Authors’ Note:
In the first iteration of The Wheelhouse Review, Stephanie Phillips and I had a semi-regular column called “Everyone’s a Little Bipartisan.” We would take on an issue of the day and hash it out from the perspective of each of our political camps (Stephanie from the right and I from the left). A lot has changed over the past 10 years, so instead of sharing our thoughts from opposite political sides, we are sharing perspectives from opposite ends of the globe: the Washington DC area and Sydney, Australia.
Dear Stephanie,
I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. Though my kid’s school has gone mask-optional and it seems the days of back-to-back quarantining are behind us, I still have some lingering stress from staying home with a perfectly healthy kid for a month in January. And also I have a baby.
But I’m not just tired from the sleep deprivation and the constant vigilance about Covid. I’m exhausted from the constant hot takes, rank punditry, and worst of all, sanctimony that now seems endemic in so much of our discourse. Especially about Covid.
I feel like I can’t say, “hey, as a parent of small kids, it’s felt like my head has been held underwater for the past two years and at some point, I’d love to come up and get a breath of fresh air. I’d also love to not be made to feel like an asshole for wanting to focus on other things besides Covid.” Because if I do, I feel like someone will lecture me about people who have it worse.
It’s not just with Covid though. It’s like too many people have gotten infected with sanctimony (I probably have too, which is why I’m writing this). I keep thinking about Bo Burnham’s great riff on this: “can anyone shut the fuck up about any single thing?” In Australia, do you guys have the signs that declare your credal values? The ones that say “in this house we believe…”? My favorite is the pet shop near me with a sign that reads, “Hate Has No Place Here.” Do they think really hateful people live in the neighborhood and that they will have a “road to Damascus” moment when they see the sign on the way to buy Meow MIx?
I find this virtue signaling particularly nauseating after growing up in evangelical circles where you were encouraged to do creepy shit, like stand around a flagpole and pray in public so you could advertise how holy you were.
I was tempted to write my own screed blasting all the virtue signaling, but I figured the best way to counter my own moralizing was to talk it out with a trusted friend. So, here goes…do you think that we’re all just lousy with sanctimony and how do we treat it?
Dear Juliet,
I love how you tacked on “And also I have a baby” to the reasons you’re exhausted, like that’s a footnote in the panoply of exhausting activities instead of the energy-sapping behemoth parenting actually is. I’m so glad my kids are no longer babies. But yours are cute!
I am actually not exhausted right now because my life has sort of shifted back to “normal” (whatever that means) after a period of “definitely not normal.” There was the second year of the pandemic, replete with three months of homeschooling, excuse me, remote teaching, my non-babies. Then there was the month-long trip we took to the US after Christmas, seeing our family for the first time in two years by way of one four-hour flight from Sydney to Fiji, one ten-hour one from Fiji to LA (my kids barfed all over that one), then assorted flights between LA, Salt Lake City, and Atlanta. So yeah, I was tired. But now we’ve been back for a few weeks, and I feel so much better.
BUT! We got Covid while we were there! And all of a sudden my former sanctimony, which I had worn like a warm safe Snuggie as I watched, from the shores of Sydney, while the Covid dumpster fire that is America burned, began to evaporate. You’re saying I have to stay inside a hotel room with my family of four for five days? You’re saying that if I have the slightest sniffle I can’t go on a run, the only thing that is currently saving my life? You’re saying I have to wear a mask at all times while Jim Beam over there in seat 10A treats raising his alcohol tolerance like he’s training for the Beerlympics and chasing his liquor with a twelve-inch sub from Jersey Mike’s?
Girl, we went to the hotel pool. NO ONE ELSE WAS USING IT! And I may have pulled my mask down and my blanket up while I slept on one of those barfy flights.
The thing about sanctimony, besides the snuggly warmth of it, is that it only remains operational if the thing you’re being sanctimonious about is a rule that’s easy for you to keep. It was easy for me to meet at that flagpole every Wednesday morning, looking down my white nose at all the people who didn’t have a mom willing to drive them across town an hour earlier than school started because she had money to put gas in her car and a job with a flexible starting time. It was easy for me to sign a pledge in high school saying I wouldn’t have sex before marriage when no one was asking me out anyway.
My question for you is: that hate sign–is it directed toward dogs or people? No, we don’t have too much of that nonsense here (I also have not stumbled upon a single “Dance like no one’s watching” sign in anyone’s home, praise be). But the Covid culture wars have definitely existed here, though on a smaller scale, and my morning run takes me past several trees that were spray-painted (guess they don’t care about science or the environment!) with messages like “Don’t comply!” and “Vaccines kill!”
I guess what I’m saying is we’re all sanctimonious about something, until we’re not–which is usually just after we’ve encountered an obstacle to keeping that rule that was keeping us on our high horse.
