I was walking across the Seine in 2007 going over in my head the explanations and arguments I might make to clear up all the misunderstandings, and there were many. My relationship of more than three years had ended — first, it was I who wanted to end it, then months later she who didn’t want to try again — but the thing that stuck with me (and I honestly cannot even remember the details now) was that if only she understood, there would be I’m not sure what, but it would be good.
It was February, and I went on a trip to Europe by myself to do something with my vacation time between the Super Bowl and start of baseball season. I had only been to Europe once, also Paris, with a half-French friend at his grandmother’s apartment in 1989. (Little did I know I would live in Portugal years later in what seems like another life.)
But crossing the river, I had what might be called an epiphany, though that word connotes a sense of happiness in discovery that was the opposite of what I felt. I realized none of my arguments and explanations would ever matter, the relationship was over and the my only move was to embrace the sense of bitter disappointment in not being understood. That was it. The bitter taste of black coffee during a fast, no toast with butter and jam, no bacon and eggs. It wasn’t the satisfaction for which I had hoped, but it was a taste of something. And I understood it would sustain me were I willing to partake of it.
. . .
When Covid hit, I took it seriously. I remember scolding my partner Heather and our then eight-year old daughter to wash their hands every time we got back from the park, and I even glared at one of our friends when she tried to help Heather up when she had slipped in the mud during a hike. Hard to believe, but I too was a nazi about it.
But something changed in early 2021. Maybe it was the weekend getaway where we got drunk with friends indoors for the first time at an Airbnb, my positive antibodies test a few months later or the non-sensical and contradictory messaging from our media and once-esteemed health institutions. Whatever the causes, I lost my fear of covid entirely, and once freed from this distortion, nearly everything people were doing struck me as absurd. As a person who has always felt the need — one might call it a compulsion even — to tell the truth as I see it, I started posting my observations to my Twitter following. The response often surprised me:
While there were mostly positive responses, the negative ones ranged from calling me a “piece of shit” (mild) to being accused of killing people. I worked in an industry that was “very online” and also willing to buy the narrative (at least publicly) with few exceptions. I wasn’t worried for my job (I was a part-owner of the business), but it had the potential to harm my partners and make aspects of my professional life unpleasant. The misunderstandings from the tweet and the subsequent back and forth got so out of hand, I even wrote a long-form post clarifying my position and going after the intentional gaslighters.
As I said, many more people connected with what I was saying in a positive way, and a bunch of Twitter bullies weren’t going to silence me, but the more I posted, the more certain elements of my online world felt justified and comfortable attacking me in a way they would not have dared before I outed myself as a heretic of sorts. As always, I tried to post only what I felt to be true and guard against falling into any kind of ideology or political identity, no matter how many inaccurate labels the mob tried to pin on me. Time will always prove one’s observations more or less accurate, and I was willing to face its verdict on the basis of what I said. Because I was no longer afraid of the virus, and others were, or because I didn’t seek to belong to a particular tribe, I was reasonably confident the verdict would fall in my favor — the thinker with the fewest biases has the best chance to get it right. But, even more strongly, I felt people trying to silence me or twist my words into the equivalent of manslaughter had lost their minds, even if I turned out to be wrong about any of the particulars, like the inefficacy of outdoor masking, and later, the uselessness of the vaccine passes.
. . .
When the CDC more or less admitted later that cloth masks (the ones in question in my tweet) don’t work well even indoors where the virus actually spreads, and its head, Rochelle Walensky, admitted she misled the public when she asserted the vaccine would stop the spread and end the pandemic, I was relieved that finally the establishment health organs, with whose edicts my detractors seemed so eager to comply, had come around to the truth. In a sane world, all those who publicly slung so much vitriol my way without provocation (I was not going to their timelines and engaging with them, they were finding my posts and coming after me) in front of all our mutual colleagues, would retract their statements and apologize for being caught up in groupthink-driven panic. I would get satisfaction, and the few holdouts who were too embarrassed to admit their error would be isolated, like criminals who fled justice and lived hiding in shameful exile.
But that’s not exactly how it went.
No one apologized, or acknowledged I was correct about outdoor masking as irrelevant to public health. Or that there was no correlation whatsoever between vaccine uptake and case levels, or that the masks virtually everyone was wearing, and for which they were advocating, had no effect on the spread at all (except possibly to increase it). Worse, no one even acknowledged the damage they tried to inflict on my reputation and ability to earn a livelihood as a result of these errors. In fact, they continued to snark about me and pepper in an occasional insult or dunk out of the blue, but tellingly without offering any substantive critiques or engaging with the content of my posts.
That the things I had posted and been ridiculed for turned out to be correct wasn’t relevant. I was guilty of heresy, and heresy isn’t determined by a finding of fact. It’s a strict liability crime, so to speak. If you voice a view that differs from that of the church, you are going to hell for the crime of defying the church itself. You can make all the rational arguments you want, clarify the ways in which they were hypocritical, illiberal, illogical and dishonest, but you’re still guilty because at the time, your views were out of step.
In fact, I would argue, among a certain cohort, the more correct your views turned out to be, the less chance you have of receiving satisfaction from those who attacked you for them. Because not only were you out of step with the consensus, but you’re also a source of potential embarrassment for the especially strident. Your continued existence as a member of the community is a threat to their standing as smart, decent and reasonable people. Your heresy was initially only an affront to their worldviews, but now your continued heresy and existence in the community is a threat to their own reputations and self-conceptions. They needed to finish the job when they went after you, and that they didn’t or couldn’t is only made worse as the non-zealots come around.
I don’t believe all of this is conscious. Your existence, both for dissenting and worse for being right, now carries terrible associations for them, and they hate you for it. Had you been wrong, they could pity you and forgive your transgression, scold you and, by their good graces, accept you back. But being right is unforgivable because you’ve embarrassed them and, whether they acknowledge it to themselves or not, revealed the failure of their processes.
. . .
It’s been heartening to find so many like-minded people who understand what’s going on and serve as a bulwark against the despair one can feel in a society based on lies. That one is not alone is watching the unsightly naked emperor posture and pose strengthens one’s resolve to tell the truth as best one can. But the lesson I learned in Paris has been brought home again: that life is not typically in the business of delivering satisfaction.
One is unlikely to be rewarded for dissenting. The world will not acknowledge you, your friends will not see you as prescient or ethical or righteous. If only you could be understood, given your due for that which you stood, there would be I’m not sure what, but it would be good! Instead, you get to embrace the feeling of disappointment, of not getting something extra for holding to the truth in the face of lies. To be earnest and sincere is its own reward. As Marlo Stanfield says, “You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.”
But perhaps that is how it should be. When there’s a reward or an incentive, people who get applauded for being on Team Good will feign it. It’s the very basis for the manipulative virtue signaling, on account of which people attack heretical views in the first place. Of course, you will not be rewarded for being naively, sincerely, heretically honest!
This isn’t a new phenomenon. The question of why one should stand for what’s true, even if it’s not in one’s short-term interest, has been with us for millennia:
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
. . .
Telling the obvious truth about covid in a hostile (online) environment hardly makes one a prophet, and the persecution one receives in 2022, though harsh in some cases, pales in comparison to the real thing back in the day. But the sentiment — that being attacked and slandered for telling the truth is good karma, so to speak — stands. Take solace in it. The more unfair nonsense you get, the better it is for your character, your soul.
Even if it wasn’t the satisfaction for which I had hoped, it was a taste of something. And I understood it would sustain me were I willing to partake of it.