That's a brutal commute, PM.

I think that where I am really hung up is trying to figure out what "truth, justice and the American Way," even means. Is it an empty slogan? (Feels like yes - truth is a joke, justice seems to be delivered differently depending on wealth, and the American Way can't just be the crap we buy at the mall, can it?) Was it always an empty slogan? (Feels like no - but if it wasn't it was before my time).

The concept of liberty didn't always stop at "I want what I want when I want it, and the gubmint can't tell me no." Did it? I mean, surely, we didn't fight a war for independence in order to preserve our right to buy crap from China at extremely low prices.

I'm stuck on Spiderman, actually. With great power comes great responsibility. But we want the power without the responsibility. Right?

Reply to post #18 (show post):
I said the other day that all Englands are fictional. I believe all Americas are fictional too. Let me give you the unflattering versions.

My country, the UK, built its disproportionate wealth off trading slaves and taking resources from other countries by force. We went to war with China when they tried to stop the sale of opium. We let a private company of rich predators pillage India with a private army bigger than that available to the crown. We rigorously protected landowners above tenants for centuries. We used cavalry against civilians to protect the rights of mill owners. We let 1,000,000 Irish die another 1,000,000 emigrate without lifting a finger to deliver aid during the famine. We evicted the clans from the Scottish Highlands and turned their crofts into grouse moors for the wealthy. So not a picture of a liberal democracy.

A similar story can be told for the US, framing its history as one of rich white men spilling blood and rigging or breaking laws to keep and expand their wealth.

The War of Independence was mainly about the liberty of rich white men not to have to pay taxes to their King. The Declaration of Independence already shows a society built on the assertion of privilege - *These truths we hold to be self-evident" in other words, 'we, the rich white men who want to rule this country feel no need to prove or defend these statements, we simply declare them to be true.

The wealth of the country is as soaked in blood as the British Empire: constantly breaking treaties with Native Americans, Federally funded genocide of native Americans, slavery by holding people as property, slavery by tying people to the company store.

The push west through warfare and conquest, The robber barons (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, et al) forcing through railroads at gunpoint, using mercenaries against civilians in range wars, virtual enslavement of Chinese workers who died in their thousands building the railroads. Deep-rooted racism and misogny that still results in people of colour dying in droves from things white people don't have to worry about and where the Equal Rights Amendment was seen as unamerican.

A society built on the dominance of Christian Fundamentalism, a systematic rejection of secularism and a long-held hatred of other religions (Jews, Muslims, Catholics).

In many ways, Trump - a mysoginistic white supremacist willing to do anything to protect and expand the right of the wealthy to become wealthier regardless of the costs to everyone else - is the product of America's deepest traditions.

Of course, that tradition also includes, FDR, MLK, and even, when judged by outcomes, LBJ. But are they anomalies, a reflexive self-correction that pops up from time to time or are they the heart of the American Dream.

Neither of the above versions is the whole truth, or even a fair and balanced accounting but, as the narrative of a nation they are as valid as the ones the rich promote as a justification of their ongoing right to be rich.

Moonlight Reader wrote: " . . . the American Way can't just be the crap we buy at the mall, can it?"

Unfortunately, yes, I think it can be.

If you think back to the early history of what became the United States of America, most of the colonizers were after money/wealth/land. Whether it was the Spanish seeking gold and silver, the French trapping beaver, or the English grabbing land to export crops to Europe, the objective was always wealth. The Dutch in Indonesia, too. Sugar in the Caribbean, gold and diamonds in Africa, all the wealth of India. The spice trade or the slave trade, what did it matter as long as there was a profit?

The Puritan work ethic combined religion and commerce; profitability, not cleanliness, was next to godliness. Wealth was a sign of God's favor, so the more a person accumulated, the more he appeared to be favored by God. "Well, yes, I exploited my fellow human creatures and killed animals mercilessly and poisoned the air and water, but I'm rich rich rich rich rich, so it must be that God approves of what I'm doing, amiright? How dare you criticize me! That's the same as criticizing God!"

