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[H2O Man]

“If I could persuade myself that I should find him in a Himalayan cave I would proceed there immediately. But I know I cannot find him apart from humanity. I claim to know my millions. All hours of the day I am with them. They are first and last. Because I recognize no God except that God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions.” – Gandhi


The Trump corona virus crisis has taken attention away from virtually every other issue – as it should. It has resulted in shut-downs in many places. Sports have been indefinitely postponed. Trump babbles about being a “war president,” but few Americans are thinking about how many military people are assigned to hostile foreign lands, other than their families. Even political discussions tend to be in the context to the government's response to the rapidly spreading virus.

My three younger children are all employed in human services. There is a discomfort for them in “working from home.” It's not that they do not have comfortable spaces to inhabit. It is because they are aware of the impact of the current situation on those existing on the margins of society. As my son asks, “Where are homeless people supposed to go during the shut-down ?”

The Hunkpapa Lakota chief Sitting Bull said that if a man loses loses anything and goes back and searches for it, he will find it. Yesterday, I was thinking about where society lost the interest in answering my son's question. I remember hearing far more about such issues in the past, but they seem to have gone out of style. Could I find out when?

I started by watching a film of the 1980 debate between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Surely this illustrated the stark differences between a good man with a social conscience, and an amoral man acting out the role of a leader. It was easy to recall my thoughts while watching it 40 years ago. I knew then that dark clouds were gathering on the horizon.

Then I watched the first 1984 debate between Reagan and former VP Walter Mondale. Again, I could easily remember what I was thinking when I was viewing it live. Mondale was a good man, fully capable of serving our nation as president. As bad a human specimen as Reagan absolutely was, it was sad to see any person's mental abilities so reduced that they had that level of difficulty in communicating. No wonder it would be so easy for VP Bush and Oliver North to convince the faded Gipper to endorse the Iran-Contra operations.

Soon, it was 4:30, and I tuned in to watch the equally feeble-minded Donald Trump give a press conference. It would surely serve as a substitute rally for Donald. I listened to him as he delivered a series of statistics that soon became trapped in a cycle of repetition. To paraphrase Lennon, words were flowing out like acid rain into a burning cup. This mere shell of a human lacks the capacity to be helpful in this time.

My older son came in and asked what I was watching? Before I could answer, he said, “Oh, fuck this asshole!” as he grabbed the remote. He turned to another program, that featured two members of the House of Representatives speaking about the corona virus. We watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then Ilhan Omar speak about what they were trying to do to help not only the middle class, but also the poor. They focused most of their attention on the issues confronting those on the margins of society. They were answering my younger son's question.

I found what I was looking for.