Well, it happened again. Not so much an argument, but me laying it out to two captive Trumpers, this time about COVID.
The content writing is a bit slow given we are writing for February pub dates, and the period from December 20th-Jan 3rd is the busiest time for Uber, so have been driving a bit to make up for the other… and then some: I did $1k in Uber last week in 2.5 days work. (That’s my mortgage.)
Anyway, got a few airport reservations this morning, so I go pick up Terry and a woman who may have been his wife, may have been his mother… as a driver, that’s not a question one needs clarifying, though the temptation was real.
As I roll up, I see that Terry has his Christmas tree up and, in his front window, a Trump 2020 sign. As I always do, I have my classical playlist going and, since it’s early, I tend to select songs to snooze by - “Air on the G-String”, Pachebel’s Canon, really mostly a bunch of Bach and some Mozart (usually too peppy, though.)
Terry and his wife/mom come out, pulling suitcases. I put them in the trunk, make sure both people are in the car, and go. The suitcases told the tale, though I did verify: headed to the airport, about 15 minutes away.
Terry starts talking, doing the usual ‘exclaim how I didn’t expect an Uber so early + ask how long this guy has been driving’ two-step. He asks me ‘what do you do?’ (another common question), so I tell him I write, mostly stuff for corporate blogs, but I also have my own newsletter about current events and am working on a book about the family biz.
Having apparently been Foxed-up already, Terry immediately turns to the newsletter.
“What’s that all about?”
“It’s a newsletter about current events and economics, seasoned with a dash of catastrophic thinking.”
chuckles “You ever write about COVID?”
“Of course. Have two articles about it, at least. One is pretty short, about 1,000 words, the other is about 3,500 words.”
“Woah! Well, tell me, what do you think about all this?”
… when I talk to people, and I know I mentioned this on the Dope (possibly this thread), I prefer to do it from the frame of reference which they most accept. If I’m talking about a concept to a finance-minded person, for example, I try to frame the argument in terms of dollars and cents, cost and benefit, net present value vs future value, etc.
These people have already given me enough context clues as to which frame they will accept, so I go there. And it’s a short trip, about 11 minutes to the airport by this time, so I challenge myself to monolog the answer:
“I feel that COVID has been the great moral crisis of our age, and tens of millions have failed it.”
“Amen” (the only thing she said the entire trip.)
“You know, as a Christian… and, more than that, as a civilized member of Western Civilization, we are taught the following as basic rules of how we live our lives:” (and I start counting them out)
- Genesis tells us that God created the Universe and gave us dominion over it.
- According to the Greeks, the Universe can be measured and controlled, something our civilization proved in the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. This car is an example of this.
- According to Jesus, the ultimate commandment is to treat thy neighbor as you would want to be treated.
“Terry, these are the fundamental rules of our civilization. This is how we achieved spaceflight and Christianity. And the moral failure I spoke of is the tens of millions who have rejected civilization, becoming effectively barbarians, as they deny both our science and our duty to each other as spelled out by Jesus.”
… looking at the GPS, I have about 8 minutes. Not doing badly, the arguments written by me so many times that I’d better be able to articulate them…
"You know, Terry, for a believer, it’s hard to deny that God struck the United States with a plague in the fourth year of Trump’s Presidency just as he struck the Egyptians with plagues during Pharoah’s time. God does not miss, and with 800,000 dead, it is hard to argue that we were not his target.
"So, imagine Terry, you’re faced with a plague and you belong to a religion which states you are being judged on your moral choices, the primary commandment being ‘did you do unto others as you would have wanted done to yourself’… and then you go anti-mask. Anti-Vaxx. Imagine standing before Jesus as he sits on the Throne of Judgement, running through a social media history full of anti-Fauci memes, ideological arguments poised as fake science, and mocking people as being fearful when they themselves are doing nothing but following Jesus’s commandment, that do unto other’s thing.
"So I wear my mask. I got my vaccines and boosters. I listened to the precepts of Western Civilization and to what my religion told me, and protected myself and other people. Because here’s the thing, Terry:
"We’ve had 30% of this country go pro-virus for malignant ideological reasons. And you look like a numbers guy, so here is what that means: Each fully infected body contains about 1 trillion COVID virons at peak infection. Multiply that times the number of people infected, say, 20,000,000. Do you know what twenty million times one trillion equals, Terry? I don’t, but I know that Omicron is the nineteenth letter in the Greek alphabet, meaning that all these chances those same immoral 30% keep giving the virus has now put us on our nineteenth variant of COVID-19. Nineteenth! And, who knows, Terry, maybe the twenty-second version will be the one which only infects 10% of the population… but kills 60% of those infected. And it will happen as long as we allow this thing to live and fester.
"Terry, think of it this way: there are 1 trillion wild animals inside every infected human, we know we have to kill these animals, and yet 30% of the population has taken the side of the COVID wolf. And those people, those barbarians who have rejected Western Civilization, are damned as far as I’m concerned.
“Like I said, I have thought and written about this a lot. Looks like we’re coming up to the airport… what airline?”
“Uh… Delta. But what about the fact it may have been manmade, in Wuhan?”
"I’m an Uber driver slash content writer in San Antonio Texas. God did not put me in a place to determine where or how the virus originated, the only thing I can do is use the teachings of my civilization and my religion to defeat this thing. Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Treat others as if they are human too.
“And I believe we are here…”
We arrive, Satie’s Gymnopedie #1 playing because I have a wicked mind and knew they would never, ever, get the reference. They get out, she hands me a rather nice tip, and I text him a link to the newsletter, standing there next to the Delta drop off. We part our separate ways, and that was that.
