If our year of living dangerously through a postmodern pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the people of this country are not inherently rule-followers. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. This country was founded on ideals of personal freedom. But in recent decades we’ve witnessed the steady rise and corruption of libertarianism spread throughout the nation. Libertarianism advertises itself as a live and let live philosophy but increasingly has become live and let die. Ironically, the same generation that cut its teeth by pushing the limits in a flower-power fueled counterculture revolution has now given birth to Q-Anon.
As I said in the Notes & Asides of the last essay, Karen’s niece was living and working in China throughout the past year. So, we got a firsthand account of their response to Covid, the outbreak of which admittedly was less severe in her city than in Beijing or Wuhan. But even there, they were under strict lockdown for weeks, including needing passes to leave the house. They had rigid travel restrictions, stern mask mandates, rigorous isolation of infected people, and stringent contact tracing. All of which were enforced.
And yet, even in the depth of the crisis when no one knew how far or wide the pandemic would spread, or even how deadly it might be, the government bootstrapped food delivery throughout the country so that no one went hungry, and ensured the population had access to medical resources so that no one went without treatment.
It was a long, brutal austerity march like only the Chinese can envision and execute. But when it was over, it was over. The lockdowns were released and the population got mostly back to normal by last summer. In the intervening year, there have been spot flares of cases which they’ve isolated and treated but not major or sustained outbreaks. No more lockdowns.
Don’t like the example of China? Well, jump across the strait and look at Taiwan. Or Singapore. Or South Korea. Or Japan. All had comparable results from imposing similar sets of rules. None had even one tenth of the cases we had per million population. Never mind anything approaching comparable deaths. They chose short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.
As we all know, our country chose a different path. Last spring, the healthcare system in New York City came within a hair’s breadth of complete collapse, as a friend living in Brooklyn at the time attested to us, as did a doctor who lived upstate. Los Angeles, too, came perilously close, although somewhat later, after we should have learned. We could have, and should have, mobilized and organized resources from around the country to have on hand for any city, county or state that needed them.
Instead, while the countries in East Asia distributed masks and medical services, we stockpiled guns and ammunition thinking the apocalypse was nigh. If it had been, it would have been self-inflicted. They chose to implement rules for public safety. We chose laissez-faire. They picked a path of recovery; we blazed a trail to insurrection.
We had an opportunity to stem the pandemic early. We chose to squander it. All in the name of personal freedom and “liberate” politics. Where in East Asia, they held back a rising tide of infections by establishing rules based on proactive, science-based precautions, we chose to see the virus’s associated deaths as acceptable economic losses. Where we saw them as losses at all.
I’ve talked about this before, and likely will again. Much of this can be ascribed to a failure of leadership, as many politically driven crises can. This time, it cost lives. Over half a million total, a thousand more each day when I started this essay. All because in rather unchristian fashion, we the people valued a twisted, often highly manipulated view of our blessing of liberty over our country’s domestic tranquility and general welfare. So, for self-centered, self-serving reasons, we sacrificed the public good.
This isn’t a new concept to me. While I was working, I watched similar unfold firsthand albeit in a vastly different venue and on a vastly smaller scale. But the experience taught me that it doesn’t take long for people to adapt to the situation on the ground, especially when rules go unenforced.
Back in the mid-90s, I traveled to Puerto Rico. My company’s communications system was going through a formal demonstration for the US Navy aboard several ships coordinating with land-based terminals stationed in the US Virgin Islands. As the developers of the communication system, our company had four engineers assigned to each ship, of which I was one. They flew us into San Juan a few days before we were to set sail and put us up in a pretty low-rent casino, at least by Vegas standards, where several of us brushed up on the laws of probability while freaking out the pit bosses. Mostly burning through the per diem we wouldn’t be able to spend on our upcoming all-expenses-paid, two-week, midsummer Caribbean cruise.
San Juan at the time was a high crime city. All the houses, even the most improbable breezeblock shacks, had steel bars over every door and window. Even middle-class residences had chunks of broken bottles embedded in the concrete atop the walls that formed their private compounds.
Before we’d flown down, we’d been briefed on the differences between San Juan and St. Petersburg, which mostly amounted to a series of warnings. We’d been warned to avoid the local women. We’d been warned to avoid going out at night. We’d been warned not to attend the cockfights. We’d been warned not to get drunk, practice our gutter Spanish, and generally act like ugly Americans. Any of which we were told might get us killed. Other than that, we were free to see the sights and enjoy a day or two of fun and sun on island before we put to sea.
What they didn’t warn us about was driving. Which was convenient as they didn’t rent us many cars.
Puerto Rico is a US territory so no special driver’s license is required. They even drive on the correct side of the road. I am not sure how insurance worked as none of the cars was rented in my name. I expect this was one of the few times purchasing the add-on at the rental agency might have paid off. But that was where most similarities to my driving experience ended.
Twice we had to drive from our casino hotel in San Juan to Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. Once for an all-hands meeting and orientation. The second time to make our departure aboard ship. That trip is about an hour and a quarter more or less depending on whether you take the highway through the center of the island or the less direct, windier coastal road.
