The big coronavirus lie: "We're all in this together"

“We’re all in this together.”

Of all the insulting, disturbing pieces of propaganda to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, this has to rank near the top.

It’s become a mantra of sorts, parroted alongside the ever popular “this virus doesn’t discriminate.”

“We’re all in this together” isn’t a rallying cry. It’s a means of control disguised as a soothing balm. It’s false reassurance that urges us to follow bad advice, like not wearing masks, and distracts us from the harsh reality: This pandemic is making the health and economic gaps between us grow wider, not narrower.

The person who says, with a plastered-on smile, “We’re all in this together” doesn’t give you a choice. He’s not pressuring or shaming you into conformity, he’s outright assuming it. You’re already “in this.” You can’t decide you don’t want any part of it because, we’re told, the virus doesn’t discriminate, and we’re all in the same boat.

But, in fact, the opposite is true. The virus does discriminate. And, worse, so do we.

The virus discriminates by affecting people with chronic health conditions more than those without them. It discriminates by hitting the elderly far harder than the young. Some geographic regions are harder hit. There’s even research that suggests people with certain blood types are more susceptible. Long story short: We are most certainly not in this together, even from the virus’ perspective.

And we make things worse by discriminating ourselves, as a society. Some people are being forced to choose between their health and their livelihoods, while others are not. The laid-off blue-collar worker who struggles to keep the heat on while self-isolating in a studio apartment is not “in this together” with the independently wealthy jet-setter who doesn’t have to work and can hole up in a six-bedroom, 3.5-bath McMansion.

“We’re all in this together” creates a false sense of buy-in, urging us to ignore the fact that this pandemic affects individuals very differently. In fact, the pandemic has become an excuse to spew propaganda aimed at brushing other forms of suffering under the rug. If “we’re all in this together,” suddenly no one has a right to complain if they can’t afford the rent or can’t find the money to feed their family, because the virus becomes the only valid concern.

“Be thankful you don’t have the virus,” is the unspoken (and sometimes spoken) rejoinder. “If celebrities and politicians are getting it, you’re the lucky one. What do you have to gripe about?”

Yes, some celebrities have gotten sick. Some have died. But these deaths get reported. Meanwhile, thousands of non-celebrities die in anonymity and are left as faceless statistics, except to the few who know and love them. The news reports celebrity deaths, with faces and biographies. Everyone else is just a number. Clinical and impersonal. So it seems like celebrities are being hit as hard (or harder) than everyone else, when in fact, the opposite is true.

Here’s the thing: People at the lower end of the economic spectrum — those non-celebrities whose names are never mentioned — are 10 percent likelier to suffer from a chronic health condition than anyone else. And they’re less likely to seek treatment for it, because they can’t afford it. Without that care, chronic health problems get worse. And remember: People with chronic health problems are being hit harder by COVID-19.

Some workers have paid sick leave, others — generally those in low-paying jobs — don’t. NBA players earning millions a year got tested for the virus quickly, even if they showed no symptoms, while ordinary factory workers, schoolteachers and truck drivers who were obviously sick had to wait.

If you think “we’re all in this together,” think again. We’re not. In the midst of the virus, no one’s talking about the wealth gap or the individual cost of health care anymore, but that doesn’t mean those problems have gone away. The virus has actually made them worse. We’re even less “in this together” than we were before. Far from being the great equalizer, the pandemic has widened the chasm between the haves and have nots that had been growing on its own for decades, and now that same pandemic has become an excuse to ignore it.

Under the false premise that “we’re all in this together.”

That’s like saying plantation owners and slaves were “all in this together” because both were part of the same cruel and dysfunctional economic system in the antebellum South. Or saying the worker who earns minimum wage and company executives who earn millions are “all in this together” because the same firm supports them both. Yet the worker can get laid off at the drop of a hat, while the fired executive gets a cushy buyout and, probably, another gig when some headhunter comes calling.

Yes, the virus discriminates, and yes, so do we. We can stop both kinds of discrimination by focusing on protecting our most vulnerable — to the disease and to economic hardship. In many cases, they’re the same people. But if we continue to turn a blind eye because we believe the false narrative that everyone’s in the same boat, more and more life rafts will keep sinking. And all the while, the privileged few keep will keep sailing blithely along in their luxury yachts, oblivious to the storm that’s wrecking everything around them.

