Fear's fools

I'm putting aside virtual matters of Sportsball today, even though what Nebraska just did -- conduct a virtual spring football game in which it inserted into the lineup Cornhuskers' legends like Tommie Frazier and Mike Rozier and Eric Crouch -- was all kinds of cool.

I'd have liked to seen my alma mater, Ball State, do the same thing. And put Art Yaroch at quarterback and Bernie Parmalee at running back and Willie Snead out there on the flank, with Shafer Suggs anchoring the secondary.

But there'll be another day for that. Today, let's talk about something else.

Let's talk about fear.

Specifically, let's talk about how it files down reason to a bare nub, and balances everyone's psyche on the thinnest of knife's edges. And how it sets all of us against one another with unsettling ease, aided and abetted by the usual suspects who live to strum our rawest nerve.

Yesterday, on another platform, I posted a news story about how South Carolina was poised to re-open its beaches and retail businesses next week, even as COVID-19 still rages and no vaccine or flattening of the curve is yet in sight. And I included a comment to the effect that this was lunacy, that among the inalienable rights Americans have there wasn't one that said they could buy that lounge chair they've always wanted today.

My cousin weighed in with the comment that I might feel differently if I owned a business. Which I might, although I pointed out that if I owned a business, I would want to be very, very careful about this, because if I put my customers at risk by opening up in the midst of a pandemic, nothing would kill my business faster.

My cousin lives in Wyoming, and she and her husband own a business deemed "essential." So they've been open all along, and I'm sure are taking all the proper precautions.

She was immediately attacked by others who claimed she was suggesting it was OK for all businesses to re-open. One person even asked if she was OK with killing people.

Thus did the thread go completely off the rails, with people weighing in with comments that had nothing whatever to do with her initial comment. It got so bad I had to go back on there and remind them this was my thread, and if they couldn't be civil or stay on topic they could get the hell off it.

All of which gets me back to fear, and what it makes us do.

It makes us say vile things to people we've never met.

It makes people defy common-sense guidelines regarding public gatherings by declaring they had a constitutional right to assemble and no one could tell them they couldn't -- ignoring the obvious fact that by assembling they were defeating their own argument.

Turns out no one was barring them from assembling, because they assembled. And since no one got arrested for doing so ... what were they protesting again?

Oh, yes. That state lockdown orders were denying them their freedoms. Which they aren't, because no one's going to jail for disregarding those orders. No one was even arrested for, in some cases, showing up on the steps of a government building packing military-grade weaponry -- even though this could have been deemed a security issue if the authorities were anywhere near as draconian as the protesters claimed.

Yet I'll refrain here from labeling these people merely stupid or ignorant, as many have. What they are, mostly, is scared. And as noted previously, fear steals your reason.

What I see here in these protests are not people who are stupid or ignorant, but people who have, with help, taken leave of their senses. What I see are people who are actually begging to be infected, and to infect others, because the money's running out and their healthcare is tied to their employment, so they want to go back to work.

That's not stupidity or selfishness talking. That's need and desperation.

What's contemptible about this is how that need and desperation are being exploited by demagogues and fear-mongers who do what demagogues and fear-mongers always do -- foment unrest with absurd fairy tales and loony conspiracy theories. They know their audience, the demagogues and fear-mongers. The Demagogue-in-Chief is particularly adept at this; his only genius is that he knows exactly which buttons to push to stir up his duped acolytes.

And so all those silly "Liberate Michigan!" and "Liberate Minnesota!" tweets. And so the mixed messaging from the presidential bully pulpit, Our Only Available Impeached President saying one day he defers to the nation's governors for re-opening their states, then encouraging protest against them literally the next day.

Obligatory Mr. Obvious comment here: Yes, OOAIP is nuttier than a Payday.

And his administration is a veritable assembly line of them, with one deranged individual actually comparing the protesters to Rosa Parks.

Yet more proof that fear makes fools of us all.