April 19, 2020
A Facebook group called “Operation Gridlock” organized a demonstration on April 15.
The protestors were objecting to (Democratic) Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s lockdown orders in Michigan, which has been hit fairly hard by the virus. The event drew several thousand people and got a ton of attention -- I think because it's so hard to believe in the midst of a worldwide health calamity, some of us would decide to create a little social upheaval.
The Michigan protest wasn’t the first. That honor belonged to Ohio on April 9, though the small statehouse gathering (less than 100 people) didn’t suggest the beginning of a movement. At least, it didn’t to me. But now that it’s begun in earnest, the movement is growing by leaps and bounds.
In just the past week, there have been protests in Indiana, Minnesota, Florida, Texas, California, North Dakota, Nevada, Virginia, and elsewhere.
Every time I think I can’t be any more upset, astonished, or heartbroken by the divisions in this country I love, it turns out I can.
Whatever the protestors’ issues generally, what would possess anyone to march in protest of a policy meant to save lives? By which I mean, ALL of our lives? Don't they call themselves “pro-life”?
And what's with all the guns???
They march mask-free, and while jokes on the Internet abound (less Republican votes in November!), no one is actually laughing. Not on either "side." The protesters' anger is like poison. They are draining everyone else of life or trying to, while they defiantly infect one
another — with their rage, with their germs, with their wish to destroy the nation they claim to love.
All these weeks of trying so hard to “flatten the curve,” as Dr. Fauci puts it — after weeks of health care workers telling us, “Stay home so we can get control of this” — here come masses of people, some of them surely infected themselves, lifting the curve again. High. Higher.
Their grandstanding for the cameras (they're not just carrying guns, they're carrying semi-automatic weapons, for God’s sake) has drawn health care workers outside of the buildings where they're working to save lives. The workers stand in front of the demonstrators like superheroes, stopping their traffic. Stethoscopes around their necks, arms folded, wearing scrubs, they hold placards showing photos of co-workers who have died. They wear masks and gloves. And their eyes are full of scorn.
If you didn’t see it with your own eyes, you’d never believe it.
Today more than 2.3 million people worldwide have coronavirus. At least 163,000 have died.
Trump, who has been reminding the protestors via Twitter of their Second Amendment rights , defends them during his daily press conferences: “These are really great people … They seem like really responsible people to me.”
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