Journaling the Coronavirus (COVID19) Pandemic, Reflection #41

April 22, 2020

Capitalism is simply a word used to describe the social and economic structure of how our culture exchanges goods and services for other goods and services. It is a formalized system of trading. The problem is not about capitalism versus the loss of lives of some people. It is about all people. If the economy is stopped, like it is now, then untold millions are going to die because of a lack of ability to trade things like money for services or goods like food or whatever.

There are about 220,000 people who die every month in the USA of all manner of causes. Illustrating one cause, in this case the virus, and then making it stand out glaringly and holding it out as being the single cause we can’t stand to have people die from…to the point where we allow all these other unnamed and uncaused people to die is simply unconscionable. But here it is with us right now and right here.

The dying from all the other stuff that the economic stoppage is going to cause has really not begun yet, and the loss of things that were once the very definition of what it was like to enjoy the American experience of living will begin now and go on through the rest of everyone’s lives who are living today. So many people in America have lived so far from the survival level that they have lost sight and understanding about how it is to live at a survival level, where comfort isn’t even considered anymore, where relaxation becomes a forgotten back item, where trust does not exist between any members of the culture who are not directly tied to survival.

I fought, I struggled and I have lived within the constraints in my country, unfair as many of them have seemed I did so not to have live at the survival level I saw and participated in when I was with the CIA in so many countries abroad (122). Most of the world lives at that survival level and it was always wonderful to come home and go to bed at night dreaming dreams about how to bring the rest of the world to where I was and to live in the conditions I lived in. To watch that all go away in a blinking instant, to watch all that disappear when it did not have to and to lose the ability to have those dreams any longer is the cause of my grief. I do not live in shocked surprise, as many are experiencing already across this once great nation…but I live in a ghostly world of waiting, waiting for what has to be coming, as the country gets the summer surprise of all time…one which ninety some odd percent have no clue is coming and will be utterly shocked by having to participate in.

I do not write this to depress or to express my own looming bout of depression. I don’t think there is any way to stop this runaway train now. The mass media that might have saved our entry into this unstoppable descent failed us so badly it is beyond description. Get yourself ready to take care of YOUR tribe. Identify who is in it and then value them deeply because you are sure as hell going to need them…and they are going to need you. You shouldn’t have to read any of this from me. It should be stuff being said by every intelligent and educated advisor in this government, but it is not, and will not be, because they are insulated and they are not going to go through almost any of this with you.

Are you Involved in a TRIBE?
This young man observed how tribes can be influenced good, bad or ugly

The Mastodons by James Strauss Autographed Paperbacks

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Always good to Here Your Thoughts and Experiences during these Challenging Times

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