The cover story in Harper’s was “The New Narcsissim.” It was October 1975, of the years Tom Wolfe dubbed “The Me Decade.” In a complex, morally demanding world, Peter Marin took readers on a tour through pop therapies promoting “selfishness and moral blindness” and branding themselves “in the larger culture as enlightenment and psychic health.” California stuff, mostly. Easlen workshops, Erhard Seminars Training (EST), and others. Trends that begin on the left coast have a way of migrating east.
We were all gods (or something), the individual fully in control of determining her/his destiny. Right consciousness brought fortune or held ill fate at bay. At one workshop two women explained that “the Jews must have wanted to be burned by the Germans, and that those who starve in the Sahel must want it to happen.” When Marin asked if we bore any responsibility for a child starving in the desert, one snapped, “What can I do if a child is determined to starve?”
Pushing a half century later, it is hard not to react that way to vaccine refuseniks determined to feed themselves to the Delta variant. They are the 21st century’s new narcissists, led by the most grandiose in my experience. His movement rebrands selfishness and moral blindness as patriotism and rugged individualism. They have no responsibility for protecting their families, their neighbors or the larger culture. Because — say it with me — freedom.
Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey had had enough this week when she unloaded on the unvaccinated for the new surge of Covid cases in her state. “It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks,” she told reporters. “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”
“I think for a lot of leaders, both in government and in business, patience has worn thin,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “There is an urgency that might not have been there a month ago.”
Meanwhile, exhausted health providers say they are bracing for case spikes that are largely preventable, driven by the hyper-transmissible delta variant. “We are frustrated, tired and worried for this next surge — and saddened by the state we find ourselves in,” said Jason Yaun, a Memphis-based pediatrician, who said his colleagues are grappling with an “accumulation of fatigue” since the outbreak exploded in March 2020.
Biden administration officials increasingly frame the current outbreak as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” seeking to persuade and perhaps even frighten some holdouts to get the shots.
New cases in Missouri are spiking. Hospitals are filling with new patients, especially in the state’s southwest region. Yet, plans are still in place for opening Greene County’s Ozark Empire Fair days from now in one of the area’s Covid hotspots.
CNN:
Mercy Hospital in Springfield recorded 148 positive Covid-19 cases as of Thursday, an all-time high, said Sonya Kullmann, spokesperson for the hospital. Greene County currently has 4,663 active cases as of Friday morning, according to its website.
The uptick in cases is caused by the fast-spreading Delta variant; 95% of those cases were in unvaccinated people, Kullmann said.
Greene County, with a completed vaccination rate of about 35%, has declared a local emergency. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson sent additional life support ambulances and medical staff to the area in preparation of rising cases.
But the fair, which will feature food, a Ferris wheel and an exotic petting zoo — marketed on its website as “summer’s biggest party” — will not be canceled.
“Amusements around the country go on every day with way bigger attendance, in a lot more confined space than what we offer,” Aaron Owen, general manager of the fair, told CNN. “I’ve worried about it all, I know (the Delta variant) is real. But farmers and agriculture folks put their livelihood at stake on this. There’s lots of factors that we have to take into consideration.”
“I’m not going to waste my time arguing with a man who’s lining up to be a hot lunch” comes to mind.
I don’t need convinving. I was exposed to Legionnaires’ disease from standing 20 feet away from a contaminated hot tub display at such a fair here in September 2019. I was was sick as a dog for a week with “a fever of unknown origin” before news broke of the Legionnaire’s outbreak. That fair, too, is scheduled again this year. Perople will attend, maskless and beligerent about it.
It only took 40 years for the narcissism they once sold as enlightenment in godless California to turn up as patriotism in the god-fearing red states.