media | Author Sean T. Smith

The Coronavirus is frightening, lethal, and spreading, but that doesn’t mean that we should curl into a collective fetal ball and wait to die. We must continue living, questioning, loving, thinking, and solving problems.

Hysteria never solves anything. Let’s be rational, then. Let’s listen to the scientists and immunologists. Let us also listen to history and our moral compass. Most people are kind and good, I still believe, although the wolves and morons have always, and will continue, to make life harder than it should be for everyone else.

There has always been a battle between liberty and safety because morons and outliers do stupid things that endanger other people or themselves. Our Constitutional rights are inherently limited because of this. My right to free speech does not include the right to scream “Fire!” In the middle of a crowded theater, and your freedom to swing your fist ends at my face.

This is why we have laws. Our country was built on the ideas of European philosophers like John Locke, who argued that a social contract exists between the government and the people, and that the government exists to protect the people from the state of anarchy that would exit without it. The government exists to serve the people.

This isn’t team sports. The country seems to be following the same pattern with respect to Corona Virus that it has since Barack Obama became president, with Republicans saying one thing and Democrats another and the American people getting smashed in the middle, whether they know it or not. It’s some kind of bizarre knee-jerk reaction in which people instantly disagree without weighing the facts, on both sides. We are needlessly polarized. This isn’t Florida versus Georgia, a vicarious game for bragging rights. With a pandemic, you’d think we’d all be on the same team. Obviously, we don’t think so, and that’s a big damn problem.

The virus doesn’t care who you vote for and will kill with egalitarian efficiency. Rich, poor, black, white, young or old, people are dying. It’s not us versus them… it’s us versus a virus. We have to beat it together.

I live in Jacksonville, Florida, and the beaches opened up with limited hours and social distancing rules in place. Like team sports, the liberals lost their minds, and the conservatives cheered. Here’s the thing. If people can’t do the right thing, then what is the solution? What’s the long term outlook?

I’m going to the beach tomorrow, as long as it makes sense and there aren’t knots of people every where. I’ve been locked in with my family for four weeks, and as long as we keep our distance from others at the beach, this should not be an issue. I hope that police will give out citations for people violating the rules and enforce the law. If it’s crowded, I will sadly walk away.

For liberals… how much central authority do you really want the government to have? How do you subdue the outliers and morons without subverting your own values, particularly with Donald Trump in power? Is this not the path to despotism? How long can the entire economy be shut down? Doesn’t it make sense to discuss how to reopen in a responsible fashion?

For Conservatives… if “Big Government”is what you despise, if state’s rights are important, how can you stand aside and justify the president calling for the “liberation” of states? Do you really believe holding rallies, waving confederate flags and carrying rifles during a pandemic is a responsible way to get your point across?

Back to the social contract… most people don’t care about those ideas. They want a fair, just, government and the ability to live their lives. I believe that seat-belt laws make sense and clearly save lives. Corporations should not be allowed to poison drinking water, police officers should not get away with killing people of color, and presidents should not be allowed to use the toilet paper shortage as an excuse to wipe their ass with the constitution.

I also think people are incredibly stupid and selfish, and that it’s not the governments job to save them from themselves. We as a nation have a duty at this point to use good judgement and common sense.

It’s not the end of the word because the the planet will go on, people will live and die and love without us and the tides will come and go and seasons will change.This virus isn’t an extinction level event, awful as it is.

We all die, so why not take a minute to accept that fact and make our lives mean something by doing a good thing for somebody else. Realize that we are all connected, and take comfort in that truth. Death comes for us all; what we do with our life is up to us. I’m all for continuing to live, obviously! I’m going to social distance and pay attention.

Living in lockdown is bad enough, without the constant drum beat of panic porn on the internet, the rage spilling onto the streets, and the absurdly divided way we seem to be viewing and confronting this virus. Let’s be kind.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King, Jr

Baltimore burns and the nation cringes. We see the non-stop coverage on CNN, the same inflammatory images repeating on an endless loop. Hate is like that, too. It doesn’t stop until we turn it off; unfortunately many people are turning it up, until rhetoric is a scream which drowns out any sort of hope to solve the underlying problems. The racial problems in this country, from economic disparities and police violence, to political disenfranchisement must be addressed. The nation is hurting and the rage seethes just beneath the surface, spilling out into the streets with increasing ferocity.

I’ve seen a staggering number of internet posts claiming that our current racial tensions are President Obama’s fault. The people who believe that are deluded. When Obama was elected the racists kicked into high gear, really putting their backs into it, finding ways to sow fear and cruelty and divisiveness. Hate-mongers with microphones and laptops have done their best to frame issues in the meanest, most lopsided ways possible, worsening a greater problem.

So the cycle continues something like this: poverty, lack of opportunity, and a toxic environment lead to a feeling of powerless, gut-wrenching anger. When racial profiling and police brutality are not only systemic, but systematically denied by governments, those same people get even angrier. They protest. Most of them are peaceful, but violence erupts, gasoline on the fire. While the news spends 90% of its time playing the inflammatory images of police getting hit by bricks or of stores burning, the media misses the greater story. The country misses the truth, and the truth is not black and white. The greater story, the real one, is more complicated… it’s more than one story. The one where blacks and whites are working together for positive change. The story of children handing out water bottles to police officers, cops risking their lives to save teenagers, grandmothers and fathers marching for justice that has thus far been elusive. The story that black teenagers know all too well, of the conversation their parents had with them when they first got their driver’s license. “If you get pulled over, keep your hands in sight at all time. Say ‘yes, sir,’ and don’t make any sudden moves.” White kids don’t get that talk.

White people and black people alike are appalled by this violence in Baltimore. It’s counter-productive. It only serves to confirm racist suspicions coiled around the back of many people’s minds, triggering otherwise sane and seemingly decent people to spout bile like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Rather than stepping back for a moment and asking why these people are so angry, it’s easier to say “what kind of people burn their own city?”

And there it is, couched in what passes for discourse and news coverage. Words like us and them…Those people. There is an “otherness” about the dialogue, rather than a togetherness. Hate, rather than love.

Racism and bigotry are a choice. If this nation is to heal, each of us must do some collective soul-searching. We’ve got to choose love over hate. We must place a priority on our nation’s future, and that means creating more jobs and educational opportunities, putting an end to the bloodbath taking place every day in our inner cities. It means voting for leaders who recognize the severity of the problem and who offer realistic ways to address it, regardless of what party they happen to be affiliated with.

Rather than be outraged at the violence we’re seeing on the news, we should be shocked for the reasons it is happening. We must come together as one people in the spirit of unity and love, for that is the only way to end this cycle of hate.