For those of us who have been following every possible precaution– washing our hands till our skin starts to split, stitching Tee shirts into face coverings, redirecting our community strolls as soon we see somebody approaching a block away, thereby confusing the hell out of our pet dogs– scenes of anti-quarantine protests on the news have actually been surreal. It’s still uncertain how grassroots this motion really is; reporting recommends that the biggest Facebook groups objecting shelter-in-place constraints are run by a family of pro-gun activists known for their coordinated adjustment efforts. Whether they’re astroturfed a little or a lot, genuine protests have actually been taking place, often with excellent cinematic eeriness It makes good sense that we– we reporters, we influencers, we everyday people– would want to get to the bottom of what’s happening, and feel obliged to reveal our disgust and issue and despair.
However we need to be mindful. Regardless of our professions or the size of our audiences, how we react to these protests will become part of the story itself. The unfolding of that story will have widespread, life-and-death repercussions.
The impulse, obviously– especially within journalism– is to read every detail. We need to hold this ugliness up to public scrutiny, to better understand it and refute it. In left-wing and centrist media, this has actually been the standard approach to a variety of MAGA goings-on, from the development of the so-called alt-right to the explosion of far-right conspiracy theorizing. In the beginning look, such a position seems entirely sensible. However it has the unusual propensity to separate the story from the individual telling it. Media analysts– whether professional reporters or daily social-media users– take on the function of wildlife photographers, as if it were their job to head out into the wilderness and record what they see without predisposition or intervention.
Of course, the natural surroundings isn’t an unique area populated just by wild animals. The natural surroundings subsumes everything, consisting of photographers. The same holds true online. We may think we can comment from a goal “ view from no place” In practice, nevertheless, there’s no place outside the story to stand. We are, every one of us, fundamentally embedded within our environments. Every single thing we do affects the world around us.
In the case of anti-quarantine protests, even our most well intentioned reactions can make the Covid-19 storm stronger and more harmful over
