Can The Pandemic Lead To Peace?

Some people are going to consider me a monster for saying this. I hope the pandemic stretches on much longer, especially in the US.

Let me clarify. I am not wishing for or happy about any deaths caused by the pandemic. That’s not what I am saying.

What I really mean by this is that I want this pandemic to continue on long enough for people to awaken. I want people to pay attention to the priorities of our government. I want the comfortable middle class to become distinctly uncomfortable. I want them to know fear and desperation. I want them to know hunger and unfulfilled need. I want them to look up from their 401k’s and stock portfolios and know there are things far more important. I want them to know anxiety that their pills and alcohol don’t abate. I want them to feel denied and abandoned and forgotten. I want them to lose all sense of privilege. I want all the upper middle class to at least face the very real possibility of losing everything they have.

I want neoliberal centrists and right wing Conservatives to look in the mirror and feel the shame they have imposed upon others when they realize they are on welfare and food stamps and waiting in line for food banks. I want others who are more privileged to insult them and tell them how their life choices were all bad. Until the more privileged realize they are waiting in the welfare line as well. That they would have nothing without that welfare.

I want armchair warmongers to know the rage of seeing how much money our government spends on invading other countries while they do without basic needs. I want them to think about how many people could be fed for the cost of every $80,000 bomb dropped 121 times a day. I want them to consider how many mortgages could be saved, how many apartments rented for every $3 million drone, every $4.3 million M1 tank, every $122 million F35 jet, every $13 BILLION aircraft carrier.

I want those warmongers to think of the $770 billion Pentagon budget in angst and anger while they consider that it does nothing at all for their safety and security in the face of the very real threat they face at this moment.

I want other nations to consider weapons of war to be too expensive to continue purchasing, shutting down the weapons manufacturing plants that employ so many “patriots”, leaving them lost and deep in debt.

I want military contractors to see their stocks collapse entirely.