Tennessee Parents Rage After Mask Mandate Discussions at School Show How Little Progress America Has Made

“A real life look at each of you, to capture all that style,” goes the theme song to the beloved ABC found-footage tragicomedy America’s Funniest Home Videos. “You're the red, white and blue, oh the funny things you do,” the peppy singer sings, as the squirrel frightens the baby or Grandma face-plants into the birthday cake. And then finally, cruelly, peppily, as the puppy escapes the bath or the party on the dock goes ka-bloop into the lake, “America, America: this is you.”

The camera really can reveal our truest selves. It’s a mirror, often a harsh one under unflattering light. This has perhaps never been truer than last night, outside a school board meeting in Williamson County, Tennessee, as a mask mandate was reinstated for elementary school students, teachers, and bus drivers. Take a good look, because America, America: this is you.

“You have a place in Hell,” screams a furious young man at a health official, voice raw from what must have been a long time of furious screaming. “You will never be allowed in public again.” “We know who you are, you can leave freely but we will find you,” an older guy threatens the same health official, in full view of the police officers who are one foot away.

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This level of demented fury is directed at masks. Not at vaccines, which would also be ridiculous, but then again, some people have a thing about needles. At masks. At small, thin pieces of fabric you put in front of your nose and mouth to reduce your vulnerability to and potential spread of a respiratory virus that is once again overwhelming emergency rooms in a new and more communicable variant, months after vaccines could have moved us past all of this. Masks, so that your kids don’t get each other and their families and communities sick, so we can get back to our lives already. The highest level of rage, pointed at the least we can do.

A fun thing I’ve been doing in the last year and a half, as mask protests have popped up around the country, is a thought experiment. When people shout about having to wear a mask, I mentally replace the words “wearing a mask” with “washing my hands.” “I’m healthy, I shouldn’t have to wash my hands,” these people are now shouting. “Washing my hands is a sign of weakness.” “Forcing me to wash my hands robs me of my liberty.”

Cool! You’re disgusting.

Hand-washing somehow slipped through the net here. By some miracle, it hasn’t been forced through the tedious binaries of the culture wars and been branded a thing only weak people do, a task eggheads and busybodies want to make you complete because they want to control your mind. At the beginning of this thing, we started washing our hands for 20 seconds the way we should have been doing all along. We get deep into technique, too; we really got in between those fingers and under those nails. And even as we learned the coronavirus does not live on surfaces, even as the science evolved as the science does, we kept doing it.

We kept doing it, because it is responsible and easy and we don’t want to eat shit.

What we are seeing here is the death rattle for a certain kind of American thinking, or more accurately, a certain kind of American feeling. We have always felt more secure facing the kinds of problems we can shoot, threaten, punch or spend our way out of. Got a stubborn problem? Drop a bomb on it. No more; we have finally faced an enemy that can only be defeated by empathy, by selflessness, by prioritizing the common good above our own personal comfort. We can only move past this moment by listening to the guidance of people who have spent a lot of time studying. We must defer to guys we could take in a fight, or even worse: women.

So of course, we are threatening them instead. It’s what we do when we ourselves feel threatened.

He’s not a virologist, but he’s yelling at the experts, and that’s good enough.

“Our kids, people under 25, there is a one in a million chance that they are going to die of Covid,” bellowed radio host and founder of sports website OutKick Clay Travis, eliding the long-term effects of Covid, the communicability of the Delta variant, and the fact that our choices affect other people. “I would tell every parent here,” he concluded, “don’t let your kids wear masks.” Not even don’t make your kids wear masks, don’t let your kids wear masks. And the crowd goes wild. He’s not a virologist, nor is he savvy enough to start a sports website that doesn’t sound like a dating app for gay Broadway dancers, but he’s yelling at the experts, and that’s good enough. The crowd needs an enemy, this guy needs the applause, everybody wins. It feels nice, it gives comfort. Them’s the breaks, Grandma, at least we’ll always have the video.

We are not going to America our way out of Covid. Not without a lot more overwhelmed ICUs, not without a lot more final goodbyes over FaceTime, not without a lot more people with scarred lungs and enlarged hearts and foggy brains. Barking at a virus like a cornered dog has not worked and will not start working if we bark louder. We need to do the imperfect, humbling, selfless, community-minded thing.

Bet you we’ll keep barking instead. America, America: this is you. Grow the fuck up.