A Brief Metaphysics of a Pandemic

Situations of distress, panic, and outright hysteria, allow for deep insights into the human soul – into the essence of an individual character as well as the psyche of cultures and entire civilizations. It discloses moral and intellectual deficiencies and reflects civic arrangements, the political order, and constitutional designs. 

It is a sobering spectacle to watch a hedonistic civilization, exhausted and vain after decades of venerating money and material pleasures when faced with a potentially deadly virus pandemic, now consumed by trivial regard for physical survival. Almost all politicians, medical and other experts surrounding the US President and leaders in most European countries focus exclusively on survivability rates and protecting everybody at all costs. Those nations and leaders that appear to keep their societal environments open (i.e., Sweden) rectify it by referencing liberal values and the right to self-determination of citizens. Any more profound sense of understanding of why the near-total shutdown of our societies and the ubiquitous succumbing to the corona virus is highly problematic, to say the least, is missing. 

Interesting to note, though, that the much-hated President Trump, while not expressing it philosophically, in his intuitive wisdom, questions the maxim upon which the majority acts. While they want to save lives and resent opening up the country with all their might, Trump clarifies that the cure must not be worse than the disease. 

In expressing what sounds like a banal truism, he reveals philosophical wisdom, which is this: “If any collective of people set the value of personal physical survival absolute, they’ve declared moral bankruptcy and are on the path to perishment.” Indeed, we have to be willing to put our lives on the line and enter a trade-off between physical survival and maintaining our social and economic livelihoods. Undeniably, Trump understood what most don’t even dare to think.

Frank Dietrich, a fellow philosopher from the University of Düsseldorf, nailed it this way (my translation): “If the crisis continues for a long time and the economic turmoil reaches extreme proportions, we must reconsider the primacy of saving lives.”

In other words, the young and healthy, those up to retirement age whose health is not compromised by medical preconditions, have to get back to work and keep the countries and nations going. Some might fall ill, a few might even die, but we must not hide away until the last trace of the corona virus has disappeared, a vaccine came out, and nobody can get sick anymore.

Our societies have to ‘man’ up again, and we should remind ourselves of Plato’s ‘thymos,’ the ‘spiritedness,’ this ingredient of the human soul without which neither an individual nor society can survive in the long run. If we are no longer willing to risk our lives for each other, we are virtually enslaving ourselves, and we will eventually – when looking back – be ashamed of our cowardice. 

It is important not to confuse or misinterpret the outlined axiom. Of course, everything meaningful to preserve lives, and every measure to protect people, must be welcome. However, the preservation of life and physical survivability must not develop into an absolute. 

If not for anything, we should at least seize the opportunity this crisis offers to rediscover the dignity that human existence is more than self-preservation at all costs and fear of death. Ultimately, every one of us – above all, our political leaders and representatives – will be judged against this backdrop of self-respect and esteem.

  

It is time to crawl out from underneath our shelters and sanctuaries and face life again.

COVID-19 Crisis Lays Bare Wicked Character of the Left

It is an adage of philosophical wisdom that crises and emergencies reveal both the worst and the best in humans. It brings out the finest in the good and the most awful in the bad.

Sadly, in times of a pandemic and a threat to all of humankind, the U.S.'s national political discourse proves this saying to be true. Those of us hoping that the COVID-19 crisis would unite us and help bridge the chasm of hate and destruction that has ever deepened in this country ever since Mr. Trump ran for office go through constant disappointment. The Democrats, the Fake News Media, throngs of prejudiced and mindless pundits, the majority of the ill-educated and deranged Hollywood celebrities (example par excellence Alec Baldwin) keep attacking and instrumentalizing the crisis for some gain in the November presidential elections. 

Disparaging and bringing down Trump is still the motto. Nothing has changed. As I have described it in previous blog entries, the destructiveness of the left, their intellectual and moral bankruptcy, even accelerates and reaches ever-increasing hysterical proportions. Yet, the left and their communication outlets don't care. They have already realized and count on it that a significant portion of the public has succumbed to the barrage of disinformation and distortion of recent years and abandoned their moral and rational judgment. Equally consumed by irreconcilable disdain for President Trump and his administration, they accept whatever nonsense Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer and their henchpeople at CNN, NBC, MSNBC, or the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, to name a few, put forward.

Not to be misunderstood. It is legitimate in an open society to engage vigorously in the struggle for political power and to prevail in elections. But only within the boundaries of mutual recognition and a minimum degree of honesty and truthfulness. From the beginning, the Trump-hating liberal crowd did not heed these limits. Very much to the contrary, they used innuendo, distortion, and fabrication of facts, outright lies, and personal attacks to attain their goals. No signs whatsoever that the Democrats and most establishment media – while promoting their ideas – intend to engage in loyal opposition work. 

After the unsuccessful and dishonest, painfully stupid, and unlawful impeachment attempt (compare my previous blog https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2020/01/when-breakdown-of-rationality-becomes. html), the COVID crisis is now about to be abused for another illicit effort to bring down President Trump before he reaches the November Elections. In which – unless colossal voter fraud takes place – he will be victorious against the probably weakest candidate the Democrats have had in a long time. The probably most loathsome individual among the Democrats, the vile and mendacious Adam Schiff, who drove the impeachment charade against the President, has already announced via Twitter – supported by Nancy Pelosi on TV – to establish a nonpartisan commission to review the country's coronavirus response. The partisan dishonesty of this man and the bulk of his party is so blatant that such a proposal is positively laughable. Everybody with the smallest amount of fair-mindedness left knows that this pathetic attempt would be nothing but to lay whatever blame – speculative and unsubstantiated as it may be – at the President's doorstep. 

 

On occasion, fortunately, a glimmer of decency emerges. It gives hope when presidential candidate Joe Biden after he accused Mr. Trump of xenophobia and racism about his travel ban on China and Europe, reverses his verdict and now acknowledges that it was the right thing to do. But such cases of honesty are rare. Unfortunately, the distortion of facts (i.e., the timeline of President Trump's response to the pandemic), the emphasis on selective information disapproving of the President and his Coronavirus Task Force (i.e., the misrepresentation of Mr. Trump's support for the off-label use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychlorochine), and the push to make the crisis to appear much worse than it, in reality, is, dominate the public dialogue. 

Aside from bashing the President, the liberal left hampers any steps to support businesses and workers financially, instead of attempting to put ideological, not corona-related pork in the relief bills to promote their socialist agenda. Since a swift return to regular operation and a speedy economic recovery would help Mr. Trump regain the main achievement of his presidency's first three years, the left is bent on not letting that happen. There is no doubt that a health crisis is exploited for political reasons, even at the substantial detriment to the entire nation. 

No matter how many infections and deaths, no matter how the crisis will play out, we are in to continue the campaign to take down President Trump. Despite the awfulness of the preceding years, the dumbest and most reprehensible social and political discourse is yet to come.