[SailinAway]

In my original post I meant to emphasize the "cult of selfishness" described in the Times opinion piece more than masks---masks are just an illustration.

The cult of selfishness is a huge change from decades ago and very striking today. I think it has gotten us into terrible trouble on many fronts. If you go back to the national war effort in World War II, you see that the whole nation pulled together and people were willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of the country, meaning their fellow citizens. With their efforts, we survived the war and were able to rebuild our lives. You also saw this in some but not all European countries, during both World War II and the pandemic. This is clearly not the case in the US today.

I realize that Krugman's article is highly partisan, but anyone 60 years or older remembers a time when there was no national cult of selfishness and greed, regardless of what party was in power. We never heard of road rage. People didn't cut in front of you in waiting lines. Tradesmen and doctors charged you what you could afford and didn't cheat you. Lower-middle-class workers could afford a reasonably priced house. People knew when their neighbors were in need and offered help. Any many more examples.

I don't think any society can survive with a cult of selfishness. If the goal of selfishness is to enhance personal wealth, freedom, etc., that seems doomed to fail, especially in a pandemic. What are you going to do with all that money and freedom when the virus catches up with you and kills you?

Krugman writes, "What they call 'freedom' is actually absence of responsibility." I love my freedom as much as anyone else. But people with an understanding of what it means to live in a society with other people also understand that you have to have equal measures of freedom and responsibility. If you're the parent of teenagers, you know how hard that is for adolescents. We have reverted to an adolescent understanding of freedom.

It just seems so obvious to me, as a basic moral principle that holds true in all times and all places, that the freedoms I want to claim for myself can't hurt or kill others. How have we strayed so far from this basic idea?