I've been making fabric face masks now for a couple of weeks, to the point that it's beginning to feel like a real job. I have virtually no cash investment in them other than the cost of elastic and pipe cleaners (for the nose piece). They're listed on Etsy at $20 for a pack of three masks; my net is about $5/mask. BF chewed me out so bad last night I thought I was going to start crying -- yes, it amounts to about $10/hour for my labor and no other profit, but I want to sell them and maybe sell them to people who can't afford $20/mask. Am I worth more than $10/hour? Maybe, maybe not. The most I've ever been paid by an employer in my entire life is $11/hour. Yeah. So I think about a $15/hour minimum wage and that seems like a fantasy.

Last summer, a friend asked me to do her a favor involving crafting. I told her I didn't really have time, and it wasn't really something I was used to doing, but she begged and it was a special circumstance, and so I caved and did it. The promised payment never showed up, but the excuses did. I gave up asking, and I gave up expecting. People really are shit. And yes, people care more about cheap crap from the mall, more about getting their nails done, more about going to a bar and swilling cheap beer while yelling at some sports team that treats athletes like Roman gladiators. People carry on about some celebrity's gorgeous clothes and billion-dollar mansion, never thinking about the people who gave up a meal so they could watch that celebrity on PPV. Dear goddess, are we that desperate? Yes, we are, and that's how those celebrities become billionaires.

Would I like a fancy new car instead of my 20-YO Blazer? Oh, I suppose so, but I like my Blazer and just wish I could afford to get the AC fixed before we hit triple digits again. Maybe if I sell enough masks?

Reply to post #19 (show post):
@Mike Finn -- GMTA

Reply to post #19 (show post):
Yes to all you said, but still, as Martin Luther King said:

"the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

I have to believe in something, so that's it for me. And even if we are, right now and at this moment, locked in combat to keep that arc bending towards justice if not completely reaching it, I have to hold some faith that the fight is worth it and that we'll win in the end.

That's my true north.

As always, my BL friends have come through with great perspectives and articulate arguments. That's why I love this place and all of you.

Reply to post #23 (show post):
(The feeling, I'm sure, is mutual!)

Reply to post #22 (show post):
I was raised with the saying: *The world is never changed by reasonable men".

The world is often changed by indomitable women.

If the arc of history bends towards justice it is because of all the people who refuse to be reasonable and accept things as they are and all the people with the imagination to see things as they should be and the passion to share their vision.

I don't know what the answers are but I know nothing should be the same. It didn't work. I worry that the masses trying to go back to the old normal will just lead us back to this plus. Oh today texas started opening up for business ~sigh~ guess where I live

Reply to post #26 (show post):
@YM - I've been keeping a close eye on Abbott, and I've certainly wondered at why on Earth they're pushing to relax the stay-at-home orders before we've even peaked at cases, but the initial plan sounds like more image than substance. He's basically saying brick-and-mortar retail stores can start doing business again, as long as items are all pre-ordered and pre-paid, and the store employee delivers it to your car at the curb. No customers inside the stores, and the standard social-distancing guidelines have to be observed (ie 6 feet distance, hand hygiene between every customer, cloth face coverings, etc). So it's really just shifting some retail from online sellers to local businesses. My concern is that business owners will not provide their employees with the safe working environment that these guidelines require, and there will be no enforcement and employees will have no recourse for their own safety.

But here in DFW, I'm mostly seeing people and businesses adhering to guidelines, on the rare occasions I venture out of the house. It may be different where you are? It's a big state, after all.

I can only reinforce what everybody has said about the gaslighting I see (from afar) happening in the US, and it's been happening here in AU from the beginning, re-writing history as it happens by bragging about having the highest testing rates in the world, when they've never even made it into the top three. Now, we're seeing repeated references to this being a "once in a century pandemic" which is a dangerously irresponsible thing to claim, and makes it easier to lull the populous into believing that all this is an anomaly that won't be repeated in their lifetime and therefore does not represent a catalyst for meaningful change.

For us personally, beyond my less-than-pragmatic desire to move to the hinterlands of nowhere and fully embrace my burgeoning misanthropy, not much will really change. Other than books and travel, we spend very little on anything consumable, and I long ago made the personal decision to stop buying plastics and anything 'made from China' whenever possible. It bothers me that this isn't as easy as I'd like, but I do what I can do.

