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CoronatidePoliticsSociety

Unlikely Gratitude

By March 20, 2020No Comments

I’m very grate­ful in gen­er­al for the rel­a­tive­ly speedy respons­es by gov­ern­ment offi­cials — from the munic­i­pal up through state and fed­er­al — to the sit­u­a­tion that con­fronts us.

We may have been too slow. We may not have tak­en it seri­ous­ly enough, ear­ly enough. We may have unwise­ly set­tled for half-mea­sures and kept to them for too long. We may have been appalling­ly unpre­pared. There are those who prob­a­bly deserve to shoul­der blame for some of that, but now is not the time to gnash our teeth and wail over it, to salt one another’s wounds.

I think at times like these — and per­haps we’re sim­ply too for­tu­nate to have almost no first­hand expe­ri­ence from which to draw — that our pet­ty divi­sions and our uncom­pro­mis­ing hos­til­i­ty to our polit­i­cal oppo­nents must be set aside.

We have too much time on our hands star­ing at these abom­inable screens — which have proved both an incred­i­ble help and a hor­ri­ble hin­drance. Let’s not squan­der the time we have blither­ing on about the minu­tiæ of poli­cies which can nev­er be perfect.

No one will be pleased by every­thing that has been decid­ed or will be decid­ed over the course of this cri­sis, but we can be silent and thank­ful for at least a moment that there is any bipar­ti­san agree­ment at all for alle­vi­at­ing the worst indi­vid­ual and cor­po­rate out­comes of this state of emergency.

When all is said and done, whether we dis­agree with large-scale busi­ness bailouts and shoring up finan­cial mar­kets on the one hand or dis­agree with direct cash pay­ments to cit­i­zens on the oth­er, this will be the sin­gle largest ini­tia­tive of gov­ern­ment in our life­times to secure the com­mon­weal. That alone, unteth­ered from motive, is no small thing.

It will not be per­fect. It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty as cit­i­zens to sup­ply what is want­i­ng with our own efforts in our own com­mu­ni­ties. If sov­er­eign­ty is vest­ed in us as the peo­ple col­lec­tive­ly, if the com­mon­wealth is there­fore our sov­er­eign respon­si­bil­i­ty, whether we are effec­tive in get­ting every­thing done through organs of gov­ern­ment or whether we must pur­sue it by pri­vate means, that respon­si­bil­i­ty remains.

Let’s take a moment to breathe and set aside our polar­iz­ing and alien­at­ing con­tempt for just a moment to take stock of that. Souls are souls and if this pan­dem­ic reveals any­thing to us, let it be that all souls are sub­ject to the self­same suf­fer­ing, frailty of flesh, whim of nature, force of unknow­ing, and shock of death. We all fear. We all hurt. We all grieve.