Trump is either the worst President in the history of the United States of America, OR he's the best we've ever seen. There can be no middle ground.
You must either shelter-in-place in your home, ordering delivery and staying 20 feet away from every other human lest you die, OR you march on State Capitols in protest, bearing guns and try your best to not be associated with the grimy creep hoisting Nazi symbolism. There can be no middle ground.
Either we're all going to die, OR we're doing an unprecedented job. There can be no middle ground.
You've seen the stories, you've watched the news, you see the breathless missives on social media and, if you're like me you think: "What a load of crap!"
I've had discussions with people who, with a straight face and without a hint of irony, suggested that people can go outside provided they be willing to forego healthcare services. For the good of society. I've also had people suggest I want people to die because I'm starting to side against the lock down model of Coronavirus prevention, leaning more toward opening up with social distancing while working hard to isolate the more vulnerable among us.
The problem, today, is that this is now considered to be "radical" by some. With the media constantly feeding us a steady diet of panic, turning otherwise harmless interactions into psuedo-racist assaults, with the health experts lumping in ANY COVID-19 symptom into the Novel Coronavirus buckets, and with government generally doing a terrible job providing meaningful virus data, it's getting real hard to try and remain a calm, measured realist in an increasingly freaked out world. What am I on about? Think about this. When you see a statistic that says "[insert your State here] has had a grim day with the highest count of New COVID-19 cases EVER!!!!" it really means nothing absent more information about the number of tests performed.
More tests, means more cases, not necessarily that the pandemic is getting worse. Nor is it clear, yet, that this soft-reopening is leading to a so-called "second wave" as breathless young J-school grads are implying. In fact, in a cruel twist of irony, medical providers are LOSING money, and in some cases filing for bankruptcy during a PANDEMIC. That's just insane when you think about it.
Are some of the protests occurring the master-plan of "far right activists"? At some level that is possible, but the more likely scenario is that people without work, and without means of feeding their kids, are getting sick and tired of having parks closed, not being able to get their hair cut, and not being able to provide.
On the other side the conspiracy theory du jour is that those mean, evil Democrats are intentionally killing the economy to damage The Bronzed Ego which would put Captain Creepy Confusion into the White House. Possible? Yes, but if you've been around any politicians for any period of time you'd soon realize that they couldn't conspire to open a can of beans, much less pull off something this complex.
The more likely scenarios are this: We have allowed ourselves to be ruled by low-functioning idiots. They type of people who, as in the Biblical tale, are more likely to bury their wealth in the Earth rather than invest it. They are a risk-averse lot who's worst fear is not "having people die" but instead being "blamed for having people die" on their watch. It's bad for being re-elected you see. Yes, there is an element of Torquemada in some of these mini-despots, they crave the power, need the power to assuage their egos. But, and this is important, for the most part their Poly-Sci degrees don't give them the intellectual bandwidth to have a full concept of what they are really doing. So, they're playing it safe.
As for the protesters? Most of these people just want to get back to work. Most people on the beaches are practicing social distancing, but are being made to look like their not through dishonest camera angles. Most adults with an even half-functioning brain understand, and will comply, with social distancing and will wear PPE if the local Pinochet's will just stop with the overreach and the rule by angry diktat.
If there has been any bad actor in this crisis it's the media. America's so called "5th Estate" has long abdicated their role of being America's watchdog, and has devolved into America's fear-monger. That's a problem, and I don't think there's an easy fix because the Emperor is completely unaware that he is sans clothes.
The United States are facing a mess of issues right now, and partisanship, plain laziness, institutional incompetence and downright dishonesty, have made it damn near impossible to get any semblance of the straight story.
And this is where it falls on you. Because, in these United States since, oh the 1970's, we've fallen down on our responsibilities as citizens. We have handed over the administration and resolution of all things to an increasingly all-powerful government, asking them to deal with issues that they were never constructed to handle. We look at media stories uncritically, demanding that J-school grads with no real-world experience on the items on which they are reporting convey truths with 100% accuracy. We expect companies to be our gate-keepers for bad things.
Every step of modern life now is about having someone else do things for us, for relying on others to be the holders of our common sense. Then, when things go pear shaped, we look at those to whom we've outsourced our security for recompense.
The only way to resolve this is if enough people start taking control of their own lives, to stop screaming at our institutions every time something goes wrong, to force ourselves to spend time doing the important things rather than creating Tik-Tok videos.
Will it be hard? Yes. Does this mean that we're totally on our own?
Of course not. because government does have a role and serve a purpose, corporations do have a role and they serve a purpose. The media has a crucial role and serve a vital purpose to the proper functioning of the Republic.
And we have a purpose as well. A critical one, a vital one. One that we've refused to perform for quite some time now.
Let's use this pandemic to change that.
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