White Americans -- particularly those of us who are or who grew up working class and poor -- are very often fatalists.
For centuries those who would exploit our labor (while torturing, enslaving, and murdering our neighbors of color) have encouraged us to accept what befalls us because there is no other choice -- the world just "happens" and it "happens" to us.The fish are either there or they are not there: it's not in our control. The climate is either warming or it is cooling: not in our control. The pandemic is going to kill more Americans per capita than in any other country: not in our control.
The "invisible hand" of capitalism or god -- too often conflated in white protestant america -- is at work.
That is what the profiteers want us to believe.
Yet even and perhaps especially for those of us who DO have faith that the world is larger than us -- that we are NOT gods and exist as small beings within a much larger universe -- the knowledge that every breath we take, every action we make impacts some other life is crucial to HOW we live our lives. The choices we make every day. Are they about ourselves alone, or do we consider our impact on everything around us?
This is why our understanding of government action or inaction is so critical to how good of a nation we actually are for EVERYONE.
The Trump Administration shrugged off the pandemic just as it shrugged off climate change. All the words and statements are on record showing that the administration's belief that the "private sector" of business would take care of us was a huge and miserable failure costing us, unnecessarily, hundreds of thousands of lives. Go back and listen to Jared Kushner saying the the procurement of PPE for our health care workers was not the government's problem, while meanwhile our health care workers, and those in their charges, were dying.
While the T Admin helped support the work of private enterprise to create the vaccines -- please remember Pfizer, the first to be released, did not use federal help -- they had NO PLAN to deliver vaccines into arms.
Now, quietly and surely, the Democrats are once again cleaning up the godawful mess left by the private-sector Republicans before them. Most of us of a certain age have witnessed this before -- remember the financial crisis of 2007-2008? -- and it would be nice if we all studied U.S. history a bit more thoroughly and remembered these lessons for the future.
U.S. government was created to BALANCE the rights of individuals for the responsibilities of the whole.
In order for ALL of us to thrive -- including our planet -- the rights of individuals or individual corporations to amass wealth at the expense of the greater good must be regulated and limited.
The world need not be a competition against each other. While we are not in control of everything, our individual actions DO matter. Every day, in every small way. We are responsible for stewarding our beautiful world for each other.
The excruciating and extreme losses the U.S. has suffered in this pandemic were not "inevitable." They did not "just happen." The Trump Administration bears accountability. And climate change is not "just happening." We all bear accountability for the choices we make that further it.
We need a government that understands its important role to work against profiteering and for the common good. Luckily we now have such a government in place. Let's all work to support #votingrightsforall to be sure we keep it.
"In America, the two very different responses to the pandemic have given us a powerful education in government activism. “For the past year, we couldn’t rely on the federal government to act with the urgency and focus and coordination we needed,” Biden said, “And we have seen the tragic cost of that failure….” - h/t Heather Cox Richardson
End of Saturday AM rant -- thanks to those who read, listen, and even respond!
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