A self-inflicted 9-11
Let’s put things in perspective as we mourn the victims of the Al Qaeda attack on September 11, 2001. Almost three thousand Americans were killed in the 9-11 terrorist attack twenty years ago. It was not an inside job as some of the nuttier conspiracy theorists claim. We did not attack ourselves, we were attacked, and not by Israel or the Jews, but by Islamist extremists.
There was a unified, swift and justified national reaction: Get the ones responsible and bring them to justice. This we did—eventually, after many twists and wrong turns—under the Obama administration, which killed the main perpetrator, Osama Bin-Laden.
Covid-19, which is attacking us right now, already has killed 200 times as many Americans and is still raging. While the onset could not have been prevented, unified, swift and tough action could have minimized the casualties almost from the beginning. Instead, the response by the Trump government was feckless, agonizingly slow, and worse than useless in the end. Lacking was the political will to wage a hard war against the virus. The priority among Trump and the Republicans leaned far in favor of saving the economy and the election at the cost of letting the people perish. Trump did not save his precious economy or his reelection, but the people did perish in droves.
This was a self-inflicted 9-11 from the beginning, only with the deaths multiplied by ten, then again by ten, and finally by two and a half, to this point. What will be the final toll? That’s unknown. Even the famous Doctor Fauci—justly famous for brains and cojones—dares to predict that. Right now, it looks anything but good. There are more cases of Covid-19 compared to a year ago, before there were any vaccines. The United States has way more Covid-19 deaths now than countries like Canada and Germany.
“This now has become a political pandemic and so the answer is political.”
I am tempted to say that it is up to us now that we have great vaccines. That is true to a certain extent. But it might even be truer to say that there is no us, or that it is not up us but up to them.
“Them” are the willfully and proudly unvaccinated, the unmasked, the militants against mask, vaccine, and any other mandates that could help quell Covid-19. This is the army of the misinformed, of the confused, of the angry, of the deluded and, in some cases, of the plain stupid. They are rebels with a cause—a bad one. The problem is that not only do they want to play Russian roulette with their own lives; they insist we do too, and they are trying to force us to join them in their dumb, unwinnable game.
The fact that they can’t win at that game either doesn’t deter them. Dying from the virus leans overwhelmingly Republican as does vaccine refusal. This looks like a field experiment in natural selection that can’t help but decimate Republican ranks. What in the world is the point?
Perhaps coming off as a contrarian is one of the only things these people have got. Or maybe they believe “vaccines won’t save you, only God saves, and he is looking after you.” A bad bet but a logical choice for people who believe in almost anything—satanic conspiracies, UFO abductions, stolen elections, the deep state, Big Foot—except science and reason.
Our objective should be to beat them, not join them. Our problem is that delusion, possession of the absolute truth, unites them, motivates them; unity in folly is the best defense against sense and truth. So, what are we, the sane, to do?
This now has become a political pandemic and so the answer is political. Let’s define them as the fifth column battling on the side of the virus. Let’s prevent them from converting their delusions into policy. Fight them in the school board, the county and city commissions. Fight them at the state house, in Congressional and state elections, and in the battle for the White House.
And when it is all over, let’s hold them responsible for their actions and inactions, and not do as Obama did when he let the CIA torturers get away with it.
