Bernie Sanders and Mirrors

March 16, 2020

The closings continue. Daycare centers and the Y. But we are fortunate. We did talk about the possibility of rationing food last night however. Those words left my mouth: “ration food.” I also went down an apocalyptic rabbit hole. Something like which came first, economy or laws? I was thinking that if the world economy collapses, why would someone continue to enforce the law? Why would someone enforce the law if they did not get paid to do so? Without law enforcement, what is to stop someone or multiple someone’s from taking, whatever they want? It is enough to make one think that in the chicken or egg question, economy came first. But this is only a rabbit hole for now. I think that principles came first, as a society can exist without an economy. Our hunter/gatherer ancestors had principles but no economy. Principles are smaller scale laws. Neither are platonic, immutable, handed down from a god. They are man-made and relative, just like truth.

In The Martian, Matt Damon said, “I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.” I’m sure scientists are working on this and I’m sure some are doing it for the sake of science and some are doing it for the greater good. Some are doing it for money. The race to find a cure is in part money driven. It bears repeating that our values are on display here. Our healthcare system and our defense budget reflect our values. Let’s be clear, Bernie Sanders won’t be elected president, again, in 2020 because he holds up a mirror and shows us our values. We don’t value health care, enough to consider it a human right. Mirror. Our military budget (738 Billion) is eleven times greater than our education budget (64 Billion), education, the beginnings of the “science the shit out of this” that may help us all survive this plague, is so meager, compared to what we spend on weapons. Mirror.

Values...on display. The wall, the keep ‘em out wall, is part of the defense budget, and a real enemy, a virus, waltzed right in and began choking people to death, and the wall did nothing. Mirror. 

Here’s the thing about mirrors though: we don’t have to look. Sometimes it’s too hard to look in the mirror. Sometimes we don’t have the guts. Sometimes we know that if we look, we’ll have to change. Change is that hardest thing in the world. We don’t have to change. We don’t have to value education and science to the tune of 738 billion. 

Change is possible though. If we don’t change, what is to stop the virus from choking people to death?