We have readily allowed our Government to send our soldiers across the globe to die ostensibly to protect our liberty and the liberty of citizens of other Nations. It hasn’t been worth the sacrifice, in my opinion, since WWII. It has destroyed countless lives and families and robbed us of unquantifiable human capital. But it is what we did, and we should support all those who served and those who lost their loved ones to warmongering. It was true selfless sacrifice.
This economic lockdown has also destroyed countless lives and families. This devastation will take years to define and will never be rectified because our Government on both sides of the aisle wants to only help chosen industries and specific demographics (the Republicans with their targeted grants and bailouts and nonsensical tax breaks for the uber wealthy as stimulus and the Democrats who only advocate to help donor industries, those who largely do not pay income taxes and those on the dole who are just getting pandemic bonus money) while the middle class and small businesses who provide the economic backbone of this Grand Experiment are cast adrift.
Social media tantrums and bullies define our conversations on both sides of the political spectrum. Ugly names and false ideological aspersions are now the firmament of almost all political discourse. Almost every “journalistic” source wears its ideological bias on its sleeve. Our President achieved power by promising to drain the swamp he gleefully now swims in while also playing robber baron. He is our most socialist President, but he only seeks handouts for himself and his chosen accomplices and is wholly uninterested in the hand ups that define the naive who advocate for the implementation of sweeping traditional socialist reforms in the United States. Our Speaker is reduced to fat shaming and sniping. Our Congress and Senate would rather own the opposition than achieve a legislative goal. Corruption runs amok as watch dogs and whistleblowers are punished or ignored.
What is not a monumental sacrifice is to be expected or obligated to take precautionary measures that will thwart the transmission rate of this disease. It is not unconstitutional to require people to wear a mask or social distance. There is no prohibition in the Document or the two hundred plus years of jurisprudence that prevents the government from articulating narrowly constructed measures to facilitate public safety in response to a pandemic. Shriek “liberty” and “unconstitutional” all you want but the measures are not an infringement on freedom as it is defined by our Founding Fathers. This virus is not a hoax or a plan to implement control. Those that believe that are listening to pandering manipulators who monetize your attention with clicks and listens. They are largely a group of people who failed at actual goals and achieved at media by abandoning truth about their own lives and their personal beliefs. Do not trust me on this. Get to know almost any of them. They are as disgusted by their fans as Trump is by his most ardent supporters.
The leaders who want to destroy our society for their own ends and those who want to ignore the problem altogether for fear of political consequence are the same type of cowards with different ideological concerns. It is not okay for Democrats in love with the idea of a citizenry dependent on the dole to ignore the economic collapse caused by their lockdown measures. It’s equally not okay for Republican leaders to manipulate or ignore data to justify their do nothing at all, open it all up and see what happens nonsense. There is a middle ground. And those that recognize it need to start fighting back and insisting on reasonableness. And shame on all of you who gleefully bully those who reject the narratives and want to build a better tomorrow for all Americans.