Dear Stephanie,
Since starting this correspondence, the “Hate Has No Place Here” sign has been taken down. I hope it was from a sense of self-awareness and not say, because they have decided that hate indeed has a place there.
I’m sorry if getting up on my high horse about “See You at the Pole” hit home for you. Which I guess proves my point. I think self-righteousness is so disgustingly endemic to the human condition. Even when writing about the dangers of self-righteousness, it’s nearly impossible to avoid self-righteousness.
Recently, some people very close to me got Covid and they downplayed their symptoms. I know in some part that was probably because they didn’t want to alarm anyone. But I wonder how much of it might have been because they feared getting an “I told you so” (one was not vaccinated) or some other kind of judgy response. Because I’ll admit, that even in the middle of that crisis, I had to swallow the nasty, unhelpful, sanctimonious commentary I felt bubbling up inside of me to just love them. Another friend (also unvaccinated), thanked me for being kind to her while she–and her family–were sick with Covid. Apparently while she was feverish and sick and taking care of two small kids, she had friends choose that moment to ask her if she was going to get vaccinated now. Of course, I thought that too.
What got me about those incidents is that I would never say to someone who got infected with HIV that it was their own fault. I’m guessing that a lot of people in my left-of-center tribe wouldn’t either. But we sure as hell seem free to judge people who haven’t gotten vaccinated and who have gotten Covid. We seem free to judge people based on who they voted for and what media they consume. When did the party of liberals get so smug and sanctimonious?
Dear Juliet,
Can I admit that I cringed when you told me your friends who got Covid were unvaccinated? Partly because I get so frustrated with people’s distrust of science and willingness to accept outlandish conspiracy theories (I assume they aren’t unvaxxed for medical exemptions?), but also because the human condition renders me, and all of us, constantly in search of reasons why people suffer so that we can look at those reasons and say, “Oh good, that’s not me.” Both for ego purposes, and for a sense of safety. We can be protected from that horrible outcome by making good decisions. In other words, we’re in control. Which, of course, we’re not.
Individualism as an American virtue has shifted, in many ways, to what feels like a toxic form of that individualism. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Australia for five years and can see it with some distance, but the ideas of “rights” and “freedom” seem to mean “I get to do whatever I want.” There is a lack of concern for the community at large. And I’ve seen that on both sides–unwillingness to wear masks, etc, and “well you can just die if you’re not vaccinated” attitudes. I’m not innocent; my thoughts can go to dark places. It just feels like smugness and sanctimony are not in short supply no matter where you fall politically. Maybe the terror invoked by the pandemic these last couple of years has led to us all grasping for a sense of control and this is what that looks like?
Dear Stephanie,
I think you’re right. I know that when I feel anxious I like to clean, because it makes me feel like I can control at least one thing in my life. So I can see how the fear of getting sick or watching our loved ones get sick would drive us to try and control the outcome. I can also see how fear of say, government overreach could drive us to push back on top-down efforts at mitigation. And I can definitely see how our natural, human need to be part of a tribe would drive us to judge and demonize people we think aren’t part of ours.
How do we fix this? Can we? For my part, during the summer of 2020, I started incorporating a greater diversity of viewpoints into my news diet. I also started asking myself, when I would get fired up about something, why I was reacting that way. A lot of it was driven by my fears. As a Christian, I am well aware of the near-constant admonition in the Bible to NOT fear (probably because of what we’ve been talking about). In those moments–when I am sane enough–I try to ask God to help me find a way out of the fear. It works most of the time and the damage to my relationships is minimal. Antidepressants and a nice walk help too.
How about you?
Dear Juliet,
YOU TOO? I, also, control the world by cleaning my house. That reminds me, I need to vacuum.
“Can we fix this?” indeed. I also have recently become intentional about listening to voices I might not ordinarily hear in the course of my Australian-white-heterosexual-cis day. And it’s been incredible, all that I thought I knew and never did. I think a lot of change starts there–by finding out all you don’t know. But learning that requires a willingness and intention that we can’t force onto people (and certainly hasn’t happened, from my numerous–and now tapered off–Facebook posts). In the end, we can only be responsible for the content WE listen to/read/see. And, of course, for the way we treat others. Which sometimes means that the kindest thing we can do is say nothing, maybe? And that pains me, because I LOVE SAYING THINGS.
Asking ourselves the questions you mentioned–the why of it all–is helpful for me too (and, again, something we can only do for ourselves). My own experience with anxiety and antidepressants and therapy has been instructional in this–being aware of what I’m feeling and where it’s coming from and whether that is a true place or not. Sleep, exercise, good food, small enjoyments–all that helps. Along with a lifeline of grace. That’s all I have, but maybe that’s enough for now?