Gary Night – We are a Nation divided

(May 4 – 2020)  I am a newer New Mexican.  I was born in San Francisco right after WW2 ended but raised in Colorado (my father had been born in Denver and my mother in Cheyenne, Wyoming); high school was in Lakewood, college in Colorado Springs, grad school was in Southern California, and then I returned to Denver to grow in my career and to raise my children.  I have spent the past 31 years in the East: 16 years in Miami Beach during the heyday of South Beach, and 15 years in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

With 2020 vision I arrived in Las Cruces on February 29, 2020, enjoyed one week of relative freedom and attended one Farmer’s Market before the viral hammer came down. I stayed in several consecutive AirBnB’s after arriving until I moved into my new home in Metro Verde (sort of a modern take on the Taos Pueblo) after closing on March 30.

I have to express my deepest thanks to my AirBnB hosts and hostesses for providing me with a safe and comfortable place to stay during the continuing period of sheltering at home and social distancing. I also want to thank all of the cooks; order takers; DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats etc. drivers and delivery persons; and employees of the many drive through restaurants who have provided me with lunches and dinners throughout the period after they were required to shut down: I would be much thinner but for your efforts and kindnesses.

I am very concerned about our country. I am very concerned about the world in which we live. This virus has revealed so many terrible things about who we are as a people in the United States as well as how we relate to the rest of the world. So I am going to say a little about what troubles me and hope those who read this will understand that I write from the perspective of a very concerned senior citizen about what will be left for future generations here.

There must be an inherent balance between freedom and responsibility, between the liberty which we take for granted and the requirement we have to create a safe place in which to enjoy those liberties. The conversation we have had in this country has been ultimately between freedom and responsibility even if it has been expressed as red versus blue, Democrat versus Republican, conservative versus liberal.

I would like to renounce the binary argument we have permitted ourselves to fall into, because freedom and responsibility are values held by both sides, but we aren’t talking about them at all. So let me try to here.

If 20 mountain lions were loose in Las Cruces, what would happen here? Wouldn’t we ask that everyone stay home until the authorities could attend to dealing with those lions? What if there were 100 mountain lions operating as an intelligent pack loose here? Wouldn’t we arrange to have caravans of citizens moving to jobs and to shops, to protect them from the threat, yet ensure that everyone was able to work and to eat? Wouldn’t we all try to work cooperatively together to protect our children, our elderly, our infirm, our weakest links, so that all would be safe until the threat had passed?

We have been asked to shelter at home and to wear masks and gloves when out, to stay 6 feet apart, and to observe those requirements until this viral emergency is over. But from my personal observation and from my reading of reports elsewhere, I don’t see these simple requirements being observed by much more than about half of the population here or anywhere. Why? Is it because we lack self discipline as a society or are we too selfish as individuals to care about the common good? Regrettably, as a nation we no longer have a sense of what is truthful and what isn’t, to the extent that we believe the dishonest more than the honest, because the dishonest make us feel good and let us enjoy our freedoms, whereas the honest require that we act responsibly, wear masks and gloves and shelter at home, and deny us our parties, our beaches, our parks, our right to life.

We are a nation divided between those who are concerned about all of us and those who are concerned only about themselves. But to defeat the lions loose in our country, in New Mexico and in Las Cruces, we must be self disciplined enough to work together for our common good, to be responsible now so we have our freedoms in the future; indeed, to be alive to enjoy those freedoms.

One of my friends posted the following in Facebook. It speaks for me.

“First of all, I wear a mask in public, not for me, but for YOU.

I want you to know that I am educated enough to know that I could be asymptomatic and still give you the virus.

No, I don’t “live in fear” of the virus, I just want to be a part of the solution, not the problem.

I don’t feel like the “government is controlling me”, I feel like I’m being a contributing adult to society and I want to teach others the same.

The world doesn’t revolve around me. It’s not all about me and my comfort. If we all could live with other people’s consideration in mind, this whole world would be a much better place.

Wearing a mask doesn’t make me weak, scared, stupid or even “controlled”, it makes me considerate.

When you think about how you look, or how uncomfortable it is or what others think of you, just imagine someone close to you. A father, a mother, grandparent, aunt or uncle choking on a respirator.

Then ask yourself if you could have sucked it up a little for them.”

We are in an uncivil war against an unseen virus and each other. A nation divided cannot stand.

Copyright 2020 by Gary A. Knight.  (Printed with permission)

Gary Knight is a resident of Las Cruces, NM