Coronavirus

Coronavirus has grabbed our attention like nothing else in my lifetime. I’d never heard of the word three months ago, and it’s now the only thing anyone is talking about. That’s partly because COVID-19 has eliminated the competition, completely shutting down the sports and entertainment industries, and shuttering massive portions of the business and retail worlds as well. You can’t even go shopping to drown your sorrows – either because you’ve lost your job and have no money, or because you can’t find a store open to browse through.

COVID-19 was first documented in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December 2019. The first confirmed US case of the coronavirus was reported January 21, 2020 – a Washington state man who had recently returned from China. The World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, and on March 13, 2020, President Trump declared a national emergency. Almost instantaneously much of the country and a significant percentage of the world was sheltering at home. The US economy staggered immediately as millions were suddenly unemployed.

In the days immediately following the global and national declarations, a surge of bipartisanship swept through Washington. The first stimulus bills passed by over 90%. Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of President Trump’s most outspoken critics, praised the President for the “incredible” job he was doing in fighting the pandemic. (*1) President Trump praised both houses of Congress, and both parties, for their willingness to work hard and set aside differences in order to pass legislation that would aid a fearful and financially unstable citizenry. (*2) He even gave Democrats the benefit of the doubt, a posture almost universally lacking in the Donkey Elephant war. On March 27, 2020, President Trump signed the largest stimulus bill in US history, estimated at $2.2T, after both houses of Congress had passed it by consensus on a voice vote. Is the global pandemic COVID-19, commonly referred to as the coronavirus, an exception to the Donkey Elephant war? Or better yet, is the partisan war over, replaced by a war against an unseen enemy?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Image: Ohmydearlife/Pixabay

Image: Ohmydearlife/Pixabay

As much as I would love to believe that a global pandemic would mark the end of the Donkey Elephant war, I don’t really believe that’s what’s happening. I suspect that playing nice is a temporary phenomenon. I cited a couple of shockingly positive statements above from people who are notoriously not-positive toward the other side, but I could just as easily have cited the countless jabs and counterpunches being thrown as both the Donkeys and Elephants tried to position themselves as the winners. If coronavirus functions like the bucking chute in a rodeo, penning in our Donkeys and Elephants and preventing them from hurting each other too badly, you can already see the animal pushing against the restraint, just waiting to bust out and wreak some havoc.

I believe what’s happening is merely that there’s a new threat, a new enemy, that’s large enough and dangerous enough to function like a magnet, drawing the competitive fighting energy toward itself and away from the other political party. How many times have we heard “enemy” language used in battling the coronavirus? “This is a war, and we will win,” has been a battle cry universally voiced, not only by both political parties in our own country, but by leaders of nations all over the globe.

The “common enemy” phenomenon actually helps explain the increasing hostilities and partisanship in Washington and throughout our Facebook feeds. When would you say our country was the most united, the best equipped to do hard things over long periods of time at great sacrifice? I would argue that World War II was that time. The Axis powers, the Third Reich, and Adolf Hitler specifically were such a clearly identified enemy that people almost universally jumped at the opportunity to sacrifice for the cause. We haven’t had a national enemy so clearly identified and labeled since then. The Cold War against the Soviet Union was probably the closest second, but our culture wars were raging internally at the same time, and I had to do a Google search just to remind myself of who the Soviet leaders were during the Cold War. Hitler is universally recognized as the bottom of the barrel of humanity. Nobody since then has been as magnetically negative. Without a common enemy to rally against, it becomes easier to take shots at one another.

I was recently introduced to René Girard, the French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science. (*3) Girard is perhaps best known for his work on generative scapegoat mechanism. Lead Pastor Jeremy Duncan of Commons Church, Calgary has developed a YouTube series that makes Girard’s expansive work much more accessible to people like me, whose background is in science and religion, not sociology and psychology. Duncan summarizes the generative scapegoat mechanism cycle this way: (*4)

  1. tensions rise,

  2. resources are limited, and

  3. somebody makes a wrong move.

All the underlying tensions of the whole rest of the group get poured out on the designated victim. Girard sees this as the basic human experience, and the only way that humans grew beyond small tribal groups. Tension comes from our inability to desire directly and only want things through imitation. We redirect that toward an outsider and are able to become a much larger and more powerful group. Despicably referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” is merely a case study in trying to make an invisible scapegoat visible.

If that paragraph wasn’t interesting to you, maybe this one will be! Girard taught that religion is how we take the generative scapegoat mechanism and ritualize it, containing it, and minimizing it, and believes that all religions employ a scapegoat. What shocked him was how Christianity undermines the violence and scapegoating. The Christ story identifies with the victim, eliminating the need for future scapegoating and violence. Christ comes from outside the story and has no debt to violence and scapegoating (i.e. without original sin). His whole teaching is that there is no outsider. This was so unsettling that people turned their latent violence on the One claiming there was no outsider. Everyone turned against Jesus – everyone! In that climactic moment, Jesus receives all our violence instead of returning it. (*5)

Jesus is ultimately the source of our peace, not a newer, nastier enemy who can unite us in opposition. I grew up Lutheran, and one part of Lutheran worship services is called “passing the peace.” It’s a ritualized way to greet one another, with people saying,

The peace of the Lord be with you

and responding, “And also with you” instead of something simpler like “hello.” Yet that ritualized action symbolizes one of our deepest human longings.

We need a peace that’s stronger than the storms raging around us.

We need a peace that can talk louder than the fears screaming in our ears.

We need a peace that transcends the Donkey Elephant war, the COVID-19 war, and whatever war follows those.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace, outlasted death itself. I believe Jesus is our answer.

Guidance

How can we live in the “peace of the Lord,” instead of merely mouthing the words? When everything around us is shaking, how can we stick close to the Unshaken, Unshakable One? Here are a couple quick recommendations.

  • It’s EGR time – high stress times are EGR times – “extra grace required.” Everyone everywhere is on edge, whether due to financial instability, health fears, or the removal of the activities that used to bring us comfort. Each of those are huge by themselves, but the trifecta of all of them forms a perfect storm. We need to cut one another some slack, because the longer this goes, the more on edge we’re likely to be. This is an Extra Grace Required season – we need people to overlook some of our tension-induced faux pas, and we need to do the same for others.

  • Drop the blame game – both Washington and the dining room table would do well to drop the blame game. The Donkeys and Elephants are chomping at the bit to cast the other in a negative light, but who wins when that happens? Nobody. Only losers. Hopefully the seriousness of the pandemic will be sufficient to temper the ill will for as long as these hard times last. But while we can’t control Washington, we alone are in control of our own tongues. Even if somebody in your sphere of influence has clearly been in the wrong, ask yourself if dishing out blame will improve the circumstances. There are times when accountability is both necessary and growth-producing. There are other times when grace will get us further than grievances.

  • Find something else to focus on. How much bad news can you watch, really? It’s good to be informed, but at some point information becomes deflation and simply depresses us. Play a game, go for a walk, or grab a good book. Learn some new skills during this social distancing season that will put you in better shape for when normalcy returns.

Dave Drum