There are, happily, many instances reported of our better angels emerging here and there in the midst of the COVID-19 virus surreality we are now living. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, a more insidious trait is cropping up with regularity as well — that of the informant, the moral custodian who deems him-or-herself judge, jury, and executioner of the coronavirus world order. It is a trait that is annoying on its own, but it takes on a somewhat more sinister character when it receives official government sanction.
People, free people especially, are impatient, and the longer that stay-at-home orders drag out the greater, the degree of enforcement that will be required to maintain them. In the first weeks of the pandemic, people, for the most part, cooperated willingly, recognizing the uniqueness of the circumstances. As we crawl into about the seventh week, those state and local governments that are more inclined to unyielding measures start looking about for means to keep people at home and businesses closed. Since, by and large, America is still managing to retain some of its character, the preference is to do this without tanks and bayonets. What better way than to ask your neighbors to do it for them!
So, we are seeing a tendency for governors and mayors, mainly in blue parts of the country, to issue appeals for the citizenry to report on intransigent neighbors. In doing so, they are tapping a base element of human nature. Social pressure has been a part of societal order from the beginning. Every group of people has among their members the busybodies, those self-appointed moral police that most of us find so irritating, and these are easy for authorities to recruit. But it is a wide spectrum and includes at the other end those whom we would describe as neighborly, who, for instance, we instinctively trust to watch our homes while we are away. These are the type to respond to patriotic appeals to community responsibility.
This type of community self-policing is not necessarily a bad thing. You will recall the iconic World War II posters urging vigilance and the reporting of potential espionage or sabotage. Community watch programs are built upon a mild form of this instinct. Indeed, reliance on the self-policing of a community is generally preferable to authoritarian governmental action when feasible.
But it is a double-edged sword, and the blade turns if immoderately applied. Schoolchildren learn of this duplicity at an early age, when confronted by the admonition against being a “tattle-tale” and the paradoxical encouragement to report serious transgressions.
After Sept. 11, the Bush administration issued calls for the citizenry to be alert and to report suspicious activity in response to fears of follow-up attacks. This received considerable pushback from the civil-liberties crowd (many of whom now ironically sneer at those obstinate enough to not wear a mask or to wonder if it is time to permit commerce to recommence) as creeping fascism. But the useful concept, the one the child (hopefully) learns, is the ability to distinguish — buying enormous quantities of nitrogen-based fertilizer when you reside 50 concrete covered miles from the nearest farm, leaving a bag unattended at an airport, or staking out a school are naturally suspicious activities; playing catch with your daughter in a park, walking alone on a beach, or going to work or the grocery store without looking like you are auditioning for an episode of ER are not.
In Colorado recently, someone (evidently passing the quarantine by making detailed observations of their neighbors’ movements) left a note on a young woman’s windshield, admonishing her for leaving her house in the evenings (without a mask!) and for apparently dropping her baby off at day care during the day.
It turns out, the lady whose basic decency and humanity were being questioned is a 9-1-1 dispatcher who works the night shift.
Hearing of such things is justifiably infuriating. But what is merely irritating at the individual level becomes rather more chilling when the government actively encourages it. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio last week told New Yorkers to send photos of people or businesses not social distancing to satisfaction. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti similarly told his residents that “snitches” would get “rewards” if they report neighbors who are not staying inside.
These are new waters, and the question we must ask ourselves as we grapple with reconciling the medical necessities with the need to restart our social and economic life is: What sort of a nation and society do we want to be when we emerge from this? I pray it is not an Orwellian one in which we cannot leave our homes without worrying about the inculpating glare of our neighbors.
Kelly Sloan (@KVSloan25) is a Denver-based public affairs consultant, columnist, and the energy and environmental policy fellow at the Centennial Institute.
