In 1972, Steve Goodman released his album, Somebody Else's Troubles.
One of the tracks is “The Ballad of Penny Evans,” a tale of a widow of the Vietnam War.Today, in three months, more people have died because of covid-19 related symptoms than died in ten years of Vietnam. More people have died from the virus than in car accidents all of last year.
Yet some people don’t think it’s that serious. Those people, simply, are wrong.
I just finished reading One Giant Leap, the book I mentioned about ten days ago. I urge people to read it, if only for the last chapter, “How Apollo Really Did Change the World.”
Charles Fishman writes:
“Americans like to be reminded of the best of their national character. And Americans want to be asked to do hard things. We want a mission, and we will do it. That’s part of the mythology we tell ourselves, of course, but it’s the reality as well. It is one of the invisible bonds, across education and wealth and opportunity. We rise to the occasion.”
And that much is true. Given the chance, we will come together.
Later in the chapter, Fishman also notes, “But we have to be asked. We have to be rallied to the cause.”
That is the problem with this virus thing. Our President hasn’t led. He hasn’t asked. Instead the administration’s steps have been chaotic and confusing with differing messages depending on the mood of the President or the whims of his sycophantic allies.
It should, then, come as no surprise that there are states that are closed and states that are open and people demanding to get haircuts.
If we had a focused message from a focused leader, this confusion wouldn’t be so blatantly apparent. No public official would be saying that, “well, okay, let the old people and the health-compromised people die, cuz, people want to go to the movies and restaurants.”
No one would be even considering that a certain number of deaths would be acceptable, let alone a moral choice to be made.
Without the coherent leadership we get no direction, no purpose, no consistent and universal desire to do what is right. Instead, we have people who won’t wear masks because it’s uncomfortable, or won’t get vaccinated if one becomes available, who think they have to get haircuts, or run around willy nilly because they want to.
We can accomplish great things as a nation. We have in the past. We can again. We must. This is not the time to think one way is better than another. This is the time to do the right thing whether we like it or not.
If we don’t, we might end up like a line in Steve Goodman’s song: “Tonight there’s 50000 gone in that forgotten land.” The choice is ours to make, not only for ourselves, but for our country. Will we be forgotten?
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