100,000 dead and...yawn.

I had this random thought. Back in 2001, there was this moment that we rallied around. On 9/11 planes were flown into the World Trade Center buildings, taking them down.

It's a (mostly) unexpected terror attack.
We show empathy for New York, and we
unite as a country.

I distinctly remember one ad campaign. "They thought they could divide us, they were wrong."

We had an enemy who we could identify (they were essentially boiled down to "Muslims who wanted to change our way of life") and it wasn't clear where, when, or if they might strike again.

But here's the thing. We allowed some of our constitutional rights to be subverted. We allowed big brother to watch us. New banking rules. New security rules. Hell we were okay with a version of a strip searches at airports.

Sure it was probably (mostly) warranted. And arguably necessary.

But on that day 6,000 people died. Not to use their memory in a bad way - this was indeed a tragedy - but put that in perspective with what's happening today.

100,000 have died because of a virus. That's nearly 20x the number that died on 9/11.

Again New York suffers the most, but in this case we hear people deriding New York. It's too..whatever and we can't be bothered to care or help them.

And instead of uniting, we're fighting with each other. There's no enemy per se. We buy toilet paper and carry guns into legislative buildings to protest....Something.

We tell people to stay at home. To wear a mask. To social distance to stop the spread. And what we hear is "No you're infringing!"

Dear leader is inept and clueless. He wants this to just be over and wish it away. He blames everyone he can think of. He starts talking up the military because that's going to protect us against a virus I assume?

And people want to just back to "life as we knew it" and I don't think we will be able to. There's another evolutionary step we'll take. More security. More screenings. More things that change "our way of life."

And I think I finally understand why this is a problem. When there's a world issue we release our military on it. We chant "USA" and "support our troops"...there's an enemy. And we have to protect our way of life. That idea of American exceptionalism or the ideal.

And in this case, our military can't be utilized. It's an unseen enemy. There is no exceptionalism in play. And what we're asking a nation to do is *actually* sacrifice for the way of life. And that MAGA ideal that the "incompetent, sociopathic, impeached president" has been touting may be lost, especially the "great."

That's simple unacceptable. We need to just go back to living the way we living and supporting our troops and deriding immigrants.

And the sacrifice becomes more about just letting the virus run through us. Better to embody (stupidly) Patrick Henry's immortal words "give me liberty or give me death" quite literally - than to find ways to fight it.