Ready For A Fight?

I’ve come a long way in a month.

There are a whole host of factors that contribute to the establishment of a world view. Education, training and experience are certainly three of them. Then there are the more subtle factors like personality, family, religion, how much and what you read etc..For me, all of these influences have produced a deeply ingrained suspicion of not only government but authority in general. To my parent’s eternal frustration I was the kid who questioned everything. I refused to accept their word for things, very seldom gave anyone in authority over me the benefit of the doubt. Gatekeepers of information were especially suspect. For me, Journalists weren’t people who reported on events but rather ideologues who pushed an agenda. Government officials weren’t civic minded public servants, but feather-bedding bureaucrats interested in nothing quite so much as self preservation and power. Enter the Coronavirus.

My initial reaction to COVID-19 news was annoyance. Here we go again, another media created frenzy...we’re all gonna die unless we revoke the Bill of Rights and give the federal government more power!! Then my instinctive biases took over...what the hell, it’s the stinkin’ FLU for crying out loud. where’s the fire??

My world view has benefited me in ways great and small. A healthy mistrust of government has proven throughout human history to be a quite rational and justified suspicion. Questioning authority has produced many of the most beneficial advances in human history. However, at times it can be an impediment to receiving and processing the truth. Since the early days of this crisis, I have voraciously consumed a wide variety of news from every source imaginable. As time has passed I have forsaken most news organizations entirely in favor of scientific and medical organizations. What I read there is much more boring, far less sensationalized, free from grandstanding and the competition for eyeballs and ratings. By doing so, my understanding of events, while not foolproof or by any means complete, has changed dramatically. I no longer dismiss the reality of what we are facing. The Coronavirus is a substantial threat to our country. The deaths that it will bring will be significant, the damage it will do to our economy and our own personal fortunes is considerable. 

But, there is a reason why I have not given myself over to despair. It’s another result of that world view thing. Here’s what I know about the world in general and America specifically. Human beings are a resilient bunch, and Americans are the most energetically inventive and creative people in the world. We have thousands of brilliant people working heroic amounts of hours trying to beat this thing back. Scientists, doctors, researchers and entrepreneurs are grinding away trying to get a grasp on it, figure it out and find a way to overcome it. They will. That’s what I’ve learned about my country in 62 years. We are an unholy mess during peace time, a nation of feuding tribes who spend most of the time at each other’s throats. But when existential threats appear, the ranks close quickly. Our collective attention gets focused on the threat and not on each other. And that’s when magical things start happening.

When the histories of the Coronavirus are written it’s going to be about that woman in the lab in Maryland who figured out X, and that guy from Detroit who did that amazing and gutsy thing that turned the tide. It’s going to be about the nurses and teachers, the garbage men and cops, the truck drivers, the pharmacists, the shelf-stockers. We will look back and marvel at the work done by churches and food banks, and the thousands of community organizations who held life together.  We will be amazed at the thousand kindnesses that passed between strangers. What the doomsayers predicted would destroy us is going to be remembered as perhaps one of our finest hours.

So, yes. I’m still suspicious of authority. I still distrust government. But I have chosen to put some of that aside in favor of being part of the solution...and part of the solution is using this blog to remind all of you of who we are. We are Americans...stubborn, self-obsessed and petty most of the time...but ferocious and heroic when cornered. We will beat this thing. We will win this fight. 

Count on it.