Healthcare and highways: Lessons of history forgotten

We Americans have a selective memory. And we trust labels over facts.

Anyone who doubts this only has to look at two words: Infrastructure and healthcare. Infrastructure is supposed to be something that “everyone agrees on.” Who doesn’t want better roads? And who has a problem with the government paying for them?

We view good highways as a human right. Healthcare? Not so much.

But it wasn’t always this way. There was a time, back in the late 1800s, when our roads were in terrible shape. If you wanted to use yesterday’s highways, you had to depend on private businesses to surface and maintain them.

Why would businesses want to do that? The only ones with any incentive were merchants, and manufacturers who needed them to distribute goods. Naturally, the roads used by these merchants and manufacturers were in decent shape. The rest of them were barely passable – if at all. If those businesses weren’t on a direct route, tough luck. You, the ordinary traveler, had to go out of your way to be sure they were getting their money’s worth.

Sometimes, a long way out of your way. Halfway decent roads back then were a maze of twists and turns and double-backs.

The private businesses that forced everyone to go out of their way weren’t in it as a public service. Like today’s insurance companies and drug makers, they wanted to make money. If travelers happened to benefit, that was fine. If they were inconvenienced or got stuck in the mud, that was fine, too. It didn’t matter to them.

Cyclists to the rescue

If you like the fact that today’s roads aren’t a bunch of rutted, muddy dirt trails, you’ve got the bicycle to thank for it.

Cyclists back in the late 1800s weren’t happy about the sorry state of the nation’s roads, so pressed for legislators to dedicate more money to improve what we now call “infrastructure.”

The prospect was expensive. The federal government resisted setting aside money for highways, preferring to kick the can back up the (dirt) road to states, counties and those private businesses.

But the movement picked up steam once farmers joined the cyclists in calling for better roads.

One cycling activist, Isaac Potter, published a plea to farmers detailing the cost of bad roads to their bottom line: He put it at $2.35 billion, which would translate to about $56 billion today – pretty close to Michael Bloomberg’s net worth.

Wagons broke down as a matter of routine; sometimes people were hurt or even killed.

Potter made another point, too: Roads in places like France, Belgium and Italy were well maintained – even country roads. The condition of these foreign roads stood in marked contrast to the terrible shape American highways were in. One early road advocate ranked them alongside Turkey’s roads as the worst in the world.

This was all back around 1900.

Flash forward to today, and the arguments on healthcare are eerily similar. Poor healthcare coverage costs the American economy billions of dollars in lost productivity. When people go bankrupt to pay obscene medical bills, it kills consumer spending: They’re no longer fueling the economy by spending on things like cars and Christmas gifts. And that’s not even mentioning the real price: People without health care suffer. They die. They leave loved ones behind who don’t know what they’ll ever do without them.

More than 100 years ago, other countries were building and maintaining roads while the United States was doing neither. Today, other countries are treating and curing patients, while the United States is – that’s right – doing neither.

The opposition

Back then, Americans responded. Starting in the 1920s, the federal government began kicking in serious money to build and maintain the nation’s highways. As part of that, the feds got to decide where the new highways went.

That didn’t sit too well with the merchants and manufacturers who had controlled where roads were built up to that point. They didn’t like the government deciding to bypass their businesses for the good of those who actually needed to use the road. They did everything they could to stop it from happening.

But they failed.

Today, drug companies and insurers won’t like being bypassed, either. Not for the sake of the people who need to use healthcare. Not for any reason. That’s why they’re fighting the idea of universal healthcare tooth and nail.

We’re all used to government funds paying for our roads. We don’t remember what it’s like before they did. Today, we view good roads as a human right. If we don’t have them, we get mad at the government and demand them. We don’t remember what it was like before the government paid for them, because we weren’t around then.

History and hypocrisy

If we did remember, though, we’d realize it was exactly what it’s like now with healthcare. Other countries provide it; ours doesn’t. Other countries are saving money because they’re willing to invest in something worthwhile. Something noble. We’re not.

If you want to dismiss universal healthcare as “socialism,” you’ll have to dismiss the federal road system, too.

But maybe we should flip things around and look at it the opposite way. What if we started viewing healthcare as human infrastructure? Without it, our society will break down, just as wagons broke down on those muddy, potholed 19th century roads. Our economy will suffer. People will die, too – and a lot more of them.

