Day 1176 – There Comes a Time
Wednesday April 8, 2020
207 Days until the election on November 3rd
287 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a report when he was a senator. It is a classic in the study of discrimination and the nature of prejudice. ( He was challenged that he didn’t know anything on the subject, which I can understand. He wore a little bow tie and had an air of superiority about him. He wrote the report to prove his naysayers wrong. I don’t think he knew that much about the subject when he started, other than a gut feel. )
The report had two big takeaways:
1. You can’t stop prejudice, but you can legislate against discrimination. (And that by it’s very nature will reduce prejudice.)
2. The only verified way to eliminate prejudice is to put people who are prejudiced against one another side by side in equal status jobs. ( I equate this to the idea of being together in a fox hole and you are being fired upon. You really don’t care what color of skin or religion or sex the person next to you is as long as they have your back. If you’ve never been in this situation – play paintball. )
I also have been thinking about the nature of cowardice.
Much of what we fear is based on not being truthful. Either we don’t know enough or we have some crazy thinking that we really don’t want to express because if we were to reveal our thoughts then there is no place to hide and if it doesn’t make sense we look stupid. ( No one likes to look stupid. )
But if you’ve been in therapy be it marital or otherwise one of the things the therapist is trying to get you to do is to face your fears. This means expressing them. Saying what you think, what you feel, no matter how crazy it might sound.
If it’s marital or personal problems then the goal is to let the other person know what you are thinking and how you feel. It can be scary because you are laying yourself bare. Bare to ridicule. It can be embarrassing. It’s hard to do. You have to take a chance. You have to trust yourself. You have to be willing to say, “This is what I believe. This is who I am.” You have to be willing to accept that others may not understand and that there is nothing you can do about that.
Cowardice can be described in a lot of different ways, but one way is to not be honest. Not being honest with yourself and others is typical cowardice. Denying what you think, feel, or know to be true is cowardice.
We have seen a lot of cowardice from this administration. They lie. They don’t tell the truth. They may not know the truth, but it is clear that even when they know the truth they lie. They make up stuff. They look to blame others. It is cowardice plain and simple.
However, this pandemic is about to reveal the truth to them, because this virus cares little about your alternate facts and the nasty terrible people you blame for your own failings. When you come face to face with reality, it can be hard to accept. But it doesn’t matter. “It is what it is,” was a favorite saying of a friend of mine.
We are beginning to see how to fight a pandemic. Not that we didn’t know before, but some choose to ignore the methods, and we are all paying the price.
California seems to not to have had the huge crush that other places have had. Neither has Ohio. What their governors did was to shut their states down quickly. It’s only a difference of days, but what a difference a day makes! Neither state has had the huge upward curve in cases that other places have experienced.
We can look at other countries too. South Korea and the United States got their first cases of Corona virus on the same day. South Korea mobilized. We didn’t. The charts are clear. South Korea dodged the bullet.
China at first denied and then mobilized. Their chart reflects that as the number of cases and death climbed and then headed down.
Italy ignored and their chart shows that steep upward curve. Finally, they got a handle on the situation.
The nature of cowardice is to deny reality; be it your emotions, your feelings, the facts, your truth.
This administration has acted cowardly and they continue to do so. The truth is coming and it will be a hard reality for them.
207 Days until the election on November 3rd
287 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
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