In response to the validity of the American Way, it certainly looks dire, but I'm not ready to give all the credit to the corrupt. They certainly have the largest visible effect on the country and the world at large, but the way I see it, it's not unlike the way that, to the visible eye, the human race is the dominant species on earth, but in reality, it's what you can't see that dominates. If the human race ceased to be, life would continue on. If all bacteria ceased to exist, however, life would grind to a screeching halt. So while it looks like the dominant force in human society is the rich on the surface of things (and that's what they need people to believe), in reality if they ceased to exist tomorrow, the human race would continue to thrive (albeit with an uncomfortable adjustment period).

I grew up with parents that went through the depression; one a big city, first generation American girl from the north, the other a backwoods fisherman from the south whose family goes back to the revolution, so I got a range of perspectives, and what both my parents remembered were the ways people worked together, made the best of what little there was, and innovated ways to make the best of a horrible situation. Don't get me wrong - I heard about the mafia and the rumrunners too - but mostly it was about people just doing the best they could.

What I struggle with now more than ever is the institutionalised defeatism. The idea that things are the way they are because "that's just the way it is". No, things are the way they are because society as a whole doesn't set a very high standard for itself. It's much like the "boys will be boys" mentality. Boys are boys because society allows them to be. Women are better, stronger, more indomitable because women have never been allowed to be anything else. I'm NOT advocating that it's EVER been morally right to treat women differently than men, but the silver lining is that we hold ourselves to a higher standard than we hold men to. And sadly we've long forgotten how to hold any government to any standard as long as they tell us we're rich. Our respective histories are graphically littered with crimes against history's oppressed, but we used to at the very least hold our leaders to a higher moral standard than your average common criminal or snake oil salesman.

So, yes, I think we're at a low point in our existence, but I do believe there was a time when the American idea was a valid one - and I think it still exists in the corners of the world (yes, world) that don't get any press - the small towns and communities - we just don't see it because it doesn't make good copy, and its existence is therefore precarious.

Reply to post #29 (show post):
Char, I think so, too, but the other thing is that somehow the definition of "freedom" in America has diminished to this extremely narrow definition of freedom that is basically just "license". License to do anything, regardless of risk or harm to others. We've exposed ourselves as an incredibly selfish culture. And an incredibly stupid culture.

I cannot believe that the same people who think that the government can force women to carry an undesired pregnancy to term think that the government can't tell them to wear a mask when they go to the grocery store. The irony of seeing them protest the "heavy hand of the government" has just about caused me to lose my fucking mind.

Ugh. Reading the Washington Post every morning is just infuriating.

Reply to post #31 (show post):
I think that self-absorbed disregard has always been there, but what has changed is that we no longer expect better of ourselves as a nation. We no longer collectively feel an obligation to good citizenship, or even the appearance of it. There seems to be no shame in admitting to such monstrous selfishness. My hope is that this is just a down period in one of our societal cycles. I'm not the history buff here, but didn't we go through something similar in the 1920's and 1980's?

Reply to post #32 (show post):
PM - we're still in it from the 1980's. We've never really come back from Reagan. There was a brief blip after 9/11, but overall, we've raised self-absorption to a governing philosophy.

Can you imagine what would happen if (when) something really happens that threatens our existence? These people think that the government can't order them to stay home for a few weeks. What would they do with a draft for national defense? With rationing like during WWII? With taxation sufficient to fund a full on war effort?

We're a failed people. We just haven't realized it yet.

@Char -- Agreed. I've said for years that Americans could never go on general strike because they aren't desperate enough. Too comfortable, too lazy, too content. You have to be at a point of having nothing, so you have nothing to lose.

@Moonlight -- Agreed. "My body, my choice" only applies to face masks and not being able to get a haircut.

@MbD -- My parents grew up working class urban/suburban during the Depression and WW2, and doing with less and doing for others was a way of life ingrained when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. Conspicuous consumption simply didn't enter our existence.