History forgotten is hypocrisy unleashed.

The history of our highways holds lessons for today’s healthcare crisis. It’s time we start listening and doing something to save the human infrastructure that’s crumbling right before our eyes.

Samuel L. Jackson just made struggling artists feel like shit

I’m a fan of Samuel L. Jackson’s work, and that’s probably not going to change. I enjoy his acting. I’m also a critic of Donald J. Trump, and that certainly ain’t gonna change. I don’t enjoy his play-acting as president.

But what Jackson said in repudiating Trump stuck in my craw: “I know how many motherfuckers hate me. ‘I’m never going to see a Sam Jackson movie again.’ Fuck I care? If you never went to another movie I did in my life, I’m not going to lose any money. I already cashed that check.”

Emphasis mine.

Here’s the point: Jackson can afford not to care. Most actors, writers, visual artists and musicians can’t. Jackson doesn’t have to choose between his integrity and his bank account. Gee, that must be nice.

He goes on to say he does care about health care, but not because he wants the best for his loved ones. Because he wants to protect his bank account(!): “Some of this shit does affect me, because if we don’t have health care, and my relatives get sick, they’re going to call my rich ass.”

Ask me if I feel sorry for him.

Somehow, he’s got enough money not to care about pro-Trump haters, but not enough money to care more about whether his relatives get good health care than the prospect of having to for it.

Actually, I agree with Jackson on this issue, too. The prices for hospital stays and prescription drugs are obscene; the system is broken, and it’s causing people to lose their homes, their cars and their retirement savings. But let’s be clear here: That’s not going to happen to Jackson if one of his relatives gets sick.

Say, for example, one of them had to stay a month in the hospital. At $30,000 a day, that would be $900,000. Yeah, that’s a lot of money. Now say it cost another $900,000 for surgical procedures and meds. Let’s round up to the nearest million. That’s $2 million. Yes, that would break most people. But Jackson? His net worth, as of 2019, is 111 times that much: $220 million. It’s a drop in the bucket for the man who made the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-grossing actor of all time.

Gimme mine

Maybe Jackson’s just trying to be funny. He has, in fact, donated money to more than two dozen charities, including $1 million for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. But in spite of this, his latest comments come off as gloating. I’ve got my $220 million, and I’m gonna keep it.

And why shouldn’t he? He’s a good actor. He’s worked hard, and he deserves what he’s got. No argument there.

But there’s a flip side to his comments: A lot of people work just as hard and are just as good at what they do, but they struggle to get by. Vincent Van Gogh, famously, sold just one painting during his entire lifetime. He died a pauper. He killed himself. There are thousands of good – even great – artists, writers, actors and musicians you’ve never heard of who are in the same boat. Yet the notion persists that how much you have in your bank account defines your value as a person.

Bullshit, motherfucker.

Economic entitlement

In a world increasingly sensitive to attitudes of race- and gender-based entitlement, the concept of economic entitlement remains largely ignored. Health-care and education reforms are stymied. Sure, there’s talk about a $15 minimum wage, but that’s not even a living wage for most people. And indexing it to the cost of living? You might as well try planning a trip to Jupiter. Anyone who suggests leveling the playing field is accused of (gasp) socialism and de facto thievery.  

Because economic hardship isn’t always tied up in things like racial and gender identity, it’s assumed that those who don’t have money somehow deserve it. They’re a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings leeching off society because they’re allergic to hard work or don’t produce something of real value. Art? That’s dismissed as a “luxury.” But Jackson can’t very well say that, because he’s an artist too.

The work he produces is extremely valuable, but so was the work Van Gogh did. And he never complained about having to support a sick relative, because he never even had that option: His brother was the one supporting him.

This is why it’s so jarring to hear a rich actor issuing such a complaint, even if it’s to highlight the inequities of a broken health care system. Regardless of how talented he is or how many charities he’s supported, this is how it comes across: I’ve got my $220 million. You can’t have any of it.

Ironically, this is exactly how Trump thinks. He’s got his, and nothing else matters. Jackson is a Trump critic, yet he comes across as sharing the same attitude – unless he was just joking, in which case it’s not very funny. Because the joke is on creative folks who aren’t worth one one-ten thousandth of what he is.

