A Common Enemy

A Common Enemy

Fear is an incompetent teacher.

Jean Luc Picard

A friend of 45 years from the old country (Kansas) and I talk on the phone once a week.  We share experiences that I share with no one else and that allows us to share ideas that neither of us present anywhere else.  One of these ideas was that the sad state of humanity requires some kind of unifying force, something to bring us together in common cause.  Since people seem impervious to just working together simply because it is the best way to enhance and preserve life, a common threat with so little subtlety that even the dense would recognize it seems like the only chance.  We have kidded over the years that the only thing we could think of that humanity would recognize as enough common threat, as a common enemy, would be an invasion of aliens from outer space!

As proof of this need for obvious extremity, consider our current pandemic.  There is no one reading this, regardless of where you sit on the globe, unaffected by it.  Many voices, leaders and organizations make our situation clear:  many of our citizens will die, many others will become ill (apparently to lasting effect for some), most of us will suffer economically. Still we have resistance to working together on some major fronts.  Why?

One country dropping the ball is the United States of America, a marquee player in this (although Brazil among others really want a part).  What is the problem with America?  Lack of good leadership at the top.  The American President has personal limitations:

• He thinks only in terms of America First and has discarded alliances for the past three years.  Working for common cause is contrary to his DNA at this point.
• His priority is the economy over medical necessity.
• He gets his ideas from conservative news and propaganda sources rather than medical and intelligence professionals.  He confuses qualified expertise with elitism and sees views differing with his own as disloyalty.
• He has rejected science and instead believes his uneducated gut instincts are more reliable.  He is an alley fighter and sees the world as just a bigger alley.  Winning is what it's all about here, for that determines what is right while losing shows what is wrong.  And, if you lose, sell the lie that you just won until the opposition gives up and goes home.
• He is, to put it bluntly, a pathological liar who simply cannot adhere to the truth under any circumstances. It isn't just a bending of the truth, but rather fabrications pulled from the ether that fit the narrative he is promoting.  It is hard to tell when he knows what he is saying is untrue.
• He is motivated and wily in some ways, attuned to that incompetent teacher, fear, but he's not intelligent in many others. He is not a reader or a student of history.  He isn't playing 3-dimensional chess here. If his moves look crude, it is because they are and he sells that as a virtue.  He is the billionaire common man.  With gold toilets.  
• He shows little capacity for growth in the face of crisis.  If it worked yesterday, he'll use it today.  End of input.
• He values loyalty above truth telling in his advising circle.  He feels invigorated when he fires people.  Sycophants thrive around him until they screw up.
• He is always self promoting and running for office.  Briefings to the country are really campaign rallies for him.  Those briefings, were they properly conducted, would be information lifelines to the nation.
• And, finally, most of his decisions seem to be based upon doing the opposite of what Obama did or would do, a VERY BAD path to follow since Obama was pretty sharp!  Just today, we have been shown a document created during the Obama administration showing precisely what to do in response to a pandemic.  It precisely predicted the path of this one and was completely ignored by Trump.  He also dismantled the Pandemic Taskforce that would have given early warning for this and recommendations for action.  It is one of his most consistent characteristics, the anti-Obamaism.

Many of the American electorate believe the President, for they have so many concerns they haven't seen met for years and he appeals to those, promising them a place at the table.  He dissuades them from believing in the American media, labeling those sources as fake news because they often challenge his views and his pronouncements.  This denies a large segment of the electorate reliable understandings of the pandemic's real threats.  He likewise rewards "news" sources that support his views, support that yields them viewership and money.

So, the most powerful economy on the planet is MIA in this battle, providing no aid to those who are long-term allies in everything from war to commerce to climate change. Instead, through ineptitude, America threatens to become the epicenter of the problem, not part of the solution.

This virus won't destroy the world, nor will America or Brazil.  What I've written isn't the end of the story, either, for there are other voices, some of them clear and powerful like the national rise of Andrew Cuomo and his valuable daily briefings.  We just have to realize that this virus isn't our common enemy, it just points out the common enemy.  The common enemy is willful ignorance!

Now for the voices of clarity I appreciate,check out my blog mates' takes on the same topic from Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum and Shackman!