Too many live in bubble of judgment
People approve of what fits their beliefs. If not, everyone else is wrong.
Too many people live in a self-quarantined bubble.
Not the protective bubble against COVID-19, but a pretend bubble against our COVID-19 fears. We randomly pick and choose which precautions to follow based on a hodgepodge of beliefs that often conflict with each other. Yet we continue to act on a blind faith of chosen theories despite its obvious hypocrisies.
For example, those people who insist that everyone else wear a facial mask in public — at all times — although they’re allowed to be selective about it. If they choose to wear a mask only in certain social situations, they expect others to simply nod and agree with their double standard.
I’ll bet you know someone in your social circle who fits this two-faced description. I’m tired of nodding and agreeing through my mask of smirks and sighs.
Either wear a mask and practice social distancing for all social situations, or stop preaching to others how to do so during this public health crisis. It’s like sermonizing about going to heaven while doing deeds that will certainly send you to hell. I’m sick of playing the pandemic game of pretend with these people.
I’ve noticed an emerging similarity between how people cherry-pick their scientific beliefs regarding this pandemic and how people cherrypick their religious beliefs. If it fits their lifestyle, they approve. If not, everyone else is in the wrong.
This haughty attitude exposes a contagion of self-righteousness that I’ve spent a lifetime to avoid. With both groups of zealots, we’re supposed to believe exactly what they believe or we’re the ones either going to hell or contracting COVID-19.
Both of these judgments are contaminated with a smugness that seeps through their mask or their faith. Preach less and practice more, I say. Otherwise it’s just more lies we’re subjected to without a vaccination in sight.
According to PolitiFact, a nonpartisan fact-checking website to sort out the truth in American politics, the biggest lie of 2020 did not come from our president or any other politician. The biggest lie involved any claims that “denied, downplayed or disinformed” about COVID-19. “Lies infected America in 2020. The very worst were not just damaging, but deadly,” PolitiFact stated last month.
PolitiFact’s editor-inchief Angie Drobnic
Holan told the Poynter Institute, “Ultimately, we decided on lies about the coronavirus because health and well-being are at the core of what it means to be human. If you can’t keep yourself and your family safe and healthy, you can’t form a government with your fellow citizens. Life itself comes before democracy.”
I disagree with PolitiFact’s conclusion. I say the biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves, without enough (or any) proof, evidence or justification. Too many of us habitually lie to ourselves and expect everyone else to believe these lies. The COVID-19 pandemic has only further revealed this ancient truth.
“There is absolutely NO reason on God’s green earth for healthy people to be forced to wear masks. This is democrat-political, 100%, and it means SHUT YOUR MOUTHS AND OBEY,” wrote Scott Cullen, a reader from Tucson, Arizona. “That is why many of us refuse to wear masks unless forced to, and then we take them off once inside. Because it is complete bull-(expletive).”
Cullen continued to preach the gospel of what he believes is The Truth regarding this pandemic.
“No matter what Google, Snopes, and anyone else says, to those in the know that really control things, (call them the Illuminati, or whatever you want, the superrich like Soros) COVID-19 really does mean C=SEE, OVID=SHEEP, 19=SURRENDER,” he wrote via email. “That’s why the corporate media was told to constantly call it ‘COVID-19,’ NOT the Corona Virus. I refuse to be a dumb sheep.”
Like I said, too many people live in a self-quarantined bubble. Most of them are convinced that it’s other people who do so. It’s an unmasked illusion of arrogance.
“In 1918 Americans were more than willing to wear a mask to defeat the 1918 pandemic,” wrote Peggy Taylor, of Valparaiso. “Today, all you hear is a bunch of whining on a childish level over doing the right temporary thing in order to defeat this invisible enemy.”
“As Americans, we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, put aside our fears and phobias, and get about the business of defeating this virus on a collective effort,” Taylor wrote.
She’s right. However, “collective effort” is an oxymoron in our country these days.
As the public health community works to defeat this virus, the rest of us should help defeat the virus of lies that some people keep telling themselves, and us. We don’t want to be confined to your bubble. Stop worshipping from the altar of self-righteousness. Stop sermonizing to anyone who doesn’t religiously follow your guidelines in reaction to this pandemic.
Instead, use that mask of yours to not only cover your mouth but also to muzzle your judgments.