One should also recognize that nearly all the deaths occur in the poorest levels of society. The upper levels have found ways to stay safe and, from their positions of safety, are willing to even encourage those on the bottom to accept the risks of denying the realities of this pandemic and rejecting safety measures.
The final result seems to be that the pandemic will run its course, thinning the herd (the populace of American citizens) by sacrificing the old and weak and the lowest socio-economic levels of our society; this is not even to consider the prisoners, the American Indian populations, and immigrants. The leadership of the economic elite, apparently, saw this as getting rid of the burden of helping those in need by thinning the herd. The choice of our leadership seems to be to make whatever sacrifices necessary to reestablish dominance of the neoliberal economic system, the opposite of the democratic principle of caring and supporting all citizens to keep society healthy as a whole.
Or, we could have taken a different path. Instead of framing the events of 9/11 in terms of a threat to our dominance, we could have seen it as a challenge to our democratic ideals. We could have defined our "way of life" as democracy and responded from that position. The challenge was, would we, so easily, be willing to give up our democratic principles to become like the perpetrators and meet their violence and destruction with our own violence and destruction on steroids. Would we be willing to destroy our, already weakened, democracy with wars and acts of vengeance on a level far greater than the perpetrators, willing to sacrifice untold numbers of innocents in the process?
We could have chosen to rise from the ashes with renewed determination to show that democracy cannot be defeated by such acts of destruction, that we will, instead, find resolution on more human terms, valuing human life even when the perpetrators did not.
We all know that violence only leads to more violence, even though it may be forced underground for years. We have told the world we are better than that and, although our military and economic dominance can be used to destroy others, we choose to create a better and more sustainable world.
9/11 could have been a wake-up call for us to go back to our democratic roots of caring for human life and finding more rational alternative solutions rather than knee-jerk violence in kind.
The pandemic provides us with a moment to pause and reconsider our choices in the past and our path into the future. The pandemic stopped neoliberal economics in its tracks and exposed its destructive nature. It also stopped the dominance and exposed the corruption of an economic elite. We have this wonderful opportunity to recognize and accept our past errors and, in the process, begin to create a sustainable world based on the principles of democracy and accepting our true place in the web of life with some humility.
We are facing the challenges of a pandemic that threatens our society and is only the forerunner of more viruses to come. We are facing the challenges of a planet that is becoming less and less hospitable to the human species. We are seeing the destructiveness of an economic system that prioritizes wealth over human life and we see that the solutions reside only in a return to democracy, and quickly.
Sometimes it takes a long time to learn the hard lessons of life but hopefully it is not too late to learn. The learning curve apparently was very long but perhaps we can finish it by mastering the important lessons before it is too late.
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