Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - September 2020: On Exceptionalism

Good morning/afternoon/evening!

If you're like me, you spend an unhealthy amount of time imagining a zombie apocalypse. You imagine being the last of the survivors, soaring above the hoard by helicopter--but if you're really like me, you soon realize the odds are much greater of becoming a zombie. Who says I'm the main character? What entitles me to survival?

Look, I don't like wearing a mask. Cloth over my face ruins every outfit and squishes my nose and traps me with my own breath. My chewing-gum budget has gone off the rails. Yes, the vast majority of COVID patients survive--but sickness still sucks, and if death is to be preventable, it must first be seen as possible. Why should COVID spare me?

Not one of the world's million-plus people who have died was supposed to catch this.

At the same time, nobody was not supposed to catch this, either. When I was about five years old, my father explained to me how lucky I was to have been born in the United States. Kids in other countries sometimes died before adulthood or were forced into factories and mines, anonymously used up, erased. He never said lives mattered more here--that's just what I inferred, and I grew to see myself as a star, a protagonist on a high stage. Never would I be expendable. A forcefield rose up around my country, wrapped me in a cocoon.

Maybe Hollywood conditions us for exceptionalism. In action movies, henchmen tumble out of planes and off of skyscrapers. Sidekicks sacrifice themselves. CGI cities crumble just so two superheroes can have their epic battle, buildings and bridges never populated with real people to begin with. How could I not feel like a protagonist? If I were an extra, I'd be in one of those other cars. My soundtrack booms through the speakers and affirms my story. There's a reason we say I'm stuck in traffic and not I am traffic. We hate hordes and exempt ourselves from anything faceless--and maybe that's what makes facemasks so loathsome.

In my experience, the people who complain the most about others not following the CDC's COVID guidelines are the same ones fudging those very guidelines--wiggling their bubbles wider and posting group pics, nary a mask in sight. Is this not exceptionalism? Hypocritical heroes congregate and commiserate, blaming churchgoers and Republicans--those damned, backwards others!--for spreading the disease. In the 2005 smash hit DOOM, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson exclaims "I'm not supposed to die!" before getting gobbled up by the space demons, and I think about that philosophy to this very day.

Any movie can kill a protagonist.

Traffic trickles past a car crash. The planet keeps turning, and I wonder sometimes if I already own the outfit in which I will die. These thoughts aren't a bummer--respecting life means respecting its opposite, and even if I've been a hypocrite at times, I hope I'm at least consistent in my mask-wearing and isolation.

Staying safe means following the rules. Period. So on that note, I hope you've been well--and please stay safe.

Infinite Regards,

Jay