Some Americans No Longer Believe in the Common Good

[Demovictory9]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/some-americans-no-longer-believe-in-the-common-good/ar-AANAYZ9?ocid=msedgntp

…

As a child in eastern Kentucky, I often helped my grandmother work in her large garden, lush with tomatoes, beans, okra, potatoes, and peppers. Granny was born in 1909, 62 years before me. As we hoed the long rows, I loved to hear her stories of living through the Great Depression and World War II. During the hard times of the 1930s, she said, neighbors banded together to help one another, pooling money to assist a destitute family or leaving food on the doorstep of a widow raising several children. While many fought fascism overseas, she and others saved rubber and tinfoil for the war effort and scrimped on food because of rationing on sugar, butter, gasoline, coal, and oil. “Not everybody was selfless, but most of us tried our best,” she told me as the heat bugs screamed around us. “That’s what you should always do.”

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Jimmy Dyehouse, the superintendent of Science Hill Independent School District, near Somerset, not far from where my parents live, sent out a robocall to all the parents of the 440 students in his district announcing the mask mandate. On the recording, an exasperated Dyehouse apologized to parents for the fact that their kids would have to wear masks, called the governor “this liberal lunatic,” and said that he hoped the mandate would be overturned in court.

I spoke with Dyehouse because I wanted to understand exactly why he had such a problem with masks. He told me his students are “suffering” by wearing the masks, which were “nasty” and “unsanitary.” He said that many studies had proved that masks were ineffective. He didn’t cite any sources, but at least 49 scientific studies go against his claims, emphatically stating that masks are effective in the fight against COVID-19. Dyehouse feels that “the mental aspect of it on my little ones is more damaging than not wearing a mask,” claiming that it’s too scary for children to go into a school full of masked people. I brought up the idea that wearing a mask is a small sacrifice that could be seen as a patriotic duty, but he dismissed the notion. “Why should I have to wear a mask to help protect whoever, or somebody who chose not to be vaccinated, when they could put a mask on?” he told me. He didn’t seem to see any contradiction in the fact that his district includes only kindergarten through eighth grade, a tiny percentage of whom would be of age to get vaccinated. Besides, he added, he didn’t think that vaccination was going to get rid of the coronavirus, anyway.
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I try to remind myself that most of us are looking out for our neighbors when I see the bantam-rooster blustering of politicians such as Senator Rand Paul. The majority of us—about 170 million, or roughly 62 percent of all Americans adults—are fully vaccinated as of this writing. In Kentucky, we are in line with the national average, with 58 percent of adults fully vaccinated. According to a poll earlier this month, 56 percent of Americans agree that masking indoors is necessary again.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/some-americans-no-longer-believe-in-the-common-good/ar-AANAYZ9?ocid=msedgntp

[Xipe Totec]

1. It's the tragedy of the common deplorables. nt

[2naSalit]

3. +1

[rickyhall]

2. No doubt. Obviously not republicans.

[marmar]

4. Have Republicans ever been for the common good?

In all the time that I've been a politically aware person (which I would date back to my late 1980s teenage years), the Republicans have been me-centric.

[Dan]

6. Only when it's their ass on the line.

[Thomas Hurt]

5. Conservatism is about the individual and individual power.

[misanthrope]

8. So liberals don't value individual expression?

Conservatives don't seem to emphasize individuality when it comes to matters of "law and order."

Each side values the "individual" in varying ways, depending on the matter at hand.

[misanthrope]

7. I can relate to the opening segment

I had five great grandparents, all born around the end of the 19th century, all my grandparents and plenty of great aunts and uncles alive when I was born. The last great grandparent died in the early 1990s. All those grandparents and their siblings grew up in the Depression and threw themselves into the war effort during WWII.

I've heard lots and lots of stories about those times and what occurred, in cities and rural areas. From what I've seen and heard, the American society we have now would never make through times like those. We've become too selfish in the post-Reagan era, too polarized by internet social media. We would fall.