There is a connection here, I am sure of it. Multiple connections probably – I just don’t know what they are. And maybe it’s not up to me to define the connections between last April’s Liberate Minnesota rally here in Saint Paul and the demonstrations for black lives that would follow just over a month later.
The Liberate rally was not unique to Saint Paul. Similar protests popped up everywhere. Indeed, it seemed Liberate rallies sprung up anywhere you could find two or more people, with the day off work, which, in mid April 2020 was pretty much the entire country.
What did they want?
Their demand, on the surface, seemed uncomplicated. The Liberate protesters said they wanted to end the lockdown restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic. That seems simple enough, and also defendable. Countless businesses, and the livelihood of those who depend on those businesses, have either been destroyed or face possible ruin. If you’re able to ignore the reason the nation went on lockdown, of course, the economic devastation needed to end, like yesterday.
Of course, things aren’t that simple. The pandemic, and the lockdown that followed are inseparable. Still, that seemed to be the main goal here – to delegitimize the cause of this economic disaster. There is no global pandemic. COVID-19 is a mild flu, or a cold. Liberals with the sniffles. And if COVID-19 could not be delegitimized, the next step would be to rationalize the consequences. Yes, shutting down the economy will protect American lives, but at what cost?
With COVID-19 out of the picture, all we have is a man-made crisis over nothing.
This way of thinking isn’t a total surprise. We’ve experienced economic disasters before and, just like before, everyone wants it to be over it, but nobody seems very interested in the tough solution. After previous depressions, we were just as willing to fight government oversight and restrictions on the stock market like the Dodd-Frank Act. Unlike before, there is a void of leadership at the top.
As Americans, we were raised to look upward for answers. And if no good answers could be found, then we look to where the buck stops for leadership. Naturally, the buck would stop with the man or woman who’s unenviable task it was to switch off the American economy – a task made especially unenviable since our economy was enjoying a ten year rally, the longest bull economy in history.
Wherever the switch was flipped, we would expect to find an injured, yet noble patriarch who, having been dealt a rotten hand, chose the best shitty path from of a variety of shitty paths. Someone who, in spite of the bad press, would stand by their decision to weather the consequences.
But these days, the buck stops nowhere. These days, the man at the top is a shameless underbusser. Even though the federally prescribed economic lockdown to prevent the overwhelming spread of COVID-19 could only have come from the White House, if you asked the man at the top, it was somebody else’s fault. True leadership fell to those whose responsibility it was to carry out the recommended shut down.
A notable example was the admirable statement by Jerry Hammer, the CEO of the Minnesota State Fair. In a gut-wrenching video announcing the closure of the 2020 State Fair, he pointed out the decision to shutter the Fair was “–not a difficult decision. It’s the only decision.” For his poise and leadership, Jerry Hammer was promptly vilified as a ruiner second only to our current punching bag, governor Tim Walz.
This is how the Liberate rallies were built on a kernel of truth. How, in a vacuum of leadership during an historic economic disaster and compounded by a pandemic of biblical proportions, the Liberate rallies blossomed into a grotesque carnival of entitlements gone wild.
I took a flurry of pictures that day. I hoped that, once I was able to view the images on the computer, the removed perspective would provide some clarity. Something to make sense of it all. But after viewing and editing the pictures, I did nothing with them. They were just too horrible. Yes, they’re full of people smiling and waving and violently churning the American flag (usually my crowd). But the subtext of these photos was just too grim for anything useful.
The subtext here was not even subtext, it was right out in the open. Proudly displayed on signs like, “My rights Trump your fear,” and “Don’t ruin my golf season.”
At first, I was shocked by the signs and the righteous posturing from those holding them. (Didn’t they know this was an embarrassment?) But then, I am also notoriously naive when it comes to the emotional stability and maturity of my countrymen. I often trick myself into presuming we are all on a level. In doing so, I set myself up for frequent disappointments.
But then, I remember how easy we’ve had it as a country. It’s been generations since the American Collective was asked to sacrifice much of anything for the greater good. Perhaps not since food and textile rationing during World War II. Years of privilege has atrophied our ability to consider others. It has shrunk our world view until we are unable to see beyond our own frame of reference. So then, it is not a total mystery that Americans, who have had to sacrifice so little, would react with such astonishing selfishness when we are suddenly expected to sacrifice quite a lot. We’re just not used to it.
This is why the vast majority of those who attended the Liberate rallies were white. It would follow that those with the most privilege would have the most to lose. And so they would complain the loudest.
For what it’s worth, I am glad that some people noticed the disparity between the signs at the Liberate rallies, and the signs at the Black Lives Matter rallies that followed shortly after. One group protests discomfort and demands the return to luxury and leisure. The other group protests being hunted down by racists and cries out to abolish the racist policies of our government.
Now that this disparity is striking, I’m certain many people, taking cues from the President, would claim ignorance – we were caught with our pants down simply because we just didn’t know any better. Or, we refused to believe COVID-19 was anything worse than the flu. But the depths of our selfishness was perhaps made most evident by those who agreed COVID-19 was real, who admitted re-opening the economy would come with dire consequences, that people would die.
The rationale is summed up in a shrug. It’s the shrug that accompanies the phrase about breaking some eggs. Like, if we’re going to get the economy back on track, (shrug) we’re going to have to break a couple eggs.
This is a tall shrug, since it comes from a country that’s been grandstanding since 9/11, since Roe v. Wade and Pearl Harbor, trumpeting the sanctity of American lives, and our swift, steely resolve to promptly shut-down those who would attack us. And here, when presented with a pandemic that is another 9/11, on a much larger scale, and happening in slow-motion, we would reveal our true nature not as a nation who would seize the opportunity to empty the burning towers, but rather, demand their expeditious demolition so that we can get back to our normal lives.