The Politics of Respect: Pandemic Edition

Last year, shortly after the pandemic began and the US became politically divided on how to respond, we began hearing from fearful, angry, and upset people who were asking – and, in some cases, demanding - that their opinions on the virus, it’s causes, and the steps that individuals and the country should take in response, be “respected.”

This trend of people wanting their opinions to be respected continued during the lockdowns and protests, and then ballooned when the vaccines were introduced. And, because it drove eyeballs and clicks, the media was constantly quoting the doubters, the hesitant, the angry and suspicious people who fervently believed that their opinions ought to be respected.

But, asking or insisting that our opinions be respected – no matter how ignorant or outrageous - indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of respect and how it functions within relationships.

The fact is many people conflate respect for their opinions with respect for them as human beings. That’s an incorrect – and frankly arrogant - assumption. But, because people often have convinced themselves that their opinions are facts, they have an unwarranted expectation of respect from others in general.

For example, in 2020, a television news reporter interviewed a man who was walking down the street with his family in Charleston, South Carolina during the height of the pandemic. They weren’t wearing masks. When he was asked if he had any concerns about catching the virus, he said, “…COVID-19 is no worse than the flu.” Although he stated his opinion as if it were a fact, it was clearly, provably wrong. This is not an opinion worthy of being respected by anyone who knows the facts. The same can be said of the opinions that the holocaust didn’t happen, or that the earth is flat; they are not worthy of the respect of anyone who knows that they are simply not true.

And yet, so many reasonable people are willing to say they respect these opinions to someone who utters them simply because they don’t want to get into an argument. This is understandable; human beings, in general, are conflict averse. But by doing this, we unconsciously undermine our own credibility and self-respect while unintentionally boosting those of the person holding opinions that we don’t respect.

Most of us understand that feelings of genuine respect for someone are the result of our sincere admiration for and appreciation of their attributes, qualities, experiences, achievements, or position. And, when we truly respect someone’s opinion and we say so, we’re doing it willingly, deliberately, and intentionally from the heart. This also means that when someone asks us to respect their opinion and we say that we do – when, in fact, we don’t – then we’re simply lying to them.

In many cultures, especially those which consider the practices of showing respect to be requisite social behavior, this is an acceptable dodge. It is the perceived demonstration of respect that matters, not whether you have genuine respect in your heart. Unfortunately, this cheapens the concept of respect for everyone and relegates it to performative status, like saying to an acquaintance you’ve met by chance on the street, “we should get together sometime,” when you have no intention of ever doing so.

It’s also important to remember that when we say we respect someone’s opinion even though we don’t and we do this just to avoid an argument, this means we’re lying about our genuine feelings, and contributing to an unconscious internal conflict that can be damaging to our sense of self-worth and confidence. We should not be so willing to sacrifice our respect for ourselves and our integrity on the altar of personal comfort.

So, what should you say instead? A reasonable response is, “I respect you as a human being.” But if that seems like you’re setting the bar too low, or that it might be perceived as a backhanded compliment, then you can simply say, “I respect you,” and leave off any mention of their opinion.

Unless we learn to reject the false belief that all opinions ought to be respected regardless of how ill-informed they are, we will continue to split into warring camps, talk past one another and resolve very few, if any, societal conflicts. Its time learned to stop cheapening respect and treat it with the respect it deserves.