APRIL 16, 2021 – Yesterday I watched the clip of Dr. Fauci’s exchange with Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH). My skepticism about our national beliefs crystalized into acute fear. After centuries in the making, our country has come down to this—a debate between crass wrestling coach vs. erudite science teacher.
The wrestling coach is no stranger to controversy—truly, embraces it. It leads to adoration by his followers, intensified by the vilification of others. Likewise, the science teacher is revered by many and therefore, despised by others. The coach’s fans are the science teacher’s detractors.
Appealing to his followers’ obsession with “freedom and liberty,” the coach bullied the science teacher with the question, “When are we going to get our freedoms and liberty back?” The question was asked in an accusatory context, as if the science teacher had conspired to deprive Americans of their God-given right to do as they damn please, whenever and wherever they feel the urge. I could hear 74 million voters cheer the crass coach as he attempted to take down the egghead science teacher.
As if to join its owner’s embrace of TV cameras, the coach’s nose leapt over the top of the face mask. “Don’t Tread on Me!” the nose shouted, in full exercise of its First Amendment rights. In contrast, the science teacher’s nose resided with silent confidence behind a secure mask adorned with the symbols of empiricism—beakers, test tubes, thermometers.
The confrontation revealed with stark clarity the weakness of our strength—if “Don’t Tread on Me!” was once our strength. Upon a new, thinly inhabited, resource-rich, mid-latitude continent, Europeans armed with guns, germs, and steel—not to mention a “Supreme Being” by which total conquest could be justified—enjoyed one long field day. For them, “Don’t Tread on Me!” was the battle cry as they chopped down forests, tilled the earth into a dust bowl, and poisoned air and water for quick, short-term, personal gain. As an operating principle, “Don’t Treat on Me!” worked grandly for those with the sharpest elbows, the longest gun barrels—and the lightest skin.
Fast forward to a complex nation of 330 million, however, and “Don’t Tread on Me!” becomes a fatal philosophy. Viruses and climate change don’t bow to the hubris of individuals or the collective myopia of millions of free-rangers. One man felling all trees on his lot to accommodate his private, chlorinated swimming pool is his business and his alone—just as it’s the farmer’s business and the farmer’s alone to plant more corn to compensate for falling prices. Except in each case, the individual’s right exercised unchecked by many individuals leads to disaster. The grand paradox of such a system: no individual has the incentive to alter one’s destructive behavior.
As coach and science teacher debate on stage, we must come to our senses and leap from our seats. If we don’t, we’ll become frogs in a pot of steadily warming water on the hotplate back in the science classroom.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
