May 2020 - Revolutionary Misfit

A recent interaction on my FaceBook profile page leads me to believe that COVID-19 is accelerating the descent into madness among my fellow Americans…

I post a lot of stuff that interests me on my page. I post music that I like and find provocative, especially by the Grateful Dead (surely to the annoyance of many of my unenlightened friends). I post pictures of family and the beauty of my adopted country, Costa Rica. Occasionally, I will post a political meme, but I really don’t like those, as I find them lacking in nuance and usually intellectually insulting. I post books that I’ve recently read. I do that because I’m always on the lookout for good reading suggestions, so I like to offer a few myself for my friends to consider. And I post articles, some of them political, but only after carefully reading and vetting each. I try not to post anything that I find to be conspiratorial, or factually inaccurate.

I have FaceBook friends (some real and some virtual) with varying and often contrasting political ideals. I have quite a few friends who are conservative Trump supporters. After all, I hail from the Carolinas, which by and large is an area supportive of Donald Trump. So, a lot of my old friends from back home disagree with much of what I post. And I’m perfectly OK with that. In fact, I welcome the engagement of healthy and heated debate, as long as it remains respectful.

However, what happened recently on my page was definitely heated, but neither healthy, nor respectful, …

I posted a thoughtful article by Ezra Klein on the abject failure of the Trump administration in responding to the pandemic. I read a lot of Ezra’s stuff, books and articles, and I frequently listen to his podcast. I find him to be an intellectual worth listening to. However, he is predominantly of a liberal leaning mindset. And I don’t always agree with him. I would say that I’m decidedly more on the progressive side compared to Ezra.

Almost immediately upon posting this article I had a Trump supporter offer a comment on my post (I am quite sure without ever having taking the time to actually read the article). The comment basically said that by posting this article I would surely lose 50% of my real estate client base…I guess assuming that 50% of said base would take issue with the article to such a degree as to “fire” me over it…

If this “friend” was actually trying to “help” me by offering business advice…that ain’t the way to do it. And furthermore, if making money means that I can’t express my political views, peacefully and respectfully, on my own FaceBook page, well then I guess he’s right…I’m headed straight for the poor-house!

Suffice it to say that I responded to his comment in a way that I don’t respond very often. To paraphrase, I invited him to quickly exit my FaceBook page and go straight to hell!

I take political positions on my page. It’s my personal page. I think I’m allowed to do that. In fact, a quick perusal of my former friend’s (he unfriended me after this encounter) page confirmed that about 90% of the content is overtly political and usually insulting to anyone of a contrary viewpoint. Nevertheless, I refrained from any reciprocal trolling.

I have another page dedicated to my real estate business and I do not post anything remotely political over there. I don’t think it’s the place to do so and fans of that page do not want to see political crap, but rather content related to Costa Rica real estate and expat living.

So, what gives a Trump supporter the audacious idea that he can attack a person in this manner just because he disagrees with a political post?

Isn’t the whole concept of democracy predicated upon peaceful political debate?

If you want to eradicate all political debate and do so by threatening opposing views with financial (or, worse, physical) repercussion, then aren’t we converting our system to something far less than democratic? Doesn’t that sound a lot like what takes place in, say, Russia, China, or North Korea? I thought conservative Trump supporters were staunchly against totalitarianism of that nature?

You see, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t make America great again and at the same time try to make it a place where everyone marches in lockstep (or “goose-step”) politically.

Is that really the world you want to live in, or want your grandchildren to be borne into?

And what does a virus have to do with all this? Why is it that COVID-19 is accelerating the descent into madness, as opposed to everything else that’s happened over the last three years?

COVID-19 is exposing some dark truths about American society. As we are standing out as the most exceptional nation on the planet, in terms of COVID-19 cases and deaths, the gross excesses of our overly materialistic society are rising to the surface like a plucked Phoenix from the ashes. This unseen enemy (as Trump likes to call it) has rendered our mighty and invincible economy incapable of even providing adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for the essential workers on the front-lines, exposing themselves while fighting to keep the rest of us safe. Can you imagine a response like this in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, or 9-11?

When it comes to blowing up other people in far away lands, we always seem to find the means to do so. But we can’t seem to find those same means to provide adequate testing and tracing to try to contain this “Chinese” pathogen, or at least not for the most vulnerable among us.

And as the economy shrinks under shelter in place orders, the gloves come off and the AR-15’s are taken down from the truck racks. People are fighting mad and someone has to be blamed for this mess…

And while we are blaming and threatening each other, spitting mad, the virus spreads, people die, and the great American economy further collapses…

And the COVID-19 descent into madness accelerates.

Why is America Failing the COVID-19 Test?

Costa Rica continues to flatten out the COVID-19 curve for new confirmed cases. The death toll remains at 6. And the active cases curve is on a fast-track to zero, with recovered cases outpacing new ones by about 20 per day.

