Daily Archives: May 24, 2020

Yes, Christianity offers answers about the coronavirus – Christian Post

Posted: May 24, 2020 at 3:24 pm

By Joshua Steely, Voices Contributor | Monday, May 18, 2020 Joshua Steely | Courtesy of Joshua Steely

At the end of March, Time published an essay by distinguished New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, with the rather brazen title Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. Its Not Supposed To. The title is wrong, and the essay is strange, to say the least. But it serves as an interesting catalyst for asking what answers the Christian faith does have regarding the present pandemic.

Dr. Wright reflects on the privations were experiencing, which are indeed painful not to mention the many who are sick and have died. He notes that a pandemic makes for an unusually severe Lent, And this Lent has no fixed Easter to look forward to. We cant tick off the days. Then he begins to muse about the Christian response:

No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesnt?

For Wright, those who try to offer explanations are silly, rationalistic, and acting in a pseudo-Christian manner. Now, I dont doubt that some of those offering explanations for the coronavirus are silly, that some of the motivations for offering answers are pseudo-Christian, and maybe even that rationalism has some onions in the soup. But I hardly think that a charismatic preacher declaring coronavirus is the punishment for x sin is showing heavy rationalistic influence. Nor is it really the case that the desire to explain a pandemic is a sign of the Enlightenments footprint; the search for answers is a characteristically human trait, and can be found in similar circumstances in other times and places. Rationalism is an ideological bogey-man in this situation, and Wrights conjuring of it is significant.

Wright doesnt think that offering an explanation is the appropriate Christian response; nor does he think that offering concrete hope is: What if, after all, there are moments such as T.S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because wed be hoping for the wrong thing? Instead, he exhorts Christians to embrace lament, and in the strongest part of the essay, he points to sections of lament in the Psalms. He then turns to theology proper, and is apparently no friend to classical theism and the doctrine of divine impassibility.

Having noted Jesus grief at the tomb of Lazarus and the testimony to the Spirits groaning, Wright drives home his main point: It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain whats happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explainand to lament instead. As the title says, Christianity offers no answers.

Now, there surely are bad ways to offer answers in a time of crisis. People do offer trite and unhelpful words to those who are suffering. People go well beyond what God has revealed, and declare that the disaster is a punishment for x sin, and will go away if people do y. Lament is certainly a part of the Christian response to the suffering of the world, and at times it may be the only response: mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15, NIV). But has the church really no answers, no hope to offer?

The church does not have a specific answer for this specific disease. But the church does have an encompassing answer that applies to this disease as to every disease of this world, the people on it, and our souls: the sufferings of this world are the result of sin. And the church does have a hope, and should Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15). God has provided a wonderful answer to all suffering, the gospel of Jesus Christ: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Is the coronavirus pandemic a punishment? Yes, for our world is in rebellion against God Almighty. Is it a warning? It should be. Every disaster and disease is a memento mori, urging us to remember that we should use this short life to prepare for the life to come. Is it a sign? It signifies that this world is broken, and our time here is short. But does that mean the only advice is to wait without hope, because wed be hoping for the wrong thing? Not if were hoping for the Parousia.

T.S. Eliot has good things to say, but I prefer the apostle Paul on this one (1 Thessalonians 4:13, 16-18):

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hopeFor the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

But in offering these answers, are we manifesting some silly, pseudo-Christian rationalism that has sunk into our bones? This is where the church must correctly reconnoiter the culture. Generals are always fighting the last war, the saying goes; rationalism is the last war or maybe a few wars ago. We are dealing now with a late-modern or post-modern culture that is allergic to truth, answers, and certainty. Indeed and this is the salient point Dr. Wrights essay fits in Time because it offers the message our time wants to hear: we dont know any more than you do. But what our time needs to hear is the Christian message: a pandemic is the result of sin, it should be taken as a memento mori, and there is certain and eternal hope in Jesus Christ.

This harsh Lent is bad, and we should lament; but remember Easter.

Joshua Steely is Senior Pastor of Chatham Baptist Church in Chatham, Illinois.

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How non-religious worldviews provide solace in times of crisis – The Conversation UK

Posted: at 3:24 pm

The saying There are no atheists in foxholes suggests that in stressful times people inevitably turn to God (or indeed gods). In fact, non-believers have their own set of secular worldviews which can provide them with solace in difficult times, just as religious beliefs do for the spiritually-minded.

The aim of my research for the Understanding Unbelief programme was to investigate the worldviews of non-believers, since little is known about the diversity of these non-religious beliefs, and what psychological functions they serve. I wanted to explore the idea that while non-believers may not hold religious beliefs, they still hold distinct ontological, epistemological and ethical beliefs about reality, and the idea that these secular beliefs and worldviews provide the non-religious with equivalent sources of meaning, or similar coping mechanisms, as the supernatural beliefs of religious individuals.

