We Can Be Heroes: Guest MINDSETTER™ Ed Renehan
Monday, April 27, 2020
“We can be heroes …” – David Bowie
Charles Dickens once famously wrote: “My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.” Were he alive today, witnessing the behavior of the vast majority of the people of the United States versus the unfathomably inept behavior of the country’s varied Federal and State governments, Dickens would see much to support this view which he expressed more than 150 years ago with regard to his native Britain.
At the Federal level, it cannot be denied that the Executive Branch has fumbled nearly every aspect of this national Covid-19 emergency through inept messaging, inept distribution of resources, and inept planning and implementation of crises responses at just about every level. It also, sadly, cannot be denied that the Congressional Branch has been equally inept in promptly moving to enact effective legislation for creating and funding those economic packages so desperately needed by the millions of Americans and small businesses cut off from their sources of revenue.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAt the State level, a significant number of Governors (including but not limited to Cuomo in New York and Whitmer in Michigan) have stepped up with astute, well-thought-out, and effective measures to help mitigate the epidemic. Conversely, however, other Governors (including but not limited to Kemp in Georgia and DeSantis in Florida) have ignored widely known pandemic “best practices” and defied the advice of the most learned and astute experts in the field in order to open their states prematurely and, in effect, make them petri dishes for the flourishing of the virus.
Amid this melee of conflicting policies, agendas, and philosophies, it has been the American people themselves who have on the whole (except for a small, vocal minority) not only cooperated with pandemic protocols and procedures, but also heroically come forward to help their neighbors in dozens of different ways, via dozens of different venues and programs, all around the country.
Retired nurses have voluntarily returned to work in order to service increased demand for their skills while also replacing nurses who, due to their own selfless service, have now become infected. The same goes for retired physicians. Neighbors in communities large and small have taken it upon themselves to deliver groceries to elderly people (and others at increased risk) who either cannot or should not step outside their homes. And each day thousands across the country make appointments (yes, appointments are necessary right now, for the sake of maintaining social distance) to give blood.
Our first responders – firemen, police, EMTs – are still first responding, albeit at an even greater risk to their lives than is usually the case. In Washington D.C. parishioners of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church still serve lunch to some 100 to 150 homeless people daily, all of these clients at heightened risk for contracting and carrying the virus. (Similar programs continue across the land.) Greatly increased numbers of volunteers now staff mental health and suicide prevention hotlines nationwide while isolation, job uncertainty, and the loss of loved ones has vastly expanded the need for counseling.
Such responses to crises come naturally – at least to those of us with an ounce or two of empathy. Crises are, among other things, cleansing processes that strip away irrelevant artifices and humble our bloated egos. In doing so, they also clarify what truly matters and what does not. Crises are invitations to deep thinking. They remove the luxury of casual stupidity and tolerance for things that mean nothing: for the vulgar and the banal, and for self-indulgence. Crises defy materialism and force us to redefine the priorities of our “wants.” Crises remind us that we are all fellow passengers on the same train, ultimately bound for the same destination. Crises also remind us that we stand on the shoulders of giants who have weathered similar calamities through the long centuries, and endured, just as we ourselves can and will and must.
In December of 1776, American patriot Tom Paine wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Make no mistake. Countless Americans – and I believe, by far the majority – are today revealing themselves as heroes. And that is the thing we should remember and be grateful for.
Edward Renehan lives in Wickford. His latest book is The Life of Charles Stewart Mott: Industrialist, Philanthropist, Mr. Flint (University of Michigan Press).
Related Articles
- In Wake of Pittsburgh, “To Bigotry Give No Sanction” - Guest MINDSETTER™ Renehan
- Guest MINDSETTER ™ Ed Renehan: Rhode Island Needs to Get Real
- Remembering Pete Seeger’s Rhode Island Ties at His Centennial: Guest MINDSETTER™ Renehan
- Renehan: The Tangled Spirits of Exclusion, Tradition & History at Bailey’s Beach
- #MeToo is Long Overdue: Guest MINDSETTER™ Renehan
- United Auto Workers Strike Déjà Vu: Guest MINDSETTER™ Renehan
- The “Glass Ceiling” Has Already Been Shattered: Guest MINDSETTER™ Renehan