Coronavirus as an Opportunity to be Racist

Coronavirus is not an excuse to be racist. We all know that. Nonetheless, as we struggle to deal with the Coronavirus crisis, significant numbers of Americans are dusting off their favorite go-to tactic, racism, and aiming it toward the Far East. This time, it’s racism against Chinese people. For many examples, see the attached clip from Samantha Bee’s show (begin at 3:05 min for many examples where Fox Commentators follow Donald Trump’s xenophobic lead).

I struggle to find words to express my disappointment at this celebration of bigotry, and it’s not simply because I have many acquaintances and friends who are Chinese. It’s not simply because my daughters are Chinese. It’s because engaging in bigotry is a cruel thing to do to any another human being. We need to stop painting hundreds of millions of people with this broad brush. Have we learned NOTHING from the civil rights movement? For those who are tempted to push back at me and continue to blame “the Chinese” for our current struggle, which particular people are you angry at? You know it’s not all the Chinese people. You know that viruses don’t respect national borders. If you know anything about the evolution of viruses, you know that the next pandemic might originate in your own hometown.

Making this even more irritating for me, many of these racists claim to be Christians. Here’s my advice for those of you who are working hard to rename Coronavirus as “Chinese Coronavirus” or “Chinese Virus”: Take a deep breath, look in the mirror, take seriously your own commandment to love your enemy and put your fucking dog whistles away.

PS. This entire episode in hyper-nationalism is predictable by “Terror Management Theory.” (TMT). It’s well documented that people do this kind of shit when they are scared. See, here and here. Also see "The Worm at the Core," an excellent book on TMT by Sheldon Solomon.

That said, we can work harder to become better versions of ourselves in this crisis. We need to do a better job of keeping the focus on saving lives.

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Having Few Friends is Dangerous to your Health

Here's a good incentive to turn off your TV and go make real friends.

[C]lose relationships with children and other relatives had very little impact on how long you live, but people with the most friends tended to outlive those with the fewest by 22 percent. Better yet, a clinical review of nearly 150 studies found that people with strong social ties had a 50 percent better chance of survival, regardless of age, sex, health status, and cause of death, than those with weaker ties. . . . In fact, according to the researchers, the health risk of having few friends was similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and more dangerous than being obese or not exercising in terms of decreasing your lifespan. Keep in mind that means real friends. Not Facebook friends or Twitter followers.

For more, here's the full article from Inc.

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Irresolvable Negotiable Differences of our Culture Wars

Marriage/relationship researcher John Gottman has provided us with a stunning statistic:

"69% of relationship conflict is about perpetual problems. All couples have them — these problems are grounded in the fundamental differences that any two people face. They are either fundamental differences in your personalities that repeatedly create conflict, or fundamental differences in your lifestyle needs.In our research, we concluded that instead of solving their perpetual problems, what seems to be important is whether or not a couple can establish a dialogue about them."

Gottman's research reminds me of the our nation's cultural divide; apparently, we can no longer talk with those we perceive to be different. I don't think we differ from each other nearly as much as the mass media suggests. That said, it seems to me that Gottman's suggested strategies for keeping individual relationships happy and functional are relevant to what we need to do on a national level.

We have forgotten how to talk respectfully to one another, avoiding Gottman's "four horsemen," criticism, contempt, stonewalling, and defensiveness. We have forgotten that being in any functional relationship takes hard work and compromise. I believe that this difficult work has become logarithmically more difficult for two basic reasons: A) tribal ideologies running rampant and B) corporate money gushing through the political system. These two things distort the issues, cause us to create crude cartoons of one another, and permeate the national conversation with fear and loathing of each other.

Barking at each other never brings us any progress. We've seen that for years already. It will take lot of work, soul searching, and looking in the mirror to become more functional on a national level. It will take an act of faith that we can get along if only we worked harder to be civil. This is perhaps too much to ask in an age of widespread magic thinking and diminished attention spans.

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The Importance of Reaching Out to One’s Perceived Enemies

Everyone out there has good stories and lessons to share. It is my faith that it is one of our highest duties as human beings to reach out to connect with other human beings to identify and share those treasures within each other without exception and without judgment. Sometimes it's not easy and it takes some deep breathing to get past crusty exteriors of ourselves and others.

Over the past year I've reached out to have coffee with several local FB Friends who had bristled at my political views (and vice versa). In each case, over a couple hours of conversation we found common concerns and common dreams along with that willingness to connect. Later this week I'm going to join one of those men for coffee again. Aside from his staunch views that many would consider gun-loving libertarian/conservative, he is also a dog lover, brought almost to tears by the thought of dogs who suffer. He is also a dedicated family man, a cancer survivor and a man who, many years ago, pulled himself up (with unfathomable hard work) from a place that would seem to most of us to be an impossibility.

Over the past couple of months, I also reached out to a woman who (I'm certain) gets indigestion when I speak of things like single payor health care. She is a dedicated nurse who, over several decades, worked her way through a dozen challenges that might have crushed many of us. She generously gave me the gift of hours on the phone, during which she invited me to lean hard on her to help me process a situation that felt like an emotional bludgeoning. [More . . . ]

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