Monthly Archives: June 2020

Dear “All Lives Matter” folks:

Do you remember when you were a child and used to go on car trips with your family? You would be in the back seat with one or more of your siblings, and at some point, inevitably, they (or maybe you—let’s be honest here) would hold their hand millimeters in front of your face, and when you complained to your parent about it your sibling would then smirk and say, “What? I’m not touching you.”

The torment would usually end when one of two things happened. One, you would snap and push them—at which point they would howl with all of the indignation of an NBA player trying to elicit a foul—and your parent would threaten to pull the car over, or two, your parent would actually pull the car over before the situation escalated. In either scenario one thing was abundantly clear: somebody was about to lose their Gameboy.

When it comes to the BLM movement, let me also be very abundantly clear: if you are saying “All Lives Matter,” whether it is shouted out the side of your truck as you drive by protesters or typed in all caps as you fume on facebook, YOU are the kid with your hand hovering over your sibling’s face. YOU are the problem in society’s collective backseat.

“But all lives DO matter,” you protest. (“But I WASN’T touching him!”) Yes, it’s true. All lives DO matter. But when you are saying that particular phrase, in these particular times, we all know what you really mean. And no, we don’t believe that you have just emerged from some kind of years-long Big Brother House, and therefore are naïve to the changed meaning of those words. And we also don’t believe that you are a staunch defender of linguistic purity, the sort who also fights against the “gerunding” of words in your spare time. You have no real problem with the many other various ways language changes over time. You know exactly what is meant when someone asks if they can “text” you. You don’t point out that to be “gay and miserable” is, actually, an oxymoron.

And no, you can’t claim that “All Lives Matter” is more nuanced than those examples. That you don’t understand just how hurtful those words have become over the last six years. And if you really, truly, don’t understand, then I strongly suggest you try and catch up on current events before inserting yourself into a conversation. Ignorance of the Holocaust would not excuse you from the blowback you would rightfully receive if you told an overworked Jewish colleague, “Well, work sets you free, you know.” (Because I am actually concerned that someone who says “All Lives Matter” also doesn’t know about the Holocaust, I’m going to help you out here. Auschwitz. Google it.)

Look, in a small way (very small) I do feel for you. I realize that Society is currently driving this car much faster than you are comfortable with, and I also realize that because this car was built way back in the day the seat belts in the back seat are either inadequate or non-existent. I get that. But whether you like where this car is going—or whether you like how quickly it’s getting there—is irrelevant: it’s going there, and you’re coming along for the ride whether you like it or not. And believe me when I say that if you keep this kind of behavior up, when Society does finally pull this car over you are probably going to like what happens next even less.

Sincerely,

The Rest of Us

At first the conspiracy theories were almost charming. The idea that the reason we were all being asked to stay inside was so that government agents could freely change the batteries in the birds (which were actually super-advanced spying devices) only made the world a more interesting place, at least to me, and at least temporarily. What must the life of a mechanical bird minder be like, I wondered? Is there a whole secret world of bird minders, and do they have special cafes and bars where they gather? Is it (gasp!) like Harry Potter, where there is an entire other world existing within our own, in plain sight and yet totally hidden? And what if there were a steam punk version of this world, where instead of periodically changing the batteries in the birds they had to instead wind them up, and instead of being bird minders they were called winders? Quick, somebody write this book so we can all watch the movie.

But then the conspiracies turned a little more tinfoil hat and they began to lose their charm. Suddenly this wasn’t a virus at all, but rather cancer, and we were all getting it not from exposure to other infected individuals but actually from 5G towers and watching too much Netflix, and the only solution was to burn down these towers worldwide. Or maybe nobody was really getting sick at all and it was just a scheme to make Trump look bad in a futile, Deep State attempt to take down Q, and soon the flags and the guns came out and it was all just business as usual, except this time with mothers and their confused children protesting at shuttered playgrounds.

And then the complaints about mask-wearing began, and suddenly I felt like a child being served the same dinner for the third night in a row, and I couldn’t contain my whine of unhappy disbelief. “Are you serious? Toxic masculinity for dinner again?”

Because of course men make up the majority of the people who are refusing to mask. (According to a Gallup poll taken in mid May, 29% of men regularly wear masks, as opposed to 44% of women. More tellingly, 38% of men refuse to ever wear a mask, as opposed to 25% of women.) And of course, the main reason for this is the fear of looking “weak,” most commonly articulated as “I refuse to live in fear.” (I’m not even going to attempt to go down the rabbit hole that is the fear of showing fear , mostly because I’m pretty sure that if I stare at it cross-eyed long enough, like you do with one of those Magic Eye pictures, eventually it will just resolve itself into a big billboard saying “Toxic Masculinity,” and I already mentioned how tired I am of being served that dish yet again.)

In case you still had your doubts about this, look no further than the example of Trump at the Michigan Ford plant this past week, where he actually wore a mask in deference to the plant rules, but then took it off before (he believed) he could be photographed in it, because he didn’t want people to see him wearing it. (“I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”) This sentiment was still echoing days later when large groups gathered to celebrate the Memorial Day holiday. When a young beachgoer was asked why he wasn’t wearing a mask, he referenced Trump. “If he’s not wearing it, I’m not wearing it.”

Somewhere, as that young man was saying those words, America’s one hundred thousandth victim breathed their last, and their bed was made ready for the next victim.

Is it any wonder I find myself longing for the good old days of bird winding?