We All Can't Breathe

The corona virus, the tweets of a monster, the staggering number of racist killings, make it hard for all of us to take anything like a breath. When we do, we're not relaxing, just pausing between bouts of anxiety. When Yeats wrote, 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity,

he was living through the end of World War I, the Easter Rising, the quickly-crushed Irish War of Independence--all while his wife,  Georgie Hyde-Lees, was almost dying, a victim of the 1918 flu pandemic. She lived to give birth to two children, one of whom became a painter and set designer, the other a barrister.

There's the passionate intensity of a Trump rally and there's the passionate intensity of a peaceful demonstrator. Then there's the passionate intensity of a looter. There's a passionate intensity of Anthony Fauci telling the truth. He doesn't lack all conviction, but we are all losing hope in our ability to hear him. I'm happy to be in Germany, where most people do wear masks in public places. There's always the droplet-spraying toddler on the tram, the old guy with his mask slung around his chin and his finger up his nose, the angry young man shouldering his way through with no mask and a can of Red Bull or Beer, but these folks are not the majority here.