Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility it is not. Neither this local church, nor the country’s conservative political party.
Just down the road in the home of incoming Republican celebrity-congressman Madison Cawthorn reside the members of the First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, NC. Like the rest of the U.S., they will be having a Christmas like no other.
A North Carolina church gathered congregants for a musical Christmas celebration earlier this month, and within a matter of days, at least 75 COVID-19 infections had been traced back to the event.
The Henderson County Health Department has linked a growing number of cases of the respiratory infection to one caroling event held at First Baptist Church of Hendersonville. The agency identified a holiday celebration held Dec. 5 at First Baptist as a superspreader event in a press release: “To date, the Health Department has identified 75 individuals who have tested positive as a result of the event.”
We wish them speedy recoveries.
Attendees told the Asheville, NC paper (as reported), “the church was crowded, many people were not wearing masks and choir members, without masks, were singing shoulder to shoulder.”
The rest was predictable. The church will suspend operations for a month. As of Dec. 15, the county reported 4,188 positive COVID-19 cases and 91 deaths. The city is a retirement hub and 791 cases are associated with long-term care facilities.
Another local church has added air filters, removed pews, and placed chairs spaced at least six feet apart. But a spokesperson for the county health department advised that the best way to avoid another superspreader event is “just be socializing with those in your own household.”
The term willful something comes to mind.
Henderson is the largest GOP-majority county in NC-11. This reminds me too how often over the years Republicans have preached the gospel of personal responsibility to everyone else.
Now that the outgoing president is actually on his way out, personal responsibility as a Republican rallying cry against everyone else will make a rapid comeback. “For thee but not for me,” naturally. Deficit hawks will return from their Florida wintering grounds near Mar-a-Lago to inveigh against perceived Democratic profligacy that throughout the last Republican administration was in full flower.
Almost a year ago, Donald Trump told Mar-a-Lago guests, “Who the hell cares about the budget? We’re going to have a country.”
The Washington Post reminded readers:
For most of President Barack Obama’s time in office, Republicans seemed to care very much about the budget, making fears around the national debt and deficit their top talking point. They’ve backed off those concerns under Trump.
One does not need to be an accomplished prophet to know deficit handwringing will return apace, as Paul Krugman notes. Republicans in Congress will cut some sort of budget deal before Christmas to provide aid to the millions out of work and facing economic disaster. But “they are determined to keep the deal under a trillion dollars, hence the reported $900 billion price tag.” That is about more than $1 trillion being a scary number, Krugman writes:
For affordability isn’t a real issue right now. The U.S. government borrowed more than $3 trillion in the 2020 fiscal year; investors were happy to lend it that money, at remarkably low interest rates. In fact, the real interest rate on U.S. debt — the rate adjusted for inflation — has lately been consistently negative, which means that the additional debt won’t even create a major future burden.
And even economists who worry about deficits normally agree that it’s appropriate to run big deficits in the face of national emergencies. If a pandemic that is still keeping around 10 million workers unemployed isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.
Of course, we know what’s going on here. While Republicans have made the political calculation that they must cough up some money while control of the Senate is still in doubt, they’re clearly getting ready to invoke fear of budget deficits as a reason to block anything and everything Biden proposes once he’s finally sworn in.
Because everything is clean to those who are Republican, but unclean when Republicans no longer control the White House. Lies again will be grievous sin. Insults from Democrats will have Republicans running en masse for their fainting couches. Republicans will declare their freedom from Democratic tyranny.
“What they call ‘freedom’ is actually absence of responsibility,” Krugman wrote in July about resistance on the right to wearing masks. But freedom and responsibility go together. A lot of Americans this holiday season are about to find that out the hard way. Or not. A lot of us are slow learners. Or non-learners.