First of all
Mr. Crane, do not take the
name of dog in vane. I warn you, I'm an animal lover!
Secondly, the gentleman behind this policy really
believes in what he is doing. But like many of us, he lives in a self-reinforcing information bubble. I know for a fact that he is a very intelligent guy, but he has a totally different background than I do.
I was raise by parents who were not "rich" but with more money than average, and
way more than I will ever have. In spite of myself, I had a first class education forced down my throat, one that emphasized being truly
open minded. I had smart, educated parents who took me with them a couple of times when they travelled to Latin America or Europe. I even have a brainy older brother who went to undergrad at Dartmouth and graduate school at Oxford. Our neighbor and his best friend was truly a genius and went to Princeton, and has a couple of PhDs in theoretical physics and music or something. In short, I'm a struggling
middle class dummy who grew up around a lot of smart and
well educated people.
My friend running the MA association that I belong to is also
really smart, but from a southern, right-wing, religious fundamentalist background. He is very articulate and writes quite well, but is self-educated past high school. He chose to serve his country honorably in the military and study martial arts rather than go to college. He is a creationist who believes the earth is about 6,000 years old, that the Bible is the literal word of God, and he favors extremely right-wing perspectives. Sometimes he leans towards outright conspiracy theories (like the whole "birther" thing), and his view of this pandemic reflects that. In short, he quickly learns whatever he puts his mind to. He just puts his mind into a
very different place than I do. And overalI, I place a high value on the
principle of tolerance, he favors
intolerance as a principle.
...But, there you see, we are both
men of principle!
Oh, and we both love animals. He was super sympathetic when he heard I just had to euthanize my dear old cat that I had the last 16 years.
Regardless, many people share my friends point of view. Calling them fools, nincompoops, or "deplorables" doesn't help any more than labeling those of the other point of view as socialists, snowflakes, or "elites". Finding common ground is probably the greatest challenge of the moment ...right up there with stopping this pandemic. Heck, you really can't do one without the other. So let's start by not calling each other names.