This was always an idea rooted in ignorance. It sounds nice, but it's legitimately a terrible idea.

Here's why: what are all the businesses doing right now?
In 2008 what were all the businesses doing, especially the banks?
In 2001 what was the airline industry doing?

Businesses can fail.
Sometimes businesses need to fail.
Sometimes businesses need to file bankruptcy and restructure.
Sometimes they need to sell of parts of themselves.
Sometimes businesses need to be bailed out to avoid cascading failures.

But government is the thing we have that is quite literally too fucking big to fail.
Government is the thing that bails out all of the other things.
It's the last best hope for all of us playing in the US sandbox.

Government can't file bankruptcy.
It can't say "I don't got it".
Government can't "run out of money" because a hurricane wiped out 3 of its top producing states.
It can't stop putting out forest fires because it couldn't get a loan at the right interest rate.
And generally speaking, government can't layoff large portions of its workforce suddenly and be "leaner and meaner" coming out of it, and ALSO remain effective doing all the things it has to do.

Government doesn't require advertising.
It either has NO customers or it has ALL of the customers.
It has NO competitors. It's a monopoly.
It has no quarterly earnings statement.

If government does well its executives don't get giant bonuses (nor should they).
It can legitimately ask people to walk into life or death situations.
It doesn't get to poison an entire city and simply settle for an undisclosed amount or close up shop.

I know there's a vast ocean of people in this country who think these things are true but they're wrong.

Whatever government needs to do it legit NEEDS to do until that thing is done.
There are no choices.
There are no options.
Our government can't give up and leave the corona market to Spain because they have a better product or name recognition.
If millions of people die the government HAS to clean up the bodies and it has to remove them and dispose of them in a safe way.
If several buildings are destroyed in the middle of New York City, the government doesn't get to decide IF there's ROI on cleaning up the rubble.
It doesn't get to shop around investors to see if someone's interested in buying the site for new development.

Government MUST do the shit it does.
Post Office not solvent? Doesn't matter, those stimulus checks have to go out. They just have to get there. That census has to be taken. Those votes have to be counted. And yes, the fleet has to keep rolling.

So our governments (local, county, state, federal) are in no fucking ways like any business anywhere on Earth, nor will they ever be, nor should they ever be, nor can they ever be and still be GOVERNMENTS.

And now that we're seeing what happens when the entire world of business STOPS
and the government MUST keep going,
more of our friends on the Right had better recognize that.

ANYONE telling you "Government should be run like a business"
--no matter how tall they are,
no matter how handsome,
how well spoken,
no matter how genuinely they're nodding,
or how sincere their smile
--does NOT understand what they are talking about, and is either speaking directly from that ignorance or maliciously attempting to prey on yours.

This shit is over. It's settled. It's done. It's on snopes. We quite literally NEVER need to talk about it again.

You say that Democrats have been saying this for decades?

Yes. So what.

It would be a FURTHER crime if, after all of this, WE didn't hit back folks on the Right with the utmost severity if they say shit like this again.

It's one thing to be wrong in theory and another to have been devastatingly proven wrong 6 months ago at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

It's similar to my principles about climate change.

Anyone can be a climate change denier BUT, if it turns out to be real and IF we survive it and IF they ever open their mouth about science or skepticism again, the rest of us get to either smack the shit out of them or outright arrest and execute them on principle.

Sorta like Germany's policy on holocaust revisionism, but with a Philippine intensity.

Look at the birds of North America. Enormous flocks can execute sharp turns and vortical spins with magical-feeling coordination. A thousand starlings bunch into a living fist over the trees, relax westwar, shear away from skyscrapers.

With a kind of muscular clairvoyance, each bird seems to anticipate the movements of the others. What is deciding them? What permits a thousand autonomous actors to move as one body, at these unbelievable speeds?

A recent study described how these birds are able to "manage uncertainty in consensus": Flocks ... maintain cohesion as a group in highly uncertain environments and with limited, noisy information."
We're in a secret flight, too. Externally, we are all separating from public spaces, cancelling weddings, graduations, retreating into our homes. But this surface group effort hides to many, just what we're doing together on another plane: we are responding to THIS crisis with surprising swiftness and unity.
We, too, are now soaring into formation.

... The greatest misconception among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don’t care about each other.
--White people don’t care about the problems of black America.
-- Men don’t care about women’s rights.
-- Cops don’t care about the communities they serve.
-- Humans don’t care about the environment.

These couldn’t be further from the truth. We do care.
We just don’t have the time to do anything about it.
Maybe that’s just me. But maybe it’s you, too...

What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views.

At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped. Here it is. We’re in it....I imagine you feel like I do: devastated, depressed, and heartbroken.

And what a perfect time for Best Buy and J. Crew and Gwyneth Paltrow to help me feel normal again... if I could drink a venti blonde vanilla latte with two pumps of syrup, then this very dark feeling would go away.

You think I’m kidding, that I’m being cute, that I’m denying the very obvious benefits of having a roaring economy. You’re right. Our way of life is not ruinous. The economy is not, at its core, evil...I get it.

But its flaws have been laid bare for all to see. It doesn’t work for everyone. It’s responsible for great destruction. It is so unevenly distributed in its benefit that three men own more wealth than 150 million people.

Its intentions have been perverted and the protection it offers has disappeared. In fact, it’s been brought to its knees by one pangolin.

3.
... the onslaught is coming. Get ready, my friends. What is about to be unleashed on American society will be the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again.

It will come from brands, it will come from government, it will even come from each other, and it will come from the left and from the right.

We will do anything, spend anything, believe anything, just so we can take away how horribly uncomfortable all of this feels.

And on top of that, just to turn the screw that much more, will be the only effort even greater: the all-out blitz to make you believe you never saw what you saw.
-- Don't be a statistic. Die without being counted, and without counting.
-- The air wasn’t really cleaner; those images were fake.
-- The hospitals weren’t really a war zone; those stories were hyperbole.
-- The numbers were not that high; the press is lying.
-- You didn’t see people in masks standing in the rain risking their lives to vote.
Not in America.
-- You didn’t see the leader of the free world push an unproven miracle drug like a late-night infomercial salesman. That was a crisis update.
-- You didn’t see homeless people dead on the street.
-- You didn’t see inequality.
-- You didn’t see indifference.
-- You didn’t see utter failure of leadership and systems.

But you did. And so we are about to be gaslit in a truly unprecedented way. It starts with a check for $1,200 — don’t say I never gave you anything — and then it will be so big that it will be bigly.
And it will be a one-two punch from both big business and the big white house — inextricably intertwined now more than ever and being led by, as our luck would have it, a Marketer-in-Chief.

Business and government are about to band together to knock us unconscious again. It will be funded like no other operation in our lifetimes. It will be fast. It will be furious. And it will be overwhelming. The Great American Return to Normal is coming.

4.
...I beg of you: take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all.

We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, ten, fifty years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.

We can do that on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on and where.

We can do it locally in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend.

And we can do it nationally in our government, in which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power. If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen.

If we want to protect our doctors and nurses from the next virus — and protect all Americans — we can make it happen.

If we want our neighbors and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen.
If we want millions of kids to be able to eat if suddenly their school is closed, we can make that happen.
And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too.