Bringing out the worst in people

I have frequently heard that a crisis tends to bring out the best in people. Perhaps that's true in most situations. When it came to the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the exact opposite.

A big part of the problem with the pandemic is how heavily politicized it became. When Donald Trump was in office, absolutely everything that went wrong was treated as proof that we needed to remove him from office. Once Joe Biden took over, everything that went wrong was proof that we had the right man in office. Trump was to blame for all the deaths under his watch. Biden was in no way to blame for an even higher death toll on his watch. In reality, there were numerous missteps throughout the pandemic at all levels. Things were bad under both Trump and Biden.

The media took the lead in politicizing the pandemic, and citizens followed. The disturbing part of this was how people started responding to people who lost their lives. We viewed the deaths of liberals as tragic. Meanwhile, we mocked conservatives who died. There were all kinds of jokes. People would insist that Republicans were killing their own to own the liberals. There was a Pac-Man image using a confederate flag where MAGA hats were being devoured. Does anyone honestly believe that this image was meant to help those who lost loved ones? If the deceased was known to be on the conservative side of the spectrum, liberals put out a celebratory vibe. Even as we have eased up on the Covid obsession, I still periodically see people making comments about how they don’t mind people dying because they are more likely to be conservative.

Even outside of deaths, there was constant division. Do you believe that our approach to the pandemic was hindering freedom? Liberals started referring to this as freedumb. There is no mandate that American citizens must value life above liberty. Merely having a different opinion should not be viewed as a sign of stupidity. In fact, the inability to grasp this simple concept raises serious questions about the liberals pushing this flawed narrative.

I don't want to let conservatives off for their role in the division, but I don't think anyone needs me for this. Liberals have already aggressively attacked such things as a heavy push of vaccine misinformation. I will leave legitimate concerns with conservative views to the liberals.

We need to stop leading with hate and intolerance. People should have a right to differing viewpoints. We would have been far better off if we tried to understand these viewpoints rather than attack people for having different struggles during one of the most mishandled pandemics in history.