We Will Not Be Denied Our Freedom to Consume Ourselves

By ART CULLEN

If you thought the pandemic or climate crisis would cause us to change our lifestyles, think again.

Airlines are overwhelmed with the post-vaccination surge this summer. In late July, we flew to South Bend for a wedding. Our 60-passenger plane taking off from Fort Dodge was surprisingly occupied. O’Hare was a throng. A fellow from New York had been there 12 hours after a flight cancellation home. The airlines couldn’t meet the demand. He was fit to be tied.

A week later, I drove to an Iowa Farmers Union picnic near Des Moines. Men were lined up at the restroom at the Hwy. 4&20 truck stop. When have you seen men lined up at a restroom, except at a Hawkeye game? And since when is Hwy. 20 busy?

Last weekend, I drove to the Twin Cities for the annual reunion with the college roomies cancelled last summer. I would have driven through hellfire to get there. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper at 70 mph from Mankato to Minneapolis on Hwy. 169. By 11 a.m. on Friday, I-494 along the south edge of the cities crawled at 10 mph from the west side to the east. It’s busy as ever.

Thinkers were thinking a year ago, when air traffic was down 80%, that we would suppress our urge to take flight and Zoom more. We are Zooming plenty, but flying and road warrioring nonetheless.

Everybody wants to break out from the prison of self-isolation, me among the first. I am bracing myself for a run through the Midwest in September and October for screenings of the documentary film “Storm Lake” — Iowa premiere is at the Vista Theatre in Storm Lake Sept. 16, with shows in Iowa City, Des Moines and Sioux City, plus Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Yet, this Delta variant insists on expressing itself and has me wondering. Since my shot in April, I have felt like an Ironman. But now we’re hearing that some people might need a boost. The vaccinated can carry a heavy viral load without knowing what they’re exhaling. People will not be told to wear a mask or to get the shots — some Tyson workers in Tennessee (including a nurse) were protesting required vaccinations last week. “We don’t want to lose anyone,” CEO Donnie King said.

During World War II in the tiny farming community of St. Joe, near Algona, nearly everyone pitched in with the war effort by rationing. Those who didn’t and were found out were paid a visit by a delegation of hay balers whose sons or brothers died at Normandy. Now, it may take children dying to get everyone to wear a face mask at a funeral — which I did not last week and realized I probably should have the moment I walked out — or to get vaccinated.

Hospitalizations of children are surging now.

Despite an epic drought in Minnesota where the lawns are brown and the corn spindly in spots, and wildfires spreading throughout the West, our wanderlust drives us like ever before. We must get it in before school starts, where children will not be required to wear masks. Even hospital nurses are not required to vaccinate. Freedom to be self-absorbed has consequences.

The hope, then, is that the drug makers can make pace with the mutations through the wonders of genetic targeting. Keep those booster shots coming. We have blown opportunities to snuff the virus: first, by avoiding a real lockdown in spring 2020, then by dodging masks and isolation, and finally by half the country being bamboozled into believing that vaccines are Satan’s spawn. We did not have Fox News during World War II in St. Joe.

We can hope, too, that technology can save us from ourselves in the form of electric cars and homes, or that airplanes can fly on algae (they can), and that we can somehow provide 8 billion people a chicken in every pot without boiling the cook. Who would have thought 10 years ago that your wristwatch could talk to you to an address in Varina?

It’s clear by now that mandates are for Communists and other authoritarians, and that there is a climate problem, but I’ll be jiggered if gasoline runs over $3 a gallon or bacon stays so high. We might have to buy yellow jackets like the French and turn over carts in the streets. Pray for innovation born of necessity. Sturgis must go on.

Art Cullen, managing editor of The Progressive Populist, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in his day job as editor of The Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He is author of the book “Storm Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2021

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