The latest thing for Americans to fight about

The alarm went off like a chainsaw next to my ear, shredding through the reverie of my last dreams. It's day whatever the heck this is of the coronavirus conflict.

The bike shop continues to receive repair work faster than we can get through it. This is typical for spring, and much of the summer. Because it's felt like April for a month and a half already, it still seems early in the year. Indeed, in many previous years we would still be ramping up, even this late in the month, as winter might have hung on, or public interest might focus elsewhere. The number of people stuck at home looking at their possessions has reminded many of them that they own bikes. Forced leisure gives them the time to bring them down to us.

Protective procedures make the work cumbersome. Every trip to check in a repair or go to the basement where most of the bikes await service requires going through two locked doors, with some degree of decontamination outgoing and incoming. The same is true of any outdoor test riding. Meanwhile, we share a parking lot with businesses that attract people who are conspicuously less concerned about such precautions. Local case numbers appear to support their point of view. How much of this is the result of the virus's long incubation period? How much is the result of a lack of comprehensive testing? Or are there really very few infected people, and the disease is hardly spreading around here?

Dealing with an invisible foe, we each have to decide for ourselves how strongly to react. After work yesterday, I went up the street to a nearby grocery store. I wore a mask. A handful of other people did as well, but the majority did not. There were few people in the store. None of the staff wore masks. The checkout girl and the stock boy radiated contempt, whether they realized it or not. I concluded my business as quickly as possible and walked back to my car on the nearly deserted sidewalks.

All over the country, people are rebelling against the restrictions of social distancing. In Michigan it led to armed idiots demonstrating outside the capitol building. Protests have also taken place in North Carolina, Ohio, and elsewhere.

Protests like these are largely the result of Americans living pampered lives. Poverty is relative. Relative poverty is still a disadvantage in a prosperous country. Americans are accustomed to levels of comfort and freedom of expression that are far above the norm in countries truly ravaged by shortage or constrained by authoritarianism. The American Dream is based on self indulgence and unfettered imagination. Not everyone has much of an imagination, but whatever they do have is free to roam. We get to see every day how many of them only roam as far as the gun shop and a gathering with irritable friends for some live action role playing. But that's only part of the story of generations of cultivated attention deficit disorder. Since the end of World War II, white Americans have been asked less and less to put up with anything for too long.

Some things have dragged on. The war in Afghanistan has been going on longer than any conflict in our history. But it's far away and involves relatively few Americans in body bags. The War on Terror has faded to a system of inconveniences now permanently attached to air travel, and a radicalized Immigration, Customs and Border Protection force, as well as domestic surveillance measures that go on in the background subtly and continuously. The majority of people never have to notice them directly. We were encouraged at the time to consume at our normal rate to prove that the terrorists had not defeated us.

After 9-11, the period of national unity lasted about 30 hours before the responses diverged into an argument about what to do next. Even the 30 hours was an illusion. The fractures were as immediate as the structural failure in the twin towers, though less spectacular. We were just too stunned in the immediate moment to form our thoughts into plans.

The current crisis is far more difficult for people to comprehend. When you've decided that your enemies are brown people of a certain religion, rightly or wrongly you can at least see them without a microscope. Even though some have highlighted the Chinese aspect of COVID-19, beating up Asians  does even less to fight the problem than persecuting every Muslim does to reduce the incidence of that particular type of fundamentalist terrorism.

A right-wing friend of mine used to splutter with indignation when Black Lives Matter protesters would block a highway.

"What if an ambulance needs to get through? What if there's a fire somewhere?" he grumbled.

Yesterday, protesters you could say "identify as conservative" took part in demonstrations designed to stop traffic in Lansing, Michigan.

When this is over, it will be another event over which we can divide ourselves, just like civil rights, women's rights, the Vietnam War, and the environment. We're still arguing about the American War of Independence and the Civil War. Nazi sympathizers didn't want us to join the Allies in World War II. When the majority prevails it ushers in a period of some uniformity of behavior, but minority opinion doesn't miraculously evaporate. "What did you do during COVID-19?" will become another qualifying question. Did you overreact? Did you blow it off? Was your point of view vindicated or discredited? Will we be sure?

The pro-death faction divides roughly into the strain that believes most people will get mildly ill or not feel sick at all, and the one that believes that serious illness and death are just part of life that we should all embrace for the greater good of our healthy herd and our glorious economy. To the survivors go the spoils! It's the perfect mass casualty scenario, because we don't really have to blame anyone. It was the disease, man. What could anyone have done? We're all better off now. Ya gotta die of something! Whatever happens, be assured that they will feel no shame in the outcome. And a great many of them will survive.

The people who want to force us back together are akin to suicide bombers. They may not have the certainty of their own death that the wearer of a bomb vest or the pilot of a vehicle filled with explosives would have, but they are nonetheless forcing their belief system onto unwilling participants. Some people will die as a result. There are many ways in which responsibility can drift like a bad fart on a calm day, never settling on anyone in particular, so we will never get the closure of saying for certain who dealt what. We fall back onto belief systems, each of us in our own imagined world, to make what peace we can with any of it.

We're essential

Bike shops made the list of essential businesses when New Hampshire's governor imposed a stay-at-home order yesterday.

Work trickles in. We're not letting people into the shop, although we might relax that in specific cases. Just don't be offended if we follow you around with a can of disinfectant spray and hose everything down right after you touch it. And if you cough or sneeze in the store, expect to leave in a body bag.

Only kidding. We would have to touch your body to stuff it. We'll just envelop you in a choking fog of Lysol as we whip you toward the exit.

El Queso Grande is working overtime, which for him is working as much as he usually does, to make more of our inventory visible for online browsing. You will still have to pay over the phone and pick up the items outside the shop. He's also looking into connecting to Quality Bicycle Products for their program that allows you to shop their inventory as long as you pay through a retailer. That would be us. In that case, your selections would arrive at your door thanks to the efforts of our friends in the shipping companies, who are keeping what's left of the economy moving from provider to consumer.

The weather continues to tease with alternating days of sunshine and sort of mild temperatures giving way to treats like Monday's seven inches of snow. The early spring sunshine has scorched all of that away, leaving only the tenacious remnants of the winter's feeble snowpack, but it certainly made for a day or two of inferior riding conditions. More common is the "wintry mix" that might bring an inch of wet snow and sleet along with hypothermia-inducing cold rain. That seems to come along about every three days. I have yet to launch the commute, partly because of my lackluster preparations and partly because I still need to be the designated errand runner while the cellist waits for clearance to put weight on her recently fractured leg. She's also working from home, teaching her students via internet during the school shutdown, while I venture out at least four days a week to my now-essential contribution to society.