By Edwin Cooney
"They're out back," said the lovely lady manager of our watering hole as I entered wearing my mask. Lunkhead was happily puffing on his lit cigar and Dunderhead seemed to be up to his ears in peanuts! As I made my way to a seat at the table set six feet to the right of Lunkhead and six feet to the left of Dunderhead.
Lunkhead was mask-less while Dunderhead wore a mask with a 1960’s peace symbol on it.
“Where'd you get that?" I asked him.
"My old lady," said Dunderhead. "She always knits while singing Beatles songs. She refuses to change!" he insisted as he popped a handful of peanuts into his mouth. "Where's your mask?" I asked Lunkhead. "President Trump says he'll loan me one of his when he starts wearing one," said Lunkhead taking a healthy sip of his scotch.
“Since you’re supposed to be wearing a mask when you enter, the only reason he's in here is because he sufficiently pulled up his turtle neck,” wisecracked Dunderhead.
“So, guys,” I asked, “how much opening up should we do now that 100,000 Americans have died from COVID-19?”
"All the way!” exclaimed Lunkhead, pointing his cigar at Dunderhead. “It isn't any government's business to protect us against disease, so they can't and they won't. If we're to remain the land of the free, we must be the home of the brave!”
"Brave!" exclaimed Dunderhead. "What's so brave about insisting on the right to make a buck?"
"Look," said Lunkhead, “as Winston Churchill once told the Canadian Parliament on December 30th, 1941: ‘We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.’ Every sensible person realizes that there's no gain without risk. We're a nation of over 330,000,000. Even if we lose 2,000,000 people, that's only about seven tenths of one percent of our whole population. Besides," asserted Lunkhead, "anyone who's afraid to die doesn't deserve to live!"
“Nuts!" shouted Dunderhead. “Even during wartime we acknowledge people in our population who are ineligible for service in the armed forces. What you're doing, Lunkhead, is putting the entire population at risk. Neither George the Third nor Jefferson Davis, Hitler, or Stalin ever did that to their people!"
“Bull-puckey!” Lunkhead shot back. "It isn't about military service. It's about something that's everybody's business. It's about freedom! My freedom, Dunderhead, doesn't end where your fear begins!"
“Look, Lunkhead,” I said. “You don't possess any freedom once you're dead! Besides, the value of your freedom and mine means zilch unless and until the opportunity it creates is fulfilled. During wartime you might reasonably argue that the chances of the nation's freedom increases with the death of every enemy soldier, but we're fighting a disease rather than a government. Too often, you conservatives use freedom as a license to do what you damned well please, rather than for doing what you clearly ought to do!
“How can you use numbers to evaluate the legitimate price you're willing to pay when making a national decision, Lunkhead?” I asked.
"As I said before, government has no legitimate business when it comes to preventing or fighting disease. Fighting disease is the people's business not the government’s," Lunkhead insisted. “Government is constitutionally responsible for fighting wars — not pandemics!"
"Nuts," asserted Dunderhead, “we expect government to put out our fires, rescue us from floods and earthquakes, and set safety standards for everything from food to the design of homes, hotels, hospitals, and freeways. That's the way it has to be, because private builders and manufacturers would play fast and loose with goods and services if they weren't regulated. Besides, since our very founding, states and local communities have quarantined people against the spread of diseases like typhus, diphtheria, and, of course, the flu. Lunkhead is saying that unless we're prepared or unless we dare to die, we don't deserve to live — that's nuts!" Dunderhead said slamming down his beer glass (something he seldom does). "His patriotism seems to be more about him, his opportunities and, in one way or another, all about the state of people's pocketbooks rather than about their well-being. Notice, Lunkhead, I said ‘well-being’ not ‘welfare.’ I know what you'd do with welfare even though it's in the Preamble of the Constitution.”
"Can we live without Lunkhead's idea of a vibrant economy?" I asked Dunderhead.
"That's exactly the challenge," said Dunderhead. "Our job is to make life, as it temporarily is, functional. If people personally are willing to take that chance of not socially distancing, that's their prerogative so long as they can live their lives without affecting the lives of others. Remember, Mother Nature is neither liberal nor conservative. She's both nonpartisan and non-American. Her virus will take anyone who invites it into their system even if they've only done so by accidentally coming in contact with someone while exercising their precious liberty. People like Lunkhead believe they can guarantee their safety with their wealth and significance. They’re willing to let other’s lives amount to little more than a game of chance! Get it straight, Lunkhead. Neither you nor I are granted, by anybody's constitution or anybody's bible, the right to make other people sick!"
“That's Dunderhead," said Lunkhead, "he's always looking for someone to guarantee his carcass no matter how much it costs!"
Suddenly, both men were on their feet headed for their side by side bungalows.
Once more I was left with the check. This time, however, I was also left with the certainty that one of them was absolutely right.
Guess which one!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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