05.22.2020
That’s often how the indictment begins; the complete version is: Why can’t the most powerful country on earth better protect its own citizens from the coronavirus?
Let me suggest the question contains the answer. The most powerful country on earth always focuses on the power — and on the folks who wield it. And they focus how to get more. (This is also true if you substitute “wealth” for power.)
The political and economic leaders of the United States focus on the folks with little or no power only when they need to do so — only when ignoring the situation would adversely affect the status and security of the powerful.
The current nutrition programs are an example of this dynamic. SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program = “Food Stamps”) exists to support families that don’t earn enough income (or wield enough power) to meet their basic nutritional needs. Alleviating hunger leads to healthier, better educated, and more productive citizens. But many leaders see SNAP only as an expense (read “waste”) of resources, so they regularly propose reducing its funding.
The current response to the meat-processing-plant problem is another example: the “leaders” ignore a public promise to test all workers, fail to make necessary safety changes, and yet order their employees to continue working with the threat of termination — while the political leaders protect the owners from legal responsibility for any harm to workers’ health.
For the past half-century most U.S. citizens have been free from most bacterial or virus-caused diseases. Science has “taken care of” such things. This has allowed the leaders (along with the general population) to ignore any need to prepare for an epidemic or unexpected outbreak — they could “invest” those resources in maintaining and expanding their status. This was especially the case when disease was most prevalent among, and associated with the folks on the margins, those without power.
But coronavirus doesn’t care about power — or position, status, wealth, hair or skin color, or any of the other markers we use to distinguish among people. Coronavirus is an equal opportunity disease.
All of a sudden the powerful are threatened along with everyone else.
All of a sudden there are calls for some of that power to be used to help folks deal with the coronavirus (with the powerful first in line, of course).
Maybe the most powerful country on earth should re-evaluate its power-based economy.
Maybe we should take another look at the economy Jesus taught: power is only useful when it helps those who have none. (Start with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel, then tackle the parables in John’s — Jesus consistently identifies with “the least of” the folks in society.)
Jesus’s economy does work. If you need an example, look at the Marshall Plan: after defeating the Axis powers in World War II, the U.S. turned around and gave money to the countries who had just been our enemies, to help them rebuild their economies and their governments as democracies.
If the United States used its power as Jesus would in dealing with the pandemic — to lift and heal everybody, to keep everybody safe and secure — what might the “new normal” in our country look like?