This is not an invisible enemy. It is the same one we’ve been fighting for centuries. Opening the economy is a long-term strategy to:
- reduce the population who receive SS, SSID, Medicare, and Medicaid,
- reduce the number of people receiving SNAP, unemployment, employment assistance, and other social safety net entitlements,
- reduce the unsustainable prison population without justice reform,
- reduce the population of Black and Brown citizens and immigrant populations,
- suppress the vote,
- minimize the need for expansions of healthcare, affordable housing.
There is no invisible enemy. The enemy is standing right in front of us with a noose. Make no mistake. This is a deadly move. Perhaps we could think this is an act of unconscious bias, if we want to be generous. But we cannot mistake that this is an act of the Principalities and Powers using their willing slaves of sin, willing in order to preserve and enhance their own postions of presumed power and privilege and wealth.
Racism, antisemitism, ageism, xenophobia, heterosexism, and classism all contribute to the environment where a governor presumes that opening a bowling alley and a barbershop are going to restart the economy.
Do not go out. Stay home. Stay alive.
Prayer for the day comes from Psalm 64:
Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint; preserve my life from the dread enemy. Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked, from the scheming of evildoers, who whet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows, shooting from ambush at the blameless; they shoot suddenly and without fear. They hold fast to their evil purpose; they talk of laying snares secretly, thinking, “Who can see us? Who can search out our crimes? We have thought out a cunningly conceived plot.”
bevfriedlander 