Head Tale

It’s an interesting question about how we should feel when someone makes bad, ill-informed choices that lead directly to their death.

*Of course* every death is sad.  *But maybe* it’s not quite as sad when someone willingly makes a conscious choice to avoid even the most basic Covid precautions and then ends up dying of Covid?

Decorum says you can’t speak ill of the dead. But maybe reality and our current circumstances say otherwise?

Because, on one hand, Luke Letlow was a 41-year old man with no pre-existing conditions who had a wife and two young children and was poised to take a major step in his political career as a recently elected congress person.

On the other hand, if you repeatedly put a single bullet in a revolver, spin the chamber, and put it in your mouth then pull the trigger, there’s a good chance that eventually the result won’t be good.

So, since my last two posts of the year will be my usual “First Lines of Every Month” post on December 30 and my “End of Year Memes” post on December 31, this is a bit of a weird way to end 2020.

But given what a strange year it’s been and how 300,000+ Americans have simply blurred into a single statistical blob, an ever-increasing counter on CNN instead of being remembered as real people with families, jobs, histories, passions, contributions, it seems fitting to treat a Republican congress person who tied himself to Donald Trump and was regularly photographed not wearing a mask, even at events featuring elderly veterans, as a cautionary tale.  (This isn’t a Republican thing – I regularly hear younger, healthier, presumably more liberal and/or more educated Canadians say some variation of “I’m young – if I get it, I’ll be okay” which leaves me shaking my head – “actually, you don’t know that for sure.  You *can’t* know that for sure.”  And honestly, there are *some* conservatives who appear to recognize the seriousness of the disease – though often only after they or someone they know has had it.)

Anyhow, there are lots of people across the political spectrum sending prayers to Letkow and his family.  But if I were someone inclined to send meaningless prayers, I’d prefer to send mine to the doctors and nurses who had to treat him plus anyone his wanton disregard of science and facts and basic common sense may have harmed as well.

This man, like so many others, portrayed himself as a leader.  But leadership isn’t just a title, it’s your actions.  He was anything but.