By Frank Bruni
Opinion Columnist
Over the past week, both The Times and The Washington Post
published ambitious examinations of this country’s disastrous response to the
coronavirus, which rages “out of control” here, in The Post’s words, even
though other nations “have rigorously driven infection rates nearly to zero.”
I highly recommend both articles, as their approaches
differ. The Post takes a wide-angle view, while The Times focuses on the
actions of the Trump administration in the crucial month of April.
I read them out of general curiosity. I read them to stay
informed. But I also read them with a particular question in mind, one that has
consumed me for many weeks: What does the abject failure of the United States,
the richest country in the world, tell us about ourselves? In the mirror of
Covid-19, how is America reflected?
Before I share my answers, I want to make clear: I remain
deeply in love with America and fiercely proud of it, for reasons that would
take several newsletters to do justice to.
But right now I’m just as deeply and fiercely worried. Our
struggle with this pandemic has convinced me that somewhere along the way, we
went from celebrating individual liberty to fetishizing it, so that for too
many Americans, all sense of civic obligation and communal good went out the
window.
That’s the root of the resistance to lockdowns that many
other countries entered more quickly, implemented more broadly or adhered to
more diligently. And it encompasses a suspicion of federal versus local
mandates that’s overwrought and insufficiently flexible when a crisis of this
magnitude comes along. We badly needed a more coordinated national response
than we had the appetite or aptitude for. We still do.
Somewhere along the way, we also developed an immature
definition of freedom, conflating it with selfishness, convenience and personal
comfort. That’s writ large in the freak-out over masks. In reality, they’re “a
ticket to more freedom,” Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado said a few days ago when
he instituted a requirement that Coloradans wear them in many circumstances.
“It makes it less likely that businesses will be shuttered. It makes it less
likely that people will die. It makes it more likely school will return.”
In other words, important freedoms for all sometimes require
slight adjustments by individuals. That’s not tyranny. That’s responsibility.
Somewhere along the way, we became impatient — tragically
so. I marvel at the great public works of yesteryear, because we can’t even
accomplish basic infrastructure upgrades today. For the politicians deciding
whether to approve them and the voters whose taxes would be directed toward
them, the payoff is too far down the road. If we’re tyrannized by anything,
it’s our demand for immediate gratification. That mind-set has robbed us of the
necessary discipline and endurance to fight this pandemic.
And somewhere along the way, our materialism got the better
of us. Don’t get me wrong: Livelihoods as well as lives deserve consideration
when restrictions to halt the coronavirus’s spread are being instituted.
But the American mantra of “the economy, the economy, the
economy” has been too central, too loud, which I can say with confidence
because it’s going to wind up hurting the economy in the end.
There’s no robust economic recovery without a baseline of physical safety. There’s no wealth without health. We’re learning that now, as the promise of that recovery recedes.
There’s no robust economic recovery without a baseline of physical safety. There’s no wealth without health. We’re learning that now, as the promise of that recovery recedes.
Our challenge is greater than plotting a course to the far
side of this pandemic. It’s repairing the national character that plunged us so
deep into it.
