EVERY TIME I READ MORE ABOUT this pandemic the more I am afraid that this is going to change everything for good. I am also afraid that our system of government is entirely inadequate to avoid a far worse disaster that is not only likely but which is being encouraged under, through and by Republican-fascist gaming of the Constitutional system and the culture of the law which has grown up under it. One of the most depressing thing is the way that the Governor of Arkansas is relying on the entirely unreliable courts to overturn the politically expedient ban on mask requirements passed by the Arkansas legislature which he signed into law.
The entire structure of the government, under state constitutions and the U. S. Constitution, especially the court system is playing chicken with the lives of countless school children in the weeks before schools reopen there AND, MARK MY WORDS, THE JUDGES AND "JUSTICES" ON THE COURTS WILL TAKE THEIR OWN SWEET TIME SECURE IN THEIR WELL UPHOLSTERED CHAMBERS PROTECTED IN WAYS THAT THOSE SCHOOL CHILDREN, THEIR FAMILIES, INCLUDING YOUNGER CHILDREN ARE NOT.
I doubt that with the best will in the world and the best intention the Biden administration is going to be able to save us from a far worse disaster than a great infrastructure bill, the one which isn't near being passed, will save us from.
Even more depressing is the point that the World Health Organization has made in arguing against booster shots in affluent countries while the majority of the world has not had access to any vaccines citing the opportunity for new and deadlier, perhaps vaccine overriding variants to arise. The arguments for booster shots in the United States and other affluent countries where many people, such as myself, have had a full first-round vaccination provide an opportunity for those to arise in us - thanks in no small part to the Republican-fascist campaign to spread the virus among the unvaccinated and unmasked - make as much sense. Nothing short of a world-wide campaign to develop and distribute the vaccine is going to work to slow or halt the spread of new variants and I don't foresee that happening - maybe this is God telling us it's time to practice universal justice or we'll die together due to our injustice. The role that "justice" has played in this in the United States is the opposite of irony, it's an indictment of our concept of justice and its absence in practice.
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If this doesn't end up killing us, I am certain of one thing, this is going to make it clear that the 18th century "enlightenment" assumptions that are well represented by the criminal irresponsibility flowing from the likes of Ron Desantis, presenting it as a choice between aiding the virus to kill millions of us or "freedom" are wrong. They are wrong because those 18th century aristocratic concepts are fatally flawed and modern life with its larger population and world travel prove it is wrong in the most disastrous way.
This is the test of that conception of limitless freedom outside of moral responsibility and it is now certain that that leads to death. It's not as if that hasn't been presaged in recent times, the heady sexual freedom that gay men championed in the 1970s led to us losing enormous numbers of our friends and loved ones to HIV-AIDS. It was presaged in the libertarian view of alcohol and drug use which has led to addiction and death, it was presaged in the ACLU led effort to allow prescription drug companies to advertise on TV and the radio which aided the Sackler family in their efforts to market opioids. That was only one of the examples of ACLU attempts to aid addiction and death, they also helped the liquor industry and were in the process of aiding the tobacco industry - the state AG lawsuits and settlement with big tobacco short circuting the campaign to promote "smokers rights" to harm and kill the rest of us with their "right to smoke" polluting our air. Unfortunately we cannot depend on such extra-judicial salvation in all of these instances. More about that later. More about all of this later, if there is time for it.
Listen to the language, listen to the slogans and buzz words and touch-phrases in which the FOX, Murdoch, Republican-fascist campaign to get millions killed with Covid-19 is sold to the suckers who will ask for the vaccine only as it's too late to save their lives. It is the language of freedom and liberty and individual rights it is not the language of moral responsibility. It is the language taught to us by the civil liberties industry, movie and TV civics and all other presentations of freedom absent the responsibility to act morally.
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