The first time out, we piled in four to a vehicle and opted for the highway through the interior which was theoretically quicker. Quicker but I am not sure safer.
It’s hard to describe exactly what that trip was like. The highway, as I remember, was mostly a four-lane affair, two in each direction separated by a median. Not much different from I-95 where I grew up. But I remember that it wasn’t limited access, rather that it had lights where it intersected with the other highways we needed to turn onto. That’s just my lingering impression. Thankfully I wasn’t in the front so didn’t get the full, panoramic view. When we were moving, things were mostly normal, or at least not too much crazier than other urban landscapes and highways I’d driven in at other times in my life with people weaving in and out closer than I would like at speed. It was the interchanges and intersections where things got interesting.
The best comparison I have for that is of driving after a hurricane when all the traffic lights are out from lack of power. In Florida, we are supposed to treat every intersection that normally has a working light as a four-way stop. But in reality, larger intersections become a free-for-all. People always assume their direction has right-of-way because it’s the more important or larger road. Horns blare, tempers flare, people blow through with barely a pause, never mind a yield.
In Puerto Rico, that seemed like the situation every day. At the interchange between two highways, complete with lights and well-marked turn lanes, cars snaked left to turn right, cars spilled into the medians and the breakdown lane to bypass others and gain advantage. No one fully ceased moving regardless of the lights, which were more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. If a driver saw an opening or an advantage, s/he took it. “Opening” is a generous term. Kind of like DC driving rules: If you could insert a corner of the car into a space between two other vehicles, you’d eventually make it fit just by continually creeping forward and claiming space in an elaborate game of chicken. As long as you kept leveraging your advantage without actually making contact.
What fascinated me most was not how the locals drove. I’d already seen a number of different customs in different cities and countries I’d been in.
In Boston, the unwritten rule is that you don’t make eye contact with another driver. Because the moment you do, you have acknowledged you’ve seen them which they take as permission to do as they please because it’s now your responsibility to avoid them.
In DC, you automatically yield to diplomatic plates regardless of right-of-way or rules of the road. Those guys have immunity and know it. You also avoid the people shaving or applying mascara in their rearview mirror or the people with a hardback book propped up on their steering wheel in 35 mph bumper to bumper traffic at o’dark early in the morning (true story).
In Spain, I was told that if you had a choice between hitting sheep or hitting a shepherd on a mountain road, it was in your best interest to hit the shepherd. You would only pay compensation for him once, where with the sheep you would pay for the generations of offspring it might have. Dehumanizing advice but there it was.
In rural Mississippi and Alabama, Georgia and Florida, you don’t go too fast or too slow, never mind cross the center line or even the outer lane marker unless you looking for a rather expensive ticket in places like Meridian, Madison, Marietta or Raiford. Basically, you don’t drive in these places with out-of-state, or sometimes out-of-county plates. Or on I-95 in the 80s or 90s much south of Jacksonville or much north of Miami if you are driving while black.
In rural one-track roads in Scotland, it was a race to see who could to get to the pull-off first and let the other driver by. In Wales, you just had to be mindful not to flip the three-cylinder car on the tight, wet, mountain corners that most English drivers took at speed. In England, you could easily get stuck on a roundabout like Charlie on the MTA.
And that’s without ending up facing a car weaving toward you in your lane on a well-lighted divided road after midnight on Halloween until you ditch for the median with palm to horn like an air raid siren which goes unheeded in the blur of alcohol trailing the car that passes you by (true story). But I expect that could be a holiday tradition in any US city or town, not just Seminole.
No, what fascinated me was how little time it took for the people I was with to adapt, or more revert, to the rules being off. Less than zero. Almost instantaneously, they drove like they were born to it. Using medians and breakdown strips as auxiliary traffic and passing lanes, Turning left from the right across three lanes of moving traffic, wedging a bumper between two vehicles with three horns harmonizing while curses and threats were issued in Spanish, English and some hybrid creole, complete with multicultural, international gestures in case anything got lost in translation.
I’d worked with most of these individuals long enough, and under similarly stressful circumstances, to understand that the situation would have been vastly different had stricter rules been on the table and enforced. For example, witnessing one of my compatriots sent home from Wallops Island after getting tagged by the installation police for doing over 100 mph across a bridge into the facility when he thought no one was around, despite having been warned that federal cops have absolutely no sense of humor for that. Or any of a myriad of rules most of us might consider polite, social conventions that I witnessed in the lab when they knew there would be no repercussions as I discussed in Switching Sides.
The rules they followed, the rules almost all people in such circumstances follow, is the example set by leadership, the rules and conventions their leaders and peers choose to accept or enforce, not the rules on the books. And when that leadership is absent or turns a blind eye, they consider all other rules to be optional. In this case, ambiguous or ambivalent rules, ones generally long adhered to and ingrained in other circumstances, were turned off like switch, despite what it might mean to the safety of those around them, or the public welfare in general. Aggressive behavior that only benefits the individual over defensive behavior that benefits everyone.
