The Underbelly of America

This pandemic has exposed many weaknesses in our country. We are obviously vulnerable to this virus and will suffer great hardship for some time: not because we don’t have the capacity to deal with the challenge but because we didn’t call it in a timely manner and don’t have the fortitude to face it. The reason: we’ve never seen this before in our lifetime but we have this naive belief that we’re the best and we have the best resources, and “we can get through this and come out better”.  BULLSHIT!        This crisis has exposed the underbelly of this Nation and it’s weaknesses. It starts with our politics and policies: meaning our bloated governmental functions that cannot react to crises; a selfish money and power driven political system; a lack of a permanent forecasting function in all areas of national security (not just military); and a failure to really understand what has gotten this Nation to it’s level of superiority the past 100 years.    But now, we are seeing a serious failure of our country; our inability to recognize our shortcomings and our inability to know how to deal with them.     We always fail to recognize what two factors made this country great—the flow of the multitudes of mixed  humanities who came to this land over these past 300 hundred years with the ambition to have a better life (recognizing the millions who were brought into the country against their will) and to make use of the bountiful resources of our part of the earth.          So - what do we do?                          First we have to admit to our prejudices; all of them. Race, religion, ethnicity, social/economic position and the tribalism that now exists in our politics.  Next our media must be fact based and not opinion and ratings based.  Finally, all of us must recognize that there is a population (the underbelly) of  citizens who day after day perform basic services (cleaners, food processors, so many hourly employees who perform what we rely on every day and whom, heretofore, we haven’t appreciated. their value. What do we do with these admissions?   Could we quit being so arrogant about who we are? Could we demand that our leaders be more responsible to their duties and less to their well-being? Could we be ready to sacrifice for the common good?  I HOPE SO. If we don’t figure this out we will fail.

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