It’s simply amazing how much of an impact a
tiny bug can have on our lives, witness the reordering of priorities for
everyone, from the leaders of the world to the common man on the street.
At the top of the political food
chain we have seen how far Chinese leaders have gone to lie about China’s
responsibility for the coronavirus epidemic. We will never know how many lives
have been lost in Wuhan, because China’s communist leaders will never permit
the truth to be told. The expulsion of western reporters is only one of the
measures China has implemented to avoid accountability for the spread of the
virus.
Here at home we have turned to our
leaders to save us from this awful contagion. President Trump’s poll numbers
have risen for his handling of the crisis. For all his inept and often
incoherent responses to reporters at his daily briefings, people at least
appreciate his stepping forward to explain his decisions and to cede the
microphone to others who have the expertise that he lacks. In dire situations
like this the people want leadership. Right or wrong, the president is
providing it.
The multi-trillion-dollar relief bill
passed by Congress and signed by the president is an unprecedented effort to
help businesses and individuals survive the crisis. The road to passage,
however, revealed the true priorities of the Democratic Party as defined in its
slogan, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.”
While Senate Republicans were trying
to negotiate a bill that would be acceptable to both sides of the aisle,
Speaker Pelosi was busy fashioning a bill of her own, a 1,440-page socialist wish
list. Vote-buying pork for everyone, including odd payouts to casinos, travel
agents, sunscreen manufacturers, harbor dredging, and the John F. Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts. And let’s not forget goodies for unions, migrants
and asylum seekers, the Green New Deal, and, of course, Planned Parenthood.
Pelosi was not actually reordering Democratic
priorities but responding to what Majority Whip James Clyburn saw as “a
tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” For Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez it wasn’t enough: we forgot to include illegal immigrants who should
get the same as everybody else.
Meanwhile, ordinary Americans have
different priorities. They want to avoid getting the virus, but they like the one-in-a-thousand
odds of getting it. Instead, they worry about the long-range future: recession,
followed by another Great Depression, small businesses closing up forever, lost
jobs, the next rent payment.
But, want to know what Americans
really fear? Look at the people sitting
in their cars in the Food Lion parking lot awaiting the next delivery of toilet
paper. The panicked response to the coronavirus tells us everything we need to
know about people’s priorities and their worst fears. In a country with an
abundance that we take for granted, that fear is symbolized by something they likely
have never seen in their lifetimes: empty shelves.
I must confess I experienced a mini
panic of my own this week. Our household supply of toilet paper down to two
rolls, I began a search to restock. I failed everywhere I looked. Until a lady in
line at Dollar General told me to go to the end of aisle 4 and look all the way
in the back of the bottom shelf of the end cap. I did. And I found eight
undiscovered rolls that I carried pressed to my chest as I hurried back to the check-out
counter. I had learned something about reordered priorities.
No comments:
Post a Comment