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Point of View: On Viruses

Wed, 06/03/2020 - 11:15

All about us there’s suffering, and yet this neighborhood in which we live in Springs is beautiful, in full bloom and serene. It doesn’t get any better than this — here, that is.

“What’s it all about?” Mary asked, rhetorically, the other night. “I’ll tell you what it’s all about,” I said, knowing full well that she knew what it’s all about. “It’s about doing the best you can for others while you’re here, it’s about being useful, or at least feeling useful, it’s about the greater good. That’s it.”

Well, that all sounded very fine, but here we are, sunlight and the black shadows of overarching tree limbs swaying on our green backyard lawn as cities burn, and police assail protesters with rubber bullets, tear gas, tasers, and billy clubs, owing to a virus even more virulent than the one that has spread across the world in the past three months, a virus whose lethality, contrary to the new one that’s been preoccupying us, can best be combated through lessening the grip of irrational fear and by stepping forward.

This virus, the one that attacks the brain rather than the lungs, has had its way way too long, shackling a so-called free country that remains in thrall to the arbitrary power of prejudice. We’re still well more than six feet distant from the fine words of our founders, who failed to make the connection between the political slavery they abhorred and the chattel slavery they condoned.

Still, outside this morning, the last of May, it is beautiful and it seems the glistening leaves promise peace, whose fulfillment on this part of the earth can only come through acknowledging the self-evident truth that all men are created equal.


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