COVID really hurt us.
My daughter said this to me the other day about Trump: “I don’t know if I want things to be terrible to prove they were all wrong to vote for him, or things to be great and prove I was wrong about not voting for him.”
I can so relate, because we’re all just big egos most of the time.
But that got me thinking about COVID. It made a lot of people believe experts don’t know much and that the common person can know better. Experts were wrong. Things weren’t as bad as we feared. See!!! Not that many died. Vaccines didn’t work. The government was wrong.
Even though…
Millions of people died during COVID. Yes, not the whole world, but still… millions. I have friends who lost their dads.
Millions were saved by vaccines. Millions of lives.
The government was dealing with an unknown. They anticipated the worst—which might actually be one of the reasons the worst didn’t happen. That’s their job. And sometimes, it’s our job too.
The fact that everything ended up “alright” doesn’t prove anything even though lots of people took that lesson from it.
It seems we’re in the same place with Trump 2.0 again. Many are saying the same thing: It won’t be that bad. Stop overreacting, etc…
But…
Women have already lost rights. Women have already died because they couldn’t have abortions.
Men have already been empowered to be assholes. We live in a country that, if nothing else, has learned that you can do a lot of bad things and still win it all. People see that. People learn from it.
We’re dealing with an unknown. Some of us are fearing the worst. Because it could be. And if the worst doesn’t happen, it doesn’t justify letting this slide. It doesn’t justify not ending the possibility of the worst when we had a chance.
I’m not sure if I’m making sense, but that’s what this blog is for, I guess—just trying to get words and thoughts out.
I agreed with my daughter’s reasoning at the time, but the thought has been bothering me. Because it’s the wrong idea. The future won’t prove anyone right or wrong. If Trump doesn’t end up being Hitler (which I pray he doesn’t), then it proves nothing—except that sometimes we get lucky when we let the snakes out of the box and don’t get bit. Even though there was no real reason to open the box and let them out in the first place.
And at some point, we will get bit. Some already have been, and more definitely will be. And maybe that number of bites will never be catastrophic enough to justify all the fear—but if we keep letting snakes out of boxes, at some point, it will be. That big climate change snake is looking real dangerous, btw.
So, I guess, in the end, for my own ego, I can say it this way: there’s no reason on god’s green earth to hope things get bad to prove you were right. It’s always better to try and minimize damage when you can still minimize and not when you just “hope” it won’t be that bad because things are never that bad.