I applaud Jackson for criticizing Trump. I share his views. But he doesn’t deserve any special pat on the back for voicing them when he has, by his own admission, no financial stake in the game. The people who do deserve props are the struggling artists who could lose a sale by speaking out – but do so anyway. The unknown Vincent Van Goghs of our time who might just, one day, change the world.

This is what it's like to be laid off in America

This is what it’s like to be laid off in America. Whether you’ve been working at an auto plant or a steel mill, at a department store or a white-collar job.

It means telling your family you no longer have a job, and feeling like you’ve let them down by failing at the one thing that you’re best at. The one thing they were counting on you to do.

It means trying to act “professional” even though you’re suddenly without a profession.

It means no longer living from paycheck to paycheck, because now you’re living from no check to no check.

If unemployment is low, you see yourself as part of the bottom 5 percent. If it's high, you feel like just another statistic.

It means asking others for help even as you update your resume to read that you’re a “self-starter.”

It means knowing you might not have the money to pay the rent, but that you might not have the money to move, either.

It means being pissed as hell that you’re losing your health insurance. That you might have to accept a job that doesn’t include that benefit. And that the government still hasn’t figured out how to be compassionate to its citizens when it comes to their health.

If it even wants to.

This is what it’s like to be laid off in America …

It means starting from scratch in the middle of life. It means putting plans for vacations and celebrations on hold. Indefinitely.

It means changing your personal information on Facebook from “works at” to “worked at,” and signing up for LinkedIn again, which you’ve let lapse because you’ve never had much use for it and thought you never would.

It means listening to people tell you how sure they are you’ll find something else, something better, and agreeing with a smile because it’s socially acceptable, even though deep down inside, you have no idea whether it’s true or not.

When strangers ask you what you do for a living, it’s too embarrassing to tell them you’re unemployed, so you cushion the blow by saying you’re “between jobs,” even though you know they’ll get the message, anyway. Which is something you didn’t want to share. But, again, it’s the socially acceptable thing to do.

And if you’ve got impostor syndrome, if you feel like you’ve been faking it all along, you take this as confirmation. But knowing you were right doesn’t help because you’d been hoping you were wrong.

Yet now you have to put your best foot forward and sell yourself again, even though you’ve been made to feel as worthless as you have in a very long time. You know it’s not your fault, but that doesn’t stop the emptiness that somehow manages to tie itself in knots down in the pit of your stomach.

It means feeling taken advantage of, betrayed and used. You find yourself saying the words “irrelevant” and “expendable” in your head, and applying them to yourself.

This is what it’s like to be laid off in America …

It means putting on a brave face for co-workers at your going-away party, even though you know you might never see them again and, yes, you’ll miss them. They say nice things about you that make you choke up, and they give you heartfelt gifts. This makes you feel like you’re a Viking at your own funeral, receiving treasures to preserve you in the afterlife, and you tell yourself you were slain in battle and that being a Viking is pretty damned cool.

You tell yourself that there are far worse things in life, like incurable cancer or losing a spouse — that it would be far worse to wake up each morning without the love of your life beside you, or knowing that you only had a short time left to live. But knowing these things doesn’t help; it just makes you feel guilty for feeling bad about your own situation when others have it worse, and that guilt is like toxic frosting on top of the pain you’re already feeling.

It’s being told that it’s nothing personal. That it’s a business decision. And you want to tell them that people are more important than their bottom line, but you know it won’t make any difference, so you keep your mouth shut and act professional. Like you understand. Like you’re comforting them. But they’re the ones who don’t understand.

When they say that, it’s like when your significant other breaks up with you and says, “It’s not you. It’s me.” And you want to say to the bearer of this bad news, “If it’s your fault, then why aren’t you handing in your resignation?

You wish it had been a performance issue, because then they would have just written you up and you would’ve had a chance to improve. Then you would have had some control over the situation.

Not like this.

You wonder if you were let go because you were making too much money. If you did your job too well and they could no longer afford someone with your skills. Was this your Catch-22? If you do well, you’ll get a raise, but at the end of the day, that will be the cause of your termination?

You feel like collateral damage, marginalized into the minefield of someone else’s bottom line.

It’s hating that your former employer did this to you, but wishing the best for the people who still work there. Your former comrades in arms. Your friends. It’s trying to reconcile those two feelings in the back of a mind beset by new worries and fresh disappointment.

But mostly, you just feel empty and rudderless, hurt and alone. And disempowered.

This is what it’s like to be laid off in America.