USA the land of the Free??

It’s easy to visit places like San Francisco and New York and revel at the pace, and the excitement, of life. It’s easy to throw a coin in a beggar’s bowl, and feel that you have done something small for that person’s life. It’s possible to walk past people on the streets and not realise how bloody hard their existence really is.

Trump tapped into that despair, caused by a financial structure which is unrelentingly cruel. A country where citizens can’t afford to get sick. How they just get by, week to week. Now 33 million extra of them are unemployed because of a virus; which nobody saw coming. The number of deaths in USA is now 78,000.

Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of the political scene in Washington. Unfortunately, he filled it with people who were worse than those there before. Finally, this week a group of Republicans produced this ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_yG_-K2MDo which made Trump spit tacks. This is his own Republican supporters attacking him. Message to those of us filled with despair…there is hope yet.  

At the UN last week, the USA blocked a vote on the Coronavirus because the motion mentioned the WHO. The games which Trump will descend to is beyond belief. This country is rapidly becoming a laughing stock. That is terribly sad.

Behind the Trump bullshit there is the story of ordinary people, like you and me, and how they are coping.  Struggling to see why this has happened to them. The land of the free is anything but that. Was it just a myth all the time? Were the songs we have all sung over the years part of a myth? I must have a stack of cousins in USA. There’s lots of Irish there. My lot came here, thankfully. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/21/stories-tough-jobs-loneliness-quarantine-coronavirus/?arc404=true&utm_campaign=wp_week_in_ideas&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_ideas

I really liked it when the Washington Post humanised the Covid 19 story. They published a series of stories of people who had died. This really brought it home. The virus knows no friends. It does not discriminate. For those who say we should get slack right now, read these stories.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/coronavirus-dead-victims-stories/?arc404=true

Let’s make sure that we look after each other here. Be kind.