This will be rambly, and probably unpopular. It is what it is.
It’s Memorial Day, when the general idea is to remember the people who fought and sometimes gave their lives for our freedom. And I do remember them, especially the ones that touched my life personally.
It’s hard, though, not to think of current events. Because we Americans love nothing better than a cause to rally to, our government (and I mean both sides of the line) has cast the pandemic as a war against an invisible enemy.
Do you ever think about why they use that terminology so very carefully?
It’s because we all accept that war brings casualties. We accept that there will be heroes and there will be loss. We hear ‘war’, and we mentally steel ourselves for the martyrs to follow.
This is not acceptable. As I sit here writing this, close to 100,000 Americans have died, and they didn’t have to. What’s worse is that, as I sit here, writing this, there are protests going on across the country, led by people to whom those losses were acceptable and inevitable. They believe their freedoms are being violated by quarantine and the ask to wear a mask in public. And they believe that if more people need to die so that they can have ‘daily life’ back, it’s worth it.
Clearly, I don’t see eye to eye with those folks. And that is what it is- at the heart of it are the issues that continue to divide us- faith, economics, and clinging to things that should have been left in the past. I can’t fight all of that, and I don’t have the right to- one freedom I do hold to be inviolate is the right to think any way you want to.
It’s your actions that can and should be curtailed when they do harm to others.
Back to my central point, though- this is not a war. A virus isn’t interested in justice, and there’s no peace talks to pursue to end this. It is mindless. To keep calling the pandemic a war because it supposedly makes people band together is delusional.
And clearly, it’s also not working.
So how about we drop the bullshit rhetoric and look at the situation and our actions with a little more clarity? Not only does it do more honor to the people who have given their lives, it also puts control back in our hands to stop it from costing more lives.
And it also dishonors those who so deeply believed in the ideas of freedom, justice, and peace that they laid down their lives to achieve that goal- not for themselves, but for us all.
Happy Memorial Day. To those that gave their lives in war, I honor and salute you. To those that have had to die due to lack of PPE, awareness, and the ability to face the reality of our situation, I mourn for you and wish the powers that be had a better plan through this.
Curiouser and Curiouser 