(07-19-2020, 05:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My hope is that in the middle of a 4T, it always looks like we may not make it out alive while it's going on. Think of Washington at Valley Forge, and those many who pledged their lives and sacred honor who in fact lost their lives. Think of the thousands being shot down at Cold Harbor and the horror of Sherman's March. Think of the fascists taking over Europe and East Asia in the midst of a never-ending economic depression. But we made it through, and it was the darkness before a better day. Are we a worse and less-able people than those who fought through past 4Ts and came out the other side? As bad as we are, I don't think so.
Our economy is strong enough to allow anyone with problems to get bread, and we certainly have the circuses in the form of television. The old smear of the television as the "idiot screen", whether we watch sports, bad reality TV, or music videos, or watch lame-brained movies or play mindless video games, is even truer than when one had to choose between Milton Berle or Fulton Sheen.
We are fortunate this time that we do not have the never-ending economic depression; the politicians now know enough to back the banks against runs and to use an economic downturn to do renovations of infrastructure. Are we less courageous and less willing to sacrifice?
OK, it would be easy to demonize the SARS-2 virus behind COVID-19. Little ever has so fit the description "Enemy of the People" as that virus. I look at an image of that virus and I see a demonized image much like an American wartime image of Hitler, Mussolini, or Tojo... or more recently Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden... except that it has no human characteristics. That virus is fair game for extermination.
If I were President I would promote hand-washing and mask-wearing as the easiest ways of protecting people... people may think of soap as a rather gentle chemical, but it literally rips SARS-2 apart and breaks it down. Process food -- wear a mask. Use a toilet or get your hands dirty or sweaty-- wash them. I would have had the economy shut down faster and tighter, and we would be out of the mess faster.
Donald Trump is a catastrophic failure. When we needed unity in protecting the lives of tens of thousands of people who did not need to die, he divided us. He sponsored quick-buck 3T behavior when such was too dangerous to continue. For that he will be reviled for the ages as the Caligula of American history.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.