In fact, Costa Rica’s success in dealing with this crisis is starting to get noticed around the world. I keep seeing New Zealand touted as the world’s model in that regard and Jacinda Ardern certainly deserves loads of credit. But I think Costa Rica definitely deserves a very robust honorable mention.

My question is…what’s up with the U.S.A.? Why is America failing the COVID-19 test?

My home country is supposed to be known for its exceptionalism, but not this way…

The U.S. is leading the world alright…it has become the epicenter for this virus and has one of the highest fatality rates, as well as rate of deaths per million, in the world.

That’s not the kind of exceptionalism we Americans like to boast about!

So, why is America failing the COVID-19 test? Is there something specific to the American psyche that gets right to the heart of an answer?

Because, you know, we Americans love to place blame.

So, what’s (or who’s) to blame here?

In short…we are!

You see, Americans suffer from this compulsion towards a market mindset. That is, the mindset of the market being the solution to every problem. Granted, America has historically enjoyed the most prosperous market on the planet. We are (or have been) the envy of the world in that regard. Americans are therefore somewhat justified in their aggressive market-orientation. And we certainly are so oriented, compared to the rest of the developed world. Our reliance on market solutions for just about everything, from health care to war waging, is unique in this world, to put it mildly…

Good ole’ Bernie Sanders tried over and over to point that out to us. But his loud proclamations to that effect fell on death ears, for the most part.

One only has to hearken back historically to see that the market is not what has gotten us out of deep doo-doo in the past…

We are living through historic times right now. You have to go back to 1918 for a time when a pandemic like COVID-19 has threatened the well-being of every American, as well as the American economy on the whole…

There are some trying to compare this crisis to the common flu that inflicts the nation annually. But this ain’t no flu. The flu has never come close to wreaking the kind of havoc COVID-19 has wrought upon us in only a couple months time…

However, compared to the suffering and hardship endured by Americans through the Great Depression and the ensuing World War, we ain’t seen nothing…yet…

And what exactly got us out of those messes?

Was it the market? Was the market the solution to the Great Depression, or World War II?

Of course not!

What got us out was collective action. By that I mean public action, initiated by the governments we the people delegate our power to, and executed by the blood, sweat, and tears of all Americans.

I’m talking about Roosevelt’s New Deal, the collective effort Americans at home engaged in to support our troops fighting fascism abroad, the GI Bill that helped those same troops and their families get a new start when the lucky ones returned home…

No, the market didn’t save us…we, the collective we, saved us!

Nevertheless and despite what history teaches us, Americans have become afflicted with this market oriented mindset. It’s a mindset that resides on the right and on the left (and in the center). It’s the one that believes we have to allow the market to work its magic and any attempts to interfere, via collective action, smack of socialism, or even communism.

Even now, Donald Trump says in order for us to move forward we’ve got to open up the market as fast as possible, health risks be damned. Of course, he is facing an election in a few months and bad markets don’t bode well for winning presidential elections. So, winning in November could possibly be where his true motivation lies.

Again, the market isn’t going to save us here. And if we move forward relying on it to do so, I believe America is doomed to fail. It’s doomed to fail not only the COVID-19 test, but quite possibly, doomed to fail and fall from it’s historic position as the greatest nation on earth…

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s still time to reverse course.

Mind you, reversing course doesn’t mean adopting socialism, or communism. But it does mean realizing that only collective action is going to get us out of this one, as well as that other (bigger) one looming on the horizon (in the form of rising CO2 levels).

I know what some of you are thinking…wait a minute, isn’t the solution a vaccine and won’t the development of such a vaccine be a product of a competitive market?

Well, with 3.5 million cases and 250,000 deaths, I can only hope that no one gets rich off of the development of a vaccine. After all, Jonas Salk never even filed for a patent for his polio vaccine. In fact, the very idea that someone, or some corporation, would get filthy rich off of a vaccine for this horrible disease gets to the very heart of my point…

If we can only save ourselves if there’s sufficient economic benefit in doing so, we’re f’ing doomed!

The nation-wide stay at home order, that we have collectively obeyed for the most part (well, at least until recently), is just one of the collective measures I’m getting at…

I’m also talking about collective effort to help the most vulnerable. The ones who have and will suffer the most from this crisis…

Those (like Trump himself) who’ve done well at exploiting the market, while it was still running on all cylinders, they’ll be just fine…

But that accounts for only a small percentage…Bernie’s 1%. The rest of us, we need help…collective help. Help of the kind that our government can and should be expected to provide…

If the market has been our magic carpet ride to greatness, well, that rug has been pulled right out from under us!

What’s our responsibility in this? Because we Americans, if we’re anything, we’re responsible, right?

Our responsibility is to turn from the madness of the market-as-the-only solution mindset.

Let’s face it, there is a clear and concise answer to the question, why is America failing the COVID-19 test?

We alone have the power to shift that paradigm and save ourselves…

Will we?

COVID-19 is Accelerating the Descent into Madness

Why is America Failing the COVID-19 Test?

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