This 77-year-old Independent never got the older bad flus. Never felt threatened by those flus. Did not worry for my loved ones' safety. I feel threatened by the coronavirus. I fear what it might do to my loved ones. I worry it can destroy the economic and social fabric of America. I do not think I am paranoid.
Lots of people think I'm a flaming liberal. I viewed George W. Bush, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as very bad news and didn’t vote for any of them. I think Democrats and Republicans do a lot of finger pointing and very little looking at their own personal inventory.
I see Republicans making good points about the Obama administration's shortcomings, which left America unprepared for something like the coronavirus. However, I think Republicans leave a lot on the table by laying ALL THE BLAME on the Democrats, who did not start two very costly and destructive Middle Eastern wars that lined, and still line, a lot of rich, white, mostly Republican men's pockets. The money U.S. citizens coughed up to wage those two wars could have funded several coronavirus relief packages passed by Congress.
Democrats did not give U.S. corporations U.S. Constitution rights. Democrats did not make America a welfare state for U.S. corporations subsidized by U.S. citizens. Democrats did not ask Russia to help them win the White House in 2016. Democrats did not call the coronavirus threat to Americans a hoax. Democrats did not dismantle the U.S. agency responsible for tracking and defending against epidemics and pandemics.
American corporations, run mostly by rich white Republican men, outsource production to cheap labor communist China. Republicans blame that on American labor unions and the Democrats. Republicans call Bernie Sanders a communist, ignoring their own trading with communist China and Ivanka Trump outsourced her apparel company’s product line to communist China and her president father’s tariffs on communist China products did not affect her product line.
During Senate proceedings on the coronavirus relief package, President Trump held out to the bitter end to include financial relief for foreign cruise ship companies, which do not pay American taxes or abide by American labor laws. Some rich, white, mostly Republican men had offshore financial interests in those cruise ship companies.
I wanted to strangle Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats for putting an abortion funding rider on the House's coronavirus relief package.
Republicans and Democrats don't seem to get, if you buy something, you have to pay for it. If you try to get around that by borrowing money you don't intend to pay back, by printing more money, or by saying a lot of debt is necessary, that's a pyramid scheme.
Jesus said in the Gospels to first take the beam out of your own eye and then you will see clearly enough to help your brother remove the speck from his eye. Maybe Christian Republicans and Democrats should take that advice to heart?
As for dealing with the coronavirus threat, there is a saying in Taoism, which was a major spiritual movement in old China: "Embrace Tiger, return to mountain." The Tiger is fierce, the mountain is Tao, God, whatever.
On March 19, 2020, I asked at this blog, whether to embrace the tiger (the coronavirus) and let it run its course and kill a lot of elders and people with chronic medical problems, such as myself, who cost America the most money to keep up, or resist the tiger by locking down America and perhaps destroying its economic and social fabric?
That's the awful decision President Trump, alone, had to make, in my opinion, and it looks to me he tried to do it both ways. How will that hybrid turn out? We’ll see, as President Trump is known to say. I don't envy him. He was so sure he would make America great again, and then fate dealt him an entirely different hand. He scored himself a ten. Time gives the final score.
We should hope malaria drugs are effective for people infected with the coronavirus. We should hope a cheap, effective vaccine is soon generally available to protect uninfected people. We should hope the virus will hibernate during hot summer weather. We should not behave recklessly. We should not pack churches, or any place. We should not rudely and selfishly go places or travel distances, unless absolutely necessary. We should not get in other people's faces. We should hope and pray essential service and product providers are able to keep providing.
As for China, this lawyer who became a mystic says, if President Trump had a close relationship with God, or extrasensory perception, or street sense and an open mind, or was educated in biowarfare programs, he would know the coronavirus was developed in a China bio-lab, which also was to make a vaccine, but something intervened before the virus was available, because China could not be allowed to have that kind of power to hold the rest of the world hostage.
Not likely that can be proved in a human tribunal. However, very correctly, China owes the rest of the world reparations because of how it misled the world about the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
President Trump and Congress could cancel America's $trillion-plus debt to China.
President Trump and Congress could tell American corporations outsourcing their production to China, to bring those factories back to America, or be nationalized and President Trump and Congress do it.
President Trump and Congress could bring China before the World Court, seeking reparations for crimes against Chinese, Americans and humanity arising from China not being honest about how the coronavirus initially progressed in China, and still progresses there.
Are President Trump and Congress strong enough to do those things? Are they willing to reveal and then shut down America’s bioweapon labs?
We’ll see.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
