Is COVID-19 Tearing Us Apart?
What a brutal week. We all witnessed the police killing George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests and riots convulsed the nation, and the U.S. passed two grim milestones in the COVID-19 crisis – 100,000 dead and 40 million unemployed. Given the scale of these numbers, I’d like to reflect on what we have learned about our solidarity (or lack of it) during the pandemic.
In the June issue of The Atlantic, George Packer leads off his “Opening Arguments” essay with an indictment: “In America, the coronavirus has revealed a sick and unequal society incapable of self-government.” Packer proceeds to describe us as “hunkered down in self-isolation, fearing and shunning one another, letting our common bond wear away to nothing.” He warns us in a parting shot that, “the alternative to solidarity is death.”
Packer’s argument hits home. COVID-19 has revealed flaws in our common life. We started off hoarding toilet paper and Clorox, then descended to darker realms: harassing Asian Americans, trafficking in conspiracy theories, and brandishing rifles at state houses.
Throughout, President Trump has held center-stage with plot-stirring tweets and declarations about the Chinese Virus, quack cures, and LIBERATING! states led by Democratic governors. The President and his partisans agree with their outraged opponents that the country is deeply divided, hamstrung, and declining–they just differ on who is to blame for this American carnage.
Viewing civil society through the distorting lenses of our polarized and nationalized politics, and via media that are part of the fray, yields a bleak perspective. These lenses emphasize conflict and suggest what happens in Washington and on Twitter is more important than what happens in the places where we actually live. What if we look at civil society, and the observable patterns of association and solidarity within it, straight on?
For starters, we would see that the death toll, while awful at 100,000 and counting, is far fewer than the 2 million projected by early models. Why? Americans have followed the social distancing guidelines at much higher rates than expected. We succeeded in flattening the curve. CDC Director Robert Redfield noted in an interview last month that while baseline estimates expected 50% of Americans to observe the guidelines, “compliance to the message has been in excess of 90%.”
We would also see Americans of all political stripes changing their habits to comply with public health guidance. Survey data from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group shows that while Democrats and Republicans differ a bit, they are not deeply divided on washing their hands more often (92% vs. 90%), wearing a mask (89% vs. 81%), or staying home (82% vs. 74%) in response to COVID-19.
What if we zero in on a hot spot where the partisan divide appears to be boiling over? Take my home state of Michigan, where President Trump is feuding with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, insulting her intelligence and undermining her shelter-in-place orders via Twitter. Following his cues, a band of armed protesters stormed the Capitol in Lansing to demand their freedom. Michigan’s Democratic attorney general preemptively scolded President Trump in a public letter stating he was legally and morally obliged to wear a mask on a planned visit to a Ford plant. Trump then played his role in the script to a tee, wearing a mask privately but not in public, making his critics see red yet again.
Like most places, reality on the ground in Michigan differs from the Manichean conflict the cable news networks and social media present to us. A mid-May poll of Michiganders found 86% believe the virus threatens public health, 81% are wearing a mask in public, 72% support a gradual reopening to control the virus, and 69% agree the armed protests sent the wrong message. Michigan’s Republican Senate Leader declared that the aggressive protesters hurt themselves “by creating an environment where responsible citizens do not feel safe…those so-called protesters are a bunch of jackasses." Meanwhile, Governor Whitmer’s approval rate increased to 64%—20% higher than President Trump’s.
Rather than polarizing us, it seems “the shared experience of COVID-19 is increasing Americans’ perception of unity” as More in Common reported on a national survey it conducted in April. Comparing new survey data with polls from 2018, More in Common found that, “ninety percent of Americans believe that ‘we’re all in it together’, compared to just 63% in the fall of 2018,” and “the percentage of Americans who regard the country as ‘very divided’ has dropped from 62% to just 22%.”
Tim Dixon, co-founder of More in Common, elaborated on what his team has been hearing in a comment to my last post that I will lift up here: “We've found from the conversations we're sustaining with Americans across the country many people making new connections with others in their community, and looking around them and seeing something that they did not expect: kindness towards strangers, care for the most needy and people pulling together. I was fascinated that when we ask if anything has inspired them during the lockdown, that while many mention the dedication and sacrifice of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers, twice as many people talked about being inspired by the positive behavior of others in their community. They mentioned small businesses providing food for those in need, teachers going the extra mile to help students, churches serving the community, neighbors helping neighbors, people wearing masks out of respect for others….The question for all of us is how we sustain and build on this sentiment in such fractious times, when there are so many efforts to divide us.”
Tim’s question is a good one. A key part of the answer is to stop looking at civil society through the distorting lenses and prejudices of our politics. Reflecting on how politics skews our common sense and objective impressions, George Orwell once observed, “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” The struggle is harder with a reality TV star in the White House and polarized partisans claiming to speak for the “exhausted majority” situated between their rival camps. But that is all the more reason to undertake it.
The perspective I’m encouraging does not mean putting on rose-colored glasses. Indeed, a forthright view of civil society at present would have us spending far less time worrying about drummed-up controversies regarding masks, and far more time reckoning with the deep-seated racial disparities that have resurfaced in the burdens of COVID-19 and the economic dislocations that have followed in its wake. What needs to be done differently in civil society and public policy to eradicate these and related structural inequalities for good? This includes the type of outrage we saw yet again last week with George Floyd’s murder. If we care about the health of our civil society, this is where we must focus and dig in.
I also am not suggesting that political leaders and conflicts have no bearing on the health of civil society. Indeed, I expect as the pandemic continues and the political fight heats up between now and November that the common ground we’ve held since March will begin to erode. My point is that civil society is not simply a function of or equivalent to our national politics. Civil society is distinct from and helps to shape our political life (and vice versa).
George Orwell noted of the ongoing struggle to see reality that it helps to “keep a diary, or… some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events” so we can subsequently test our viewpoints “against solid reality.” This blog is one such effort. As always, I could be wrong! What do you think?
Photo credit: Becker1999 from Grove City, OH / CC BY
