There’s Something Very Unifying About A Global Crisis

There’s something very unifying about a global crisis — a great inescapable event that affects us all at the same time.  Such crises seem rare but in modern times, they happen often.  We have world economic crises, a global climate crisis, and a crisis of faith in our leaders that’s led to widespread social uprisings around the world.  These sorts of crises affect everyone to some extent, but the effects are hard to gauge.  Some people are affected disproportionately, others not at all.

But in the case of coronavirus, it’s different.  Coronavirus is affecting everyone — rich and poor, young and old, all races and creeds — at the same time.  And while some of us say to ourselves, “It’s just the flu” or “I’m young, it won’t kill me,” our lives are still being majorly impacted by it.  For starters, there are social restrictions and they’re getting tighter by the hour.  Moreover, the world economy is shutting down, which means that along with toilet paper, money is going to be in short supply..

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The Debate on Socialism

I ran into a friend the other day, and the first words out of his mouth were “Since when did the Democratic party become Socialist?” My short answer was — they haven’t. They’re they same old corporatist, center-right party they’ve been for years. It’s just that Republicans, seizing on the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and a few others, have decided that socialism is the Democrats’ Achilles heel and so they’re making a big issue of it. Oddly enough, however, this could turn out to be a good thing. By drawing attention to it, they’ve opened a debate that’s been dormant for decades. Read More