Standing Up
This is a photograph, taken by Michael Chow of The Arizona Republic newspaper, of an ICU nurse named Lauren Leander. Ms. Leander held a silent counter-protest at an Arizona rally where Trump supporters demanded their governor “open the state for business.”
There are other reported instances in which nurses stared down the armed men Trump encouraged to “liberate” their states from pandemic-related restrictions. In one case, nurses stood in the streets, silent sentinels of the American conscience, to block a caravan of protesters who intended to snarl traffic in front of a hospital, delaying ambulance crews racing to emergency rooms with patients requiring urgent care.
In 1776, Thomas Paine published a series of essays with the overall title of The American Crisis. Paine urged the colonists to rise against the British army, which was then occupying towns and cities throughout the colonies. Times were grim, and Paine sought to buck up morale.
George Washington and his army were wintering that year at McKonkey’s Ferry on the Delaware River near Trenton, New Jersey. Washington’s army had experienced several defeats, morale was low, and thousands of soldiers deserted the army for the relative safety of their homes. The rebellion of the colonists was in danger of collapse.
One of Paine’s essays so inspired Washington that he had it read aloud to his soldiers.
“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
The nurses inspire all of us. They are daily exposed to a myriad of circumstances in which they might be infected by the coronavirus, yet they make the time (and assume the risk of additional exposure to the virus) to protest the insanity fomented by our president.
Inspiring, yes. But here’s the problem: they are standing alone.
“[T]he summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country …”
The rest of us are obeying “safer at home” orders, a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But we’re relying on — indeed, implicitly begging — a small group of nurses, who are already battling to save lives in ICUs across the nation, to save our republic.
“[B]ut he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The fact that nurses are standing alone indicates there is a deep and shameful disfunction in our body politic. The rest of us are failing to fulfill our responsibilities as citizens. As we retreated into our homes, we abandoned the defense of the nation.
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered …”
I didn’t venture out when “Open Up” protesters gathered on the lawn of the Wisconsin state capitol. I have a lung disease, and I’m on oxygen full time, so even before the pandemic I wasn’t very mobile. Wandering through a group of people now, for me, would almost certainly prove fatal
But … But … I didn’t think about how I might have staged a counter-protest without exposing myself to the virus — I just assumed that I could do nothing. I gave up before I began, which isn’t a good attitude for a foot soldier in the long war to possess.
What could I have done? Well, numerous “car protests” have been organized to demand everything from an increase in unemployment benefits to the protection of out-of-work renters from landlords. So, I could have taped signs on my car and driven slowly around Capitol Square, giving witness against a death cult while avoiding exposure to the virus.
That I assumed I could do nothing, that I settled into my easy chair with a comfortable alibi and a cup of tea, represents a failure of imagination on my part. However, I do know, now, what kind of neighbor I’m in danger of becoming: one of the people known to history as a “Good German.” I saw and did nothing.
“Yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
There may or may not be other things that I can do, but I know that in the future I can’t give up without seriously and creatively considering what might be done, however small. But there is one thing I must never do again: I must never allow a nurse named Lauren Leander stand alone.
