This post is not about the Firesign Theatre. Although there are times when I think we are all Bozos on this bus. This post is about the inability of the American populous to keep two things in their mind at once. This post is about the need to balance two valid causes of concern, two crises in America, and keep them both in our consciousness. Both the ascendancy of concern for the civil rights of black of Americans after the death of George Floyd and the need to keep awareness on Covid 19, a disease which kills 5 % of those over sixty who become infected are important and neither can be ignored.
There is a group of people in this country who are counting on the focus of the American consciousness to drift from these issues quickly. These are people who are either in the ½ %, or who are people in their pocket (think Mitch McConnell and most of the Senate). These are people like Congresspersons who voice that letting the Covid-19 pandemic rage will be a good thing. Culling the sickest of the old quickly will reduce the strain on both Social Security and Medicare. An effective swath of death in this group would really help with kicking the issues of funding these programs way down the road, long past the next elections cycle.
These folks are the people who make their money selling everything from armored personnel carriers to uniforms to group AD&D insurance to police departments. If police departments are downsized and much of their work is shifted to social workers and community activists these people lose dollars. Defunding the police will hurt their bottom line. Allowing poor whites and blacks and browns and every other variation of race and ethnic unity to work together and to compare where they have mutual interests in better health care, minimum wage protection, upgraded workplace work and safety standards and the need for access to the polling place, are definitely not in the interest of this people.
These are people who own television networks on both sides of the political spectrum. These are people who control wide segments of radio and newspaper outlets across the nation. They will dictate the focus of the mainstream media as we move forward in time. You can bet they will do everything in their power to move on from these stories and shift our attention and awareness from the raw issues of racially disparate treatment of urban populations by the police and from the impact of poverty in our cities. They will move the narrative away from the risks from Covid 19 to large parts of our population and refocus on how reopening the country will save our economy. Stories about a resurgence of cases will be way below the fold and most likely not in the first ten minutes of any newscast.
So, this is where we as individuals have to keep these two stories in the forefront of our minds. We need to watch what really happens to reform the clear proclivity of the police to abuse their obligation to protect the health, safety and welfare of all Americans, often opting instead for brute force, brute power exercised callously on the most visible of minorities. We have to watch what happens with regard to the spread and death toll of Covid-19. If it keeps going and we don’t contain and track it, we all will lose loved ones.
American attention and focus are easily diverted from real social problems and real issues of equal justice. Our politicians like the power of office, but few of them in either party have the stomach for understanding and addressing the problems of the largest part of the American population, those making under $59,000 a year. Remember real wages for non-supervisory workers are less than they were in the 1970s. Few of our leaders have ever experienced real racial discrimination. Few of them have ever lived in a food desert or have had to accept any kind of social assistance.
There is a small but powerful group that will want to turn our heads away from the racial bias that killed George Floyd. This same group does not want use to address the pandemic because their economic ox is being gored with the country closed. And if measures have to be taken to rework have things from airline seating to the conduct of public events such as court hearings to save the old and compromised among us, it will hurt their bottom line. And if we have to redesign and demilitarize the police and make them accountable for racially motivated acts of violence, this too will hurt their bottom line. The smoke and mirrors are coming. Don’t be diverted. Don’t turn your eyes away from the ugliness we must face.
I did find a Firesign Theatre piece totally appropriate for the pandemic. Enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment