Opening Up

This past Sunday was Divine Mercy Sunday -- I completely forgot until I looked at the Missal (I like to check out the readings and such).  Anyways, one of the "nice" things about the Mass shutdown is that I was able to go to the new Divine Mercy altar and spend some time in contemplation... then I picked up one of the "Guides to the Parish" we have conveniently located about.. I didn't realize the number of relics we have, nor the themes (if you will) to the various altars... it's funny; a few years ago I was looking at one of the windows and thought "why do we have the Martyrdom of Thomas a Beckett at our parish?" I am thinking this lack of paying attention is along the same lines of theological stupidity.

So, I've been getting a kick out of the all of the protests regarding the re-opening of the country.  Mind you, I am pretty supportive of these efforts, mainly because of stuff like this:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-true-costs-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/
(I often think of the fondness of the medical community of bloodletting as a curative, one of the earliest examples of "the science is settled," come to think of it.)

I think the issue is that -- contrary to most things in this country -- it wasn't discussed or debated; rather, the nation's governors (in most cases) simply said we are going to do this, and that was that.  I guess I would compare it to, say, Obamacare -- a done deal from start to finish; even then, people got to fight about things, such as the costs, the winners, the losers, etc.; I wouldn't say that people knew what they were getting, or getting into, but you had an idea.  Not this time.

The problem now, of course, is that:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/if-half-the-countrys-covid-deaths-were-in-montana-would-new-york-shut-down/
and
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/04/21/behind-protests-two-americas-one-unemployed-and-one-gets-paychecks-column/5167453002/
I think those two links, if you will, demonstrate the problem here; basically, we've put a NYC solution to the nation as a whole, and the nation doesn't quite need that, for a bunch of reasons -- lack of density, better health, etc., and now some people are beginning to realize this, and, as I noted in my last post, once you start a course it's quite difficult to change it... this is fine, of course, if the correct path is chosen,but if not... well, as I like to say, somebody has to answer for it, but it's never the right person...

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/is-private-equity-having-its-minsky
Interesting, if unpleasant.  I do note -- again -- that for all of the talk of GOPers being greedy assholes, in this case one can argue that is all of the Democrat/union pension funds -- underfunded -- that are exacerbating the problem here.  If Republicans had any brains, of course, they'd be hammering this at every opportunity...