We thought we knew what crazy looked like before. Since the COVID-19 lockdown, we’ve seen crazy go to a whole new place.
We’ve seen food service staffers, already at risk, physically assaulted for mentioning masks. We’ve seen protestors holding up signs decrying the fraud of the coronavirus while laden with PPE. Even more alarming, we’ve seen bearded white rednecks with assault weapons intimidate a governor.
This is crazy.
What changed? Granting that we’ve been surrounded by some pretty over-the-top actors and their to-the-end sycophants and supporters for years now, what pushed them all off the ledge?
The answer is... nothing.
This isn’t new. Nothing has changed. It has always been this way. They have always been this way.
They have always been wary of the world. They have always felt uncomfortable around strangers. They have always regarded their ‘liberty’ as being at risk. This has always guided their thinking and their actions, and it has always simmered just below their conscious surface.
These are people whose natural levels of fear are heightened by a structure in their brains that is tissue-rich, compared to most. Their natural levels of empathy are low, because another brain structure is tissue-poor, compared to most. They have an over-abundant supply of a particular neurotransmitter that causes them to be emotionally and cognitively satisfied with simplistic answers, which likewise discourages contemplation.
They are, put simply, born the way they are. And then they huddle up in groups, and amplify all of those traits in one another.
They have three distinct personality features that drive their burgeoning social dysfunction: they are emotionally compelled to surrender their understanding of themselves, others and the society they live in to a powerful leader perceived to be stronger and wiser than they; they are easily threatened, and perpetually scan the shadows for glowing eyes; and they are emotionally unsettled when the world around them changes, forcing them to adapt, leaving the comforts of their safe routine and status quo behind.
The coronavirus pandemic is a living hell for such minds.
They are surrounded by conflicting authorities at this moment, as their strongman shouts down pandemic experts, their own pundits side with those experts, and their local leaders are quick to retire the disruptive requirements of pandemic response. The clear signals that kept them on course are now filled with screeching noise.
They are surrounded by threats: the Big Brother government stripping them of their freedoms, the liberty-averse liberals calling for their continued acquiescence, the chicken-little doctors on every channel, the economy-wrecking blue governors – and, of course, the virus itself, which is killing tens of thousands every month. In all their lives, they’ve never been more triggered more relentlessly.
They are surrounded by change. Their brains are screaming for the “return to normalcy” that the Senate Majority Leader and others in their authoritarian hierarchy keep stoking. They see the social order that gives them so much emotional relief suddenly reversing, as the people they consider most dismissible rapidly rise in stature and importance. They are being denied access to those places that bolster their identity – their churches, their bars, their bowling alleys, their duck ponds and their shooting ranges – and it is driving them nuts.
Crazy? Yeah. Crazy. The coronavirus is literally driving them crazy, hammering on their A and their T and their U all day, every day. And then they get together and trigger each other to high heaven.
This is who they are. This is who they’ve always been. And corona made this outcome inevitable.
It must be dealt with, and to be dealt with, it must be first understood. We don’t arrive at that understanding by dismissing these people as morally unfit or bereft of intelligence; we get there by considering all the emotional aspects of what we all are going through, and realizing that the diversity we are oh-so-willing to embrace often serves up such challenges.
We can’t change the coronavirus reality; we can only get through it. We can’t change these people or the crazy they’re bringing; this is who they were born to be.
We can only change how we respond.
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