Maybe whatever is going on right now seems bigger than everything else, but the pandemic, at its worst, was only set to wipe out 5% of us, and nuclear war was going to kill us all. As for climate change, if it's not worse than killing 5% of us — mostly the old — then it's not as bad as it's been portrayed in the press.
I'm reading
"The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do Right Now/Our nation is rising, however imperfectly, to meet the challenge posed by the coronavirus pandemic. That needs to be said more often" by the NYT Editorial Board.
Ah, it seems that only a few weeks ago, there were mainstream media voices who would have called
Donald Trump "the greatest existential threat in our lifetimes."
But the pandemic is the "existential threat" that we've
done the most about — taken so seriously and changed so much of what we are doing. Maybe we need to call it the "the greatest existential threat in our lifetimes" to make sense out of how
much we've done. We haven't been willing to sacrifice so much to deal with climate change — to radically shrink economic activity and to stay home or very near home. Much of what we've done for the pandemic is also what we could do for climate change if we took it deadly seriously.
Why did we do it? Deaths were happening before our eyes, and experts told us this is what we all need to do, and the whole world was doing it at once, and we understood that it needed to be done right away. That is what's
greatest about the pandemic: The way We the People of the World
acted in response to the thing — not the thing itself.
Now, to read the editorial. It begins with a "thank you," and it advises us not to look only at the failures but to look at all the good "the vast majority of Americans have done." Why limit it to Americans? Because it's Memorial Day?
This weekend, as we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our country, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge the smaller but essential patriotic sacrifices we are all making today, for one another...
We've done a lot of "smaller" things. Whether they were and are "essential," we'll never know, and we'll analyze and politicize for as long as our lifetime lasts.
You’re doing great, my fellow Americans. What you have been asked to do is not easy...
But it is much easier than giving your life in battle.
... but you’re doing it. And you’ve already made a big difference. People are alive today who might otherwise not be, thanks to the sacrifices you have made and are continuing to make....
The editors call on us to continue. It's a thanks in advance:
Until there is a vaccine, which could be years from now, the simple acts of wearing a mask and practicing social distancing may be the most reliable ways to stem the spread of the disease and save more lives.
And if you don't believe in the cause, don't protest:
The most patriotic thing that Americans can do right now is not to carry military-style rifles to a protest that shuts down their state legislature, or to spread baseless conspiracy theories online, or to pick fights in a supermarket over reasonable public health measures....
Or at least, don't do the sorts of protests that are never a good idea, whether they're about a pandemic or anything else. The editors don't go so far as to tell Americans that it's not "patriotic" to have protests about our disagreement with what the government tries to force us to do.
As
Hillary Clinton famously said: "I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration,
somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration."
Posts
