Originally published at http://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/04/22/great-forgetting-why-we-forget-epidemics-and-why-one-must-be-remembered
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" Lincoln said of the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. “I think that’s in part because of the way we’re conditioned to remember history… Even though American history is full of painful losses, we don’t take them in.”
History has been written not by the “winners” but by what the Tao te Ching refers to as the “failure of success”. Predatory capitalism “externalizes” (in full blown addiction denial) and its insane drive (car metaphor as perfect example for perpetuation of fossil fuel addiction) and any who speak to realities of life are scorned, so dissociative has the system become. All of the puzzle pieces are the same. Can you recall the feeling in approaching a puzzle? Haven’t you noticed? The puzzle is a perfect metaphor for the distraction from life - in reality - being a seamless unity of a novelty generating preservation system for generating ever greater novelty to be preserved. All the world’s spiritual traditions compliment each other as do we as “individuals”. Paradigm shift time. The road is made by walking. I am another yourself. I am because we are. And as recently noted by a poster in Lakota: nake nula waun welo: today i am ready for anything (mistranslated in typical predatory vein: today is a good day to die) … the landscape / Mother Earth cannot be obscured and raped forever.
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I like this very much. Thanks!
@CommonDreams Oh! man you are wonderful for this job. This link will help me to remember epidemics. Which i forgotten. Thanks for sharing this with us. 
AKA “Esse est percipi.”
Rough paraphrase of one of my favorite Lao Tzu quotes: “You must make your way toward the mountain for a path to appear.”
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No, I refuse to listen to the Democratic Party’s relentless propaganda/spin. I will trust my own memory, not Google’s thank you.
The epidemic of spin - the relentless spinning of this one must be remembered.
There is a huge global theft going on underneath/behind it. I was wondering what the global oligarchs and autocrats would do to finish their shoving of their theft onto us.
The one thing I knew was that it wasnt ever going to be honest.
Their over-drama manipulations and made up crises and its fakeness is their main product.
Minus those who have lost a family member–your loss is greater than the rest–I believe that what most of us will remember will be the huge dislocation we have all sustained. In saying this, I am especially concerned about children and the loss of schooling–really trashed for the year, and as is commonly understood by fellow educators: having had a weak teacher for one grade school year may put the student at a disadvantage from which he/she may never recover. When we consider that many had NO teacher, or if they did, only a face on a screen via distance learning, and thanks to a natural enough unfamiliarity with the mode, teacher lessons that were ineffective or uninspiring–then we will have pause to consider. Other losses also crowd in to demand their due: increases in family strife, increased burden falling primarily on mothers who left work in order to maintain the children, or instructed them herself. It goes on.
When we consider that 911 could have been prevented by the simple expedient of locked cockpit doors, we may then begin to ask the question: did it really require us to flail away with 20 years of war? I also remember Viet Nam and how millions of Americans believed, were absolutely convinced (!!) that Viet Nam was a mortal threat to America. This attitude was created by the incessant, panic inspiring media, which uncritically beamed messages to us from govt officials, congressional spokespeople, and the CIA. Thus stampeded, we sent 500,000 soldiers over there–many draftees who had no desire to go.
I have two stats for the author on the pandemic–just found them on the Net:
According to the CDC: 78% who ALL who are hospitalized or need respirator are Obese. 3/8/21 CNBC
According to AARP reporting: 95% of ALL those who die from Covid are over 50 (AARP 4/1/21)
After this thing is over, we will have a belated reckoning, just as we did after Vietnam, as we still must have after these wasteful, immoral, brutalizing 20 years of war in the Middle East.
When we do reflect back on this Covid year we must ask: Could there have been a simpler, equally effective way to hand this: a pandemic that principally targets two specific, narrowly defined, vulnerable groups? Has every scrap and tittle of this response of ours been necessary?