Day 36 Moving Forward; or, Who Will Be Left Behind?

U.S. population today is what I put into Google.

331 million people

The U.S. population today, at the start of 2020, numbers just over 331 million people

What caused the inquiry was a testing statistic cited in this morning’s Times: as of two days ago, the U.S. has given a total of 3.1 million coronavirus tests.

Is that really just shy of one percent? It is.

In the same article, “Mr. Trump boasted of having ‘the most expansive testing system anywhere in the world.’”

When did we learn percentages in math class? Dr. Google tells me ages 11-13. So ... 5th, 6th, and 7th grades? I think he must have missed school that day, week, month, those years.

I know he’s a pathological liar.
I know he’s an unapologetic narcissist.
I know he’s terrified that a tanking economy means a tanking Trump.

I, for one, hope it does.

Contrast Governor Andrew Cuomo. “ʻThe more testing, the more open the economy. But there’s not enough national capacity to do this,’ Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said at his daily briefing in Albany. ‘We can’t do it yet. That is the unvarnished truth.’”

The Power Point slide behind his head read, “WE NEED FEDERAL SUPPORT.” The caps are his, not mine.

In the meantime, The New York Times has run a quickie poll on “The Coronavirus Is Changing How Americans View One Another” in their “The America We Need” series.

“The results reveal a surprising paradox: The pandemic has increased Americans’ feelings of solidarity with others, but it has also increased their acceptance of inequalities due to luck.”

There is an annoying statistical logic in the article. A sort of that’s-the-way-the-cookie-crumbles attitude toward, of all things, that discerningly random female, known thanks to Frank Loesser as Lady Luck.

Namely and specifically, “I can’t help it that I’m a five-generation Harvard legacy.” No, sweetheart, you can’t.

Ever heard of noblesse oblige? Here’s our friend Dr. Google’s take on it, “the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged.”

Where did all the noblesse oblige go? It’s singularly lacking in society these days.

Fine, you arrived here a soon-to-be sixth generation Harvard legacy. Did you give six scholarships for less privileged persons to be able to go to Harvard?

I don’t think luck is a factor here at all. There is no luck around a tiny pathogen that sees no boundaries no matter how many politicians or government leaders tell us it does. Even if you’re born a Harvard legacy.

One of the things I think this pathogen is doing is drawing a line in the sand. A stark line. It’s asking questions. Hard ones.

How do you want to move forward after the virus?
How much are you willing to do to keep everyone safe?
How invested are you in the status quo?

This one is the toughest:

How much friction can you tolerate as the change that is needed is enacted?

Have you noticed how little friction there has been with the Democratic Party lately? Bernie opted out, despite the immense value of his platform, and immediately pivoted to endorse Joe Biden. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on record that she would support Joe Biden. President Barack Obama then endorsed Joe. This morning Elizabeth Warren did.

The Democrats, like them or not, are changing with the times. This isn’t a time for argument, in-fighting, or finger-pointing. It’s time to solidify a position that creates the most good for the greatest number of people and hop to it, get going, move, move, move, move, move to unite as many of us as possible to support it and make the incumbent a one-term aberration. [Pray with me if you like, Please, God, please.]

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote in “The Best Response to Disaster Is Resilience,” “Whether we are driven by nostalgia or an itch for something new, whether we are revolutionaries or preservationists, it is in the abnormal times that we learn most about ourselves and others. The shock absorbers that ordinarily shield our emotions and lull our minds no longer work so well. Our schedules are disrupted and our priorities change. We shrink, we grow, we may even die; we do not remain the same. This is true of nations as well as people.”

And nations, as powerful a symbol as each is, are actually made up of the people who live in them.

In the case of the United States, plenty of people don’t want the social stability that universal health care, minimum income guarantees, affordable housing, and free education would create.

Those who want to maintain the status quo at this time will be left behind. They might go kicking and screaming. They might have one, last, old white guy gasp, but the top-down, patriarchal model of living, even, dare I say it, the hero’s journey, is in its death throes.

This death, for a culture that doesn’t really do death anyway, isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s ugly. It’s really ugly, it’s cruel, and it’s live in front of all of us, day in and day out, plastered across the screens of media consumers the world over.

So, Beloved, where do you stand on these seminal questions of our time?

Part of the purpose of this enforced time of apartness from others is so that we will make time to think through our priorities.

In the first “The America We Need” article of the series, the Editorial Board wrote, “Advocates of a minimalist conception of government claim they too are defenders of liberty. But theirs is a narrow and negative definition of freedom: the freedom from civic duty, from mutual obligation, from taxation.”

A negative freedom, freedom from mutual obligation. No noblesse oblige to be found there.

The root word of obligation is the Latin legare. It means to link, and is the same root that we find in ligament, and religion. Ligaments are what connect bones to cartilage and to one another. Let me, pardon the pun, stretch the metaphor. Cartilage is the social programming we need so everyone can thrive. Bones, the human skeleton, are the infrastructure.

“This impoverished view of freedom has in practice protected wealth and privilege. It has perpetuated the nation’s defining racial inequalities and kept the poor trapped in poverty, and their children, and their children’s children. The effect was to substitute economic segregation for explicitly racial segregation.”

I believe that all persons have inherent nobility, no matter their luck, no matter their circumstances. It is that inherent nobility that obligates all of us to give to one another. We all have something we can give.

As Mother Teresa was known to say, “Peace begins with a smile.”

The Times Editorial Board concluded, “What America needs is a just and activist government. The nature of democracy is that we are together responsible for saving ourselves.”

Well, America will have a just and activist government when just activists are the people who comprise the government. Until then, I suggest we think deeply about our priorities. What’s important to us and what is less important.

Then haul out your smile, and starting giving it away.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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