Which is what we saw much of last year with our pandemic response, from our president to our governor to a county commissioner, as they all drove home their “liberate” politics fed by a well-coordinated disinformation campaign, whether on masks, vaccines, or voting.
Generally, I don’t have a problem with people making their own decisions. If they want to commit slow or even fast suicide, that’s pretty much is a personal choice. People make bad decisions all the time. They drink, they smoke, they overeat, they engage in other risky behaviors that we, as a society, usually end up paying for one way or another.
Where I do have a problem is when those behaviors directly endanger others. Or when those decisions are based on orchestrated disinformation and conspiracy theories, especially for personal or economic gain. It may be your right to smoke. It’s not your right to promote smoking as health benign or nonaddictive, or market it to kids. It’s not your right to deny its links to cancer. It’s not your right to smoke in public spaces, or even certain enclosed private spaces, and endanger others with your choice, thus denying them their own. Just as it’s not your right to spread a disease during a pandemic that can absolutely collapse everyone’s healthcare system to where even getting routine emergency care becomes a roll of loaded dice. Ask Italy how that went. Or ask Brazil.
And specious economic arguments about the increased cost and inconvenience of getting your dog’s anal glands expressed don’t really stack up well with me against over half a million dead (true story). Especially when falling out of the mouth of a political leader during a public meeting. Especially a Q-Anon spouting elected official who stood firmly against any mandated response, public or private.
A few weeks ago, we had a technician from a company we’ve used before out to check our AC. By that point we’d both been vaccinated with enough time for full effectiveness. As had our tech, as it turned out. But when he arrived, all three of us were wearing masks. For us, that was as much providing a good example as well as gauging a stranger’s comfort level and circumstances before deciding how to proceed forward. For him because it was still company policy. This was just after our governor had rescinded all the local mask mandates despite our state still having the highest number of daily cases in the country.
After a brief exchange of information, we all decided going maskless was ok. But we still maintained social distance. And yet, had the tech said he would prefer the masks, we would have honored that even in our own home.
He then related that when the mask mandates first came out, he hated them. Absolutely hated them. He hated wearing the mask but did because he had to, both because his employer and the county required it. But sometime over the intervening year, he not only became more comfortable with his mask, he now had trouble setting it aside even where he could, places like restaurants and grocery stores.
Some of that was from the stark reminders of his boss’s twentysomething son getting hospitalized from his infection, and having a high school friend die from the disease back in Indiana. Either way, the intervening time had integrated and ingrained both the necessity and prudence of wearing a mask to him. And yet, I strongly suspect from his initial reaction, he would not have worn one without the county or corporate mandate.
The lesson I took away from all this is that people take a lot of time to get used to new rules, but very little time to rules being removed unless absolutely required by threat of consequences. When left to their own devices, people follow the example of those around them, especially those they trust.
Trust is a funny thing. It’s not based on information or intelligence, although it is sometimes based on experience, rarely on expertise. And sometimes that trust is situational and transactional. In the case of driving Puerto Rico, my coworkers trusted that the locals knew what they were doing (or more knew what they could get away with) and imitated them. We are truly primate children who play follow-the-leader instinctively.
Trust is the underpinning of all modern society and social interaction. We generally couldn’t live as close to each other as we do without at least a modicum of trust that certain social conventions will apply. Laws are a matter of trust that we will all be better off obeying them, and trust that the minority who refuse will be caught and punished (at least in American justice). Even our entire concept of money is entirely based on trust and always has been.
But social norms are also self-perpetuating even when people can see and understand that the situation as it stands is neither ideal nor in everyone’s, or even anyone’s, self-interest. Once you start down that road, it is very difficult to find your way back. Which is why it’s important never to let things get that far out of hand.
It’s an abject lesson in the practical realities of unrestrained libertarianism. Without rules, without leaders who provide and reinforce a positive example, without enforcement, people only do the right thing through the lens of enlightened self-interest at best. And that’s being generous.
So, where we’ve been in 2020 came as no surprise to me. Or with the Insurrection of 2021, where we’re going. I’ve said before, this represents a fundamental failure of leadership. Or in the case of the past several years, a calculated subversion. It’s a Machiavellian tactic we’ll see again and again until the political environment or public tolerance changes.
One of the house rules we had in friendly games of Machiavelli, a game of conquest and unification in Renaissance Italy, was that you could always call to see someone’s sheet when they were reading out their orders. Misrepresenting the orders you had written was not encouraged but was not strictly against the rules if you thought you could get away with it. The heart of the game is about negotiations, and all negotiations are based on trust. Trust you are being honest. Trust you will keep your word.
Sowing distrust, and exploiting the resulting chaos, is a common strategy with poor or inexperienced Machiavelli players. They think they’ll score an easy victory, but in reality, unless they are very good and very circumspect about how and when to use that tactic, it’s the quickest way to lose. Or at least ensure that no one wins.
And sometimes that’s the only point.
© 2021 Edward P. Morgan III
