by John Young
Morally, this is mass murder.
One thing I have always stressed is that ideology and philosophy are human constructs – tools that we use to help organize our behavior in a beneficial way, and to help us understand the world around us. But because these constructs are made by imperfect humans with imperfect knowledge, they need to be subjected to continuous refinement to more closely achieve their objectives: our greater wellbeing and a knowledge that more closely approaches reality.
It is said that there is nothing less common than common sense, and also that common sense is a super power. That certainly seems to be the case, because common sense tells you that if adhering to a particular ideological perspective puts the lives of you and yours at risk, that the ideology needs to be at least tweaked if not abandoned. But, too often, people define themselves by what they profess to believe rather than by what they actually are, and they do this largely for social reasons. Being social creatures, the drive for social approval can be so strong that people will adopt long-term destructive ideas simply to have social approval.
Keep this in mind while I change gears for a moment.
The Bible contains a lot of important insight. One of the most important verses in the New Testament, I believe, is in Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
What a person most values will, of course, affect what he prioritizes in his decisions. A man who treasures his wife will prioritize her wellbeing in his decisions. A man who treasures social approval will prioritize this in his decisions. And a man who treasures wealth and power will prioritize this in his decisions.
As of March third, the United States was reporting 124 cases of Covid-19 and 11 deaths. As of the morning of March ninth, they are reporting 554 cases, and 22 dead.
Rather than doing the common sense thing and shutting down travel from China, all the U.S. government did was screen arrivals for fever, with a virus whose contagious incubation period is a median of 6 days and can be as long as 24. Which means infected people were allowed into the general population. And as a result, so far, 22 people are dead who did not need to die. There will be more.
And now, let me divert into the field of ethics. European Americans United is an ethics-based organization, so this diversion is expected.
If I were to grab a knife and go stab 22 random people to death, it would be clear to any but the most psychopathic that what I had done was wrong.
What if, instead, I killed them using a poison gas? Or a firearm? Would it be any more or less wrong? No – it is still a circumstance where my decision lead to innocent deaths.
What if, instead of killing them strictly for my amusement, I instead killed them because my ideology said that killing them was okay? Or, what if I killed them because doing so would swell the value of my stock portfolio?
What if, instead of killing them personally, I instead took an action that a reasonable person would expect to result in their deaths by some other means? For example, if poison was accidentally in the water supply, but I delayed revealing that fact until the stock market closed for the day, so I would have time to sell my water company stock at full price before it would crash after that announcement?
Morally, this would be mass murder, but in practice it would merely require the financier to pay a fine if caught.
Although the linkage becomes more distant, the United States government, in response to both ideological and financial concerns, allowed infected people into the United States. Instead of exercising “Common Sense Border Control” they did screenings that have proven sufficiently ineffectual that now two dozen people have paid with their lives. And this is likely just the beginning. Morally, this is mass murder.
At the ideological level, our government could not exercise common sense border control, because once it was seen to be effective in preventing the spread of a deadly illness, it might also be considered to avoid the results of the large number of criminals being allowed into the country. It would also be demonstrable that the government was, in fact, capable of controlling our borders, and had instead simply been refusing to do so. And that can’t be allowed!
At the financial level, especially early on, wording was very carefully used in media announcements to avoid panic early, so the Apostles of Epic Evil could sell at full price, followed by a crash that will wipe out the gains of small investors saving for retirement, when the Apostles of Epic Evil will buy those liquidated assets at a discount, further consolidating their ownership and control.
Never allow a good crisis to go to waste.
The first situation, the ideological one, is untenable because it maintains adherence to ideology even when it causes the deaths of the innocent. The second situation is so sinister as to be beyond comprehension. Yet both influenced government policy far more than the actual safety of the American people.
And that takes me back to the Bible: where your treasure lies, there your heart will lie also. Common sense border control would have demonstrated that the heart of the U.S. Government lies with the well-being of Americans. But that is not what happened.
What happened instead was a half-hearted and clearly ineffective measure that provided the appearance of action to satisfy a gullible public – while instead protecting the interests of financiers and ideologues.
So we know where the heart and treasure of the U.S. Government truly lies. But to anyone paying attention, this is not a surprise. Perhaps now is a good time to start thinking about what lies beyond?
Illustration released under the creative commons international attribution license by Togopic.