Everyone Should Just Wear a Damn Mask

“The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.”

No, this quotation did not come from the mouth of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders or even Joe Biden. In fact, it was uttered by none other than retired United States Marine Corps four-star general John Allen, former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and United States forces in Afghanistan.

Let’s be honest - Our great country is in deep shit! We have retreated from the international climate change process that is our only hope for saving humanity. We are in the middle of a global pandemic which has already claimed more than 127,000 lives, far more than any other country. In fact, the U.S. has about 4.25% of the world’s population and about 25% of the deaths from Covid-19. And we have unemployment rates not seen since the great depression. And that is only the beginning!

Contrary to what we are being told by politicians, things are getting worse, not better. Almost all states opened prematurely, cases are up in many parts of the country as are hospitalizations and positive tests and experts warn that increasing deaths are likely not far behind. Instead of the grand opening we were promised, States are beginning to have to back pedal on their plans as every single health expert warned they would be forced to do if they did not follow the original phased opening Task Force guidelines.

The 8 minutes and 46 second video of George Floyd being murdered by 4 white policemen in Minneapolis has stunned the nation and the world. But it is nothing new – nothing that has not been repeated countless times over the past 400 years as Dave Chappelle so powerfully explains in his aptly entitled video 8:46. People are marching all over the world and saying NO MORE – and yet, just a week later a young black woman was dragged out of her car and body slammed to the ground, breaking her collarbone!

These abominations are not new. It is critically important for us to remember that our country was born out of genocide. The Thanksgiving Ceremony we are taught about in school and that we celebrate with huge meals and family gatherings is referred to by native Americans of New England as The National Day of Mourning!

And after they (our European ancestors) were done destroying Native American Culture, they spent the next hundred years building our country from coast to coast on the backs of Africans they had violently abducted, brought to America against their will and treated like cattle, if that well.

Leadership?

We know that leadership is not a title but rather a behavior or set of behaviors. Leaders are responsible for nurturing and caring for the people (all the people) under their purview. In times like these, we look to our leaders to inspire, to set the tone, to guide us out of the chaos.

Unfortunately, we have a leader who had police attack a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest outside the white house with tear gas, rubber bullets and a low flying helicopter - so he could walk across the street and hold up a bible.

How out of touch with reality is this leader? Hell, even NASCAR has stepped into the 21st century, banning Confederate flags (please remember that these flags represent a deadly attempt - 600,000 deaths - to violently overthrow the government of the United States). No one is flying Nazi flags in Germany, nor are there statues of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels in public squares. And when a noose was found hanging in the garage of the only full-time black driver on the circuit - all the drivers and their crews stood fully behind him in demonstrating their outrage.

Just by way of an update to that last seeming atrocity, evidently the FBI is saying the noose was not a hate symbol but rather just a tool that had been in the garage for some time used to close the garage door. Interestingly a thorough search of nearby garages turned up nothing even remotely resembling a noose.

Though I have never been to a NASCAR race, I have opened and closed a lot of garages in my almost 70 years and never once considered using a noose. How about you?

That same leader continues to downplay the impact of the virus and doesn’t follow his own Pandemic Task Force’s recommendations, thereby modeling dangerous behaviors for his tens of millions of followers. He is holding rallies in which thousands of people are packed in close quarters and not wearing masks and has suggested that injecting bleach might be a solution to the Pandemic! Most recently he has argued that if we just don’t test people for the virus, we will have fewer cases and it will go away more quickly. And for anyone who listened to his sycophants say he was just joking, he made it very, very clear the next day that he was dead serious.

How Do We Fix This?

In less than 4 months now we will have a referendum that can put an end to the chaos and give us a real fighting a chance to recover what has been lost.

• We can attack this virus the way other countries have. Japan, a country with a highly dense population where the virus started about the same time as it did here has had around 18,000 cases and 1,000 deaths so far. We have had well over 2 million cases and more than 127,000 deaths. Yes, we have 2-3 times as many people, but we have more than 100 times as many cases and deaths! The photo explains most, if perhaps not all the reason for that!
• We can step back and step up like so many people across the political, racial and gender spectrum have and tell the truth about and make amends for the legacies of genocide and racism upon which this country was built and is sustained.
• And we can rejoin the global environmental movement to save our species from certain annihilation.

Let’s be perfectly clear. None of these things has a snowballs chance in Hell of happening without regime change. Whether you typically vote Democrat or a Republican it is pretty clear to just about everyone around the world that without a dramatic change in direction we are looking at a major diminution of the United States as a respected leader in the world – “the shining city upon a hill” to quote the late Ronald Reagan. We have in a period of less than 4 years aggressively alienated our allies and “lovingly” snuggled up to our enemies around the world.

In my opinion, getting us out of this crisis could be best accomplished by someone who has championed the kinds of radical changes that are needed to save our country and our planet. But that is unfortunately not where the options stand politically at this incredibly significant time in our history.

The choice, as it has been far too often, is between two old white men. But it will likely be the most important choice we will make in modern history. Do we to continue the disastrous trends of the past four years with a sociopathic leader who only cares about himself and a vice president who misrepresents the truth and lies continually right by his side?

Or do we turn to a seasoned leader whose compassion, a quality this country desperately needs now perhaps more than ever before, emanates from an almost unfathomable personal experience and understanding of loss and suffering, and a highly qualified woman (hopefully of color) vice presidential candidate to lead us out of this mess?

Republican, Democrat or Independent, the choice is clear, and the consequences are monumental and existential! – Let’s make sure we vote and get this right! – take care, stay safe and to quote Florida, Republican Senator Marco Rubio (never thought I would ever both start and end a post with a shout out to him):

"Everyone should just wear a damn mask"

Dr. Jon