Wednesday, December 23, 2020

MAGA SuperPeople


The notion that you're impregnable and won’t be infected with Coronavirus is a little bit like the idea that you’re never going to die. Sure, everyone gets old, but there's some lingering hope in every soul for a lifetime exemption from the inevitable. It’s no wonder that so many Americans openly defy the CDC directives about mask wearing, social distancing and restricting or eliminating their travel plans. If you can get away with traveling through crowded airports and attending large gatherings with friends and families then there may be some reason to believe you’re not going to be felled by a microscopic organism. Secretly you may even maintain the belief, despite reading that strapping thirty-year-old athletes have died of the virus, that you've gotten that free pass in Monopoly. One of the common ways that people defend themselves from an awareness of their own frailty in the face of chronic or mortal illness is to lend agency to victims, blaming their illness on them. This kind of exceptionalism is sometimes placed in the category of narcissistic grandiosity. It’s a defense that has its place in some survival situations. In others like receptions at The White House or large MAGA rallies, it's a behavior that may hasten the onset of the very result these attendees were hell bent on defying—death. 

Read "Trumpty Dumpty's Great Fall" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.