Both sides to blame for loss of moral authority

Protesters participate in a Defeat the Mandates march in Washington on Sunday. Picture: AFP

On Sunday, 10,000 people marched in Washington DC to protest against vaccine mandates and the Biden administration’s handling of the Covid pandemic.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr (son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of president John F. Kennedy) stood on the podium comparing vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Using fear to excite his audience, RFK Jr said “none of us can run and none of us can hide” because of Bill Gates’s satellites and also 5G. He continued: “Even in Hitler’s Germany … you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did.”

In 1993, Australian art critic Robert Hughes published a book about American culture that now seems prescient, if not clairvoyant. Titled The Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America, Hughes decried the rise of demagoguery, tribalism and what he called an “infantilised culture, in which Big Daddy is always to blame, and the expansion of rights goes on without the other half of citizenship – attachment to duties and obligations”.

Rather than viewing vaccination during a pandemic as a patriotic or societal obligation, like volunteer firefighting, military service or following the road rules, vaccination is viewed by these protesters as an assault on the sacrosanct integrity of the individual.

It is a fact that being vaccinated helps reduce the risk of passing Covid on to others. Even against Omicron, boosters of vaccines designed to combat earlier variants reduce the risk of symptomatic Covid infection by half.

Instead of a rational interpretation of the benefits of vaccination to the individual and society, anti-vaxxers prefer to elevate their personal feelings, and if they feel that taking a vaccine is an abrogation of their rights that is all that matters.

In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy reminded Americans that their God-given right to liberty also came with responsibility to their fellow citizens. He said, “Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.”

Contrast this with the rhetoric of leaders today, who invoke petty tribalism and childish contrarianism to further their careers, and split the country into two. “If Donald Trump tells us to take (the vaccine), I’m not taking it,” declared Kamala Harris, now the US Vice-President, in 2020.

The anti-vaccine movement, which for years was associated more with the left than the right, has found new converts among anti-establishment Republicans, libertarians and fringe groups such as QAnon. What these groups have in common is a lack of trust in establishment institutions, from mainstream media, education, the electoral system, party politics, Big Tech, science, financial institutions and almost all forms of government.

Conspiracy theories, particularly those associated with “global elites”, extrapolate the lack of trust people feel in one institution (such as universities) to all institutions.

Don’t trust the mainstream media? Then you shouldn’t trust scientists, either. Don’t trust pharmaceutical companies? Then you shouldn’t trust public health measures, doctors or the epidemiologist on television. Lack of trust is exploited and exaggerated until the only people who are trusted are the gurus who promise that they alone hold the truth.

While alarming and dismaying, this lack of trust has not emerged overnight and a great deal of responsibility for it must be owned by both sides of the political aisle. In the ’90s Hughes wrote: “Shifting blame to an elite, or declaring your enemies to be one, is one of the oldest tools in the demagogic kit. Elites are snobbish, out of touch with the people, arrogant, secretive, and plain un-American. Best of all, their members need not be named.”

If both the left and right were to be honest with themselves they would acknowledge that decades of right-wing economic policies that have gutted the middle class, and decades of left-wing cultural grievance mongering that have destroyed the prestige of institutions, have created a situation where the establishment has lost its moral authority.

This loss of moral authority means that leaders are unable to inspire people to take their civic duties seriously.

From left-wing liberals to right-wing libertarians, American culture has suffered from an overemphasis on rights and a lack of attention paid to responsibilities. What the country now needs is a leader who can help people to find common ground in the American project, overcome their differences, and feel pride in fulfilling their patriotic duty. Instead of listening to RFK Jr, Americans might want to remember the immortal words of his deeply respected uncle, who entreated: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Claire Lehmann is the founding editor of Quillette, a platform for free thought.