?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[i] David Brooks  - How to Love America – New York Times – March 4, 2021

From Here We Go Where?

 

Try to find a better place but soon it's all the same
What once you thought was a paradise is not just what it seemed
The more I look around, I find, the more I have to fear[i]

 I’m unwilling to live in fear. That is a hard resolution to keep. The last four years mystified me, but the last couple of months were incongruous. I never was afraid of losing our democracy. Sedition was one of those things in The Constitution that you didn’t spend a lot of time studying. Who could have imagined an armed and planned assault on our Capitol by other citizens? Then, we watched it happen. That was nearly two months ago and I’m still writhing.

Months before the election, Trump convinced his followers that the only way he could lose the election was if the process was rigged. He repeated over and over that early voting and vote by mail would be fraudulent. He claimed irregular vote counting and called election officials biased. The fix was in!

Too many people believed him and convinced themselves that he could not lose. He called his base of supporters to Washington to protest the election, and they came. He urged them to march on the Capitol, and they did. He told them that the Vice President could nullify the election, and they believed him.

When Pence announced that the constitution didn’t allow him to change the election, they called him a traitor. They raised a gallows in front of the Capitol. Their insurrection rose to the level of sedition, in the name of democracy. Hundreds of people were injured, many died, still, others committed suicide. Culprits are still being identified and rounded up for prosecution.

The House of Representatives impeached the President a second time. The Senate acquitted him a second time. Then some senators who had just voted to acquit talked about how guilty the President was, how he had encouraged the armed insurrection, how he continued to relish the actions of his followers. They knew he was guilty; they voted “not guilty.”

State Party leaders censured Republican Representatives who voted to impeach and Senators who voted “guilty.” Pennsylvania Senator Toomey voted to convict Trump, which he described as “doing the right thing.” It resulted in quick censure from county party leaders. One, Dave Ball, went so far as to state on television, “We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing … We sent him there to represent us.” The implication was that the party sent the Senator to Washington to represent the party, not the people.

James Madison noted, “Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.[ii] There can be no illusions that there was goodness in the storming of the Capitol in an effort to overturn an election. It was a planned abuse of liberty in a free country. What is unfathomable is that so many consider it “no big deal.” The divide is wide, the divide deep. The rot drains oxygen from the soul of the nation. Our freedom to vote and for our vote to matter is under attack.

We never know when something will be the last.[iii] We never know when our last vote will be our last one; ask the people of Germany, Italy, and Spain if they thought their last vote was their last one. Is last November the last time we voted in a free and open election? Will it be the next one, or the one after that?

This year legislators in 43 states introduced 253 bills to reduce voting access.[iv] One state has a bill that allows the legislature to pick the Presidential Electors irrespective of the vote of the people.[v] Others plan increased Gerrymandering to control voter results. Still others have bills to reduce voting hours, early voting, voting locations, and drop boxes for ballot return. Many are considering eliminating votes by mail except for serious health conditions. All of the voter suppression bills were introduced, supposedly, to help ensure that citizens believe that a valid election took place. Too many people ignore these efforts to abuse liberty.

Will state legislatures gerrymander the voting districts so that elections aren’t the free expressions of voter will? We don’t know. Will state legislatures squelch easy voter registration, eliminate vote by mail, the convenience of voting in a neighborhood precinct? Voting, the most sacred act of a free people is on the brink of destruction by people who fear the loss of power. “The evil men do lives after them; the good is interred with their bones.”[vi] 

We now know that the insurrection and storming of the Capital was not a simple case of protesters with an unexpected surge of adrenalin. There was collusion among Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Neo-Nazi cells, and other groups dedicated to the overthrow of the democratic process. It was a planned insurrection, it was an armed insurrection, and it swept others in its path. It was sedition.

How do we protect the vote? In nearly half the states voter suppression is an active movement, especially if the legislature holds veto-proof power. The only way to ensure that voters can vote freely is to insist that the process be open to all. Let’s start with the notion that all men are created equal. In our country, that means that anyone over the age of 18 should be able to vote, with very few exceptions. What does free and open voting look like?

Registering to vote should be easy. When a 16-year-old person applies for a driver’s license they should automatically be registered to vote after their 18^th birthday. If a person hasn’t registered to vote but wants to vote, they should be allowed to register on Election Day.

Securing a ballot should be easy. Every state should send every registered voter a ballot one month before Election Day.

Voting should be easy. Voters should be able to return their ballots to a nearby dropbox, to the election office, or to the polls when they are open. Those who wish to vote in person should have that opportunity. Many states have had vote-by-mail for many years, so we know the process works.

Voting districts should be rational. Each district should be fairly divided between party affiliation, races, age groups, etc. Some states already have bipartisan panels of unelected officials who draw the district boundaries. This reduces the likelihood of obscene Gerrymandering.

Write your state representative or state senator and tell them to ensure that freedom to vote must be preserved for all people. Talk to your friends about the un-American activity that some legislatures are using to reduce voter turnout, to control vote results. Support campaigns against legislators who vote to increase voter suppression; vote for their opponents.

Voting in America is controlled at the local level, for the most part. County election officials and state election officials administer the laws enacted by the state legislatures. It is at the local levels that voter suppression is taking place, under the national radar, and that is where it must be preserved.

 

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[i] Where Do We Go From Here – Chicago – 1969 Recording

[ii] James Madison – The Federalist, No. 63, 1787

[iii] Timothy Snyder – On Tyranny – Tim Duggan Books, 2017

[iv] Brennan Center for Justice, New York University – January 26, 2021

[v] The Constitution allows state legislatures to determine how Electors are chosen. It does not assume that that would happen after an election.

[vi] William Shakespeare – Julius Caesar – Act 3 Sc 2