The number of non-believers is growing, with at least 450-500 million declared atheists worldwide about 7% of the global adult population. But since non-believers can include not just atheists but also agnostics and so-called nones the religiously unaffiliated, who might tick no religion in surveys this number is likely to be much bigger. Here, we use non-believers to refer to individuals who do not believe in God, and who do not consider themselves religious.

The idea that beliefs or worldviews support us in difficult times is the foundation of Terror Management Theory. This holds we fear death because we are consciously aware of the future and therefore our own inevitable demise. This fear can be so great that it can paralyse us when we try to live our everyday lives.

But we can manage this fear through belief in God and the afterlife, for example, but equally through the knowledge that death is natural. Knowing that one day we will die, worldviews reinforce our beliefs and the identities that we build around them, and can provide comfort by providing us with so-called symbolic immortality, for example, or feelings of connectedness to something bigger than ourselves. Here, it is the meaningfulness of the belief rather than its (religious) content that is important: among non-believers, increased stress and reminders of ones mortality are associated with an increased belief in science.

With a team of international collaborators, I designed an online survey to ask non-believers about the worldviews, beliefs or understandings of the world that are particularly meaningful to them. We gathered 1,000 responses from people from the UK, US, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Turkey, Brazil, Canada and Australia.

We found that across these ten countries, the six most common beliefs and worldviews were those based on science, humanism (or belief in humanity and human ability), critical thinking and scepticism (including rationalism), being kind and caring for one another, and beliefs in equality and natural laws (including evolution).

This overlap was striking. Despite huge geographical and cultural differences, we found these categories came up over and over again. Frequently mentioned worldviews included statements like: I believe in the scientific method and the ethical values of humanism. I reject all beliefs that are not evidence based, and We have one life. We have this one opportunity to enjoy our brief moment in the sun, while doing the most good we can to help our fellow creatures and protect the natural environment for future generations.

But we also found variation. While responses from countries such as the Netherlands and Finland focused particularly on caring for the Earth, responses from countries such as the US and Australia focused on the general improvement of human well-being.

We also asked non-believers to think of challenging times in their lives: when someone close to them passed away; when they or someone close to them had a serious injury (an accident) or discovered they had a serious physical illness; when they felt particularly alone or disconnected from others; and when they felt particularly down or depressed.

Asked to recall whether any of their worldviews were helpful at the time, we found that what helped most often were worldviews based on science, detachment and acceptance. These included beliefs in the naturalness of death, the randomness of life, humanism, free will and taking responsibility. For example, people suggested knowing that family members live on in their descendants, through personality traits and memories helps when dealing with a bereavement, while enduring an illness was just randomness. Stuff like that happens.

Beliefs about the nature of life and death helped many, including the view that suffering and isolation are universal experiences, and that these states will pass: Things change, and this situation isnt always going to be like this. Many indicated that a humanistic worldview was highly important to them, valuing my relationships with those close to me, and understanding that life can be all too short so we must value the one life that we know we have.

But how do these worldviews help in times of crisis? Most frequently, the respondents said they helped cope with the situation, reduced anxiety, created an increased feeling of control and sense of order, and explained or gave meaning to the situation.

Many participants indicated that understanding a difficult situation proved paramount to accepting it and coping with it. One said that understanding the process of loss and moving on via understanding psychology helps. Others stated that my belief in science explained what was happening and I also trusted in modern medicine that we could overcome it, or that it helped to consider that depression [is] a condition that responds to time and care.

What this research suggests is that worldviews and beliefs, whether religious or secular, can provide comfort and meaning in even the very toughest situations.

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The Lord of the Flies and the Lord of All – National Catholic Register

Posted: at 3:24 pm

Herein lies a difference between the Catholic worldview and the secular one.

Rutger Bregmans excellent article The Real Lord of the Flies: What Happened When Six Boys Were Shipwrecked for 15 Months was published in Londons The Guardian a few days ago. The article explored the real-life case of a group of schoolboys who were marooned on a deserted island in 1965. Fortunately, life doesnt always imitate art as the real case of the marooned boys turns out well and not all like British author William Goldings magnificent 1954 bestseller, The Lord of the Flies.

Goldings book centers on a group of British schoolboys who, having been evacuated due to a war, are subsequently marooned on an uninhabited island. The situation is at first idyllic no school, no adults, no rules and as much food as they can catch. But things go awry when basic rules such as tending to the signal fire are ignored, allowing it to go out. Ultimately, the band of boys descend into anarchy, losing their civility and, indeed, their humanity. Two factions form one group made up of boys who strive to retrieve and secure their humanity, and the other group whose members wish to descend into brutality and self-destruction.

Just as the latter are about to kill the former, a British officer shows up to rescue them, stopping their murderous rage just in the nick of time. The boys start crying and the officer responds, I should have thought, the officer says, that a pack of British boys would have been able to put up a better show than that. At that, the officer turns and spies his warship in the islands inlet.

Like the boys in the story, the reader weeps for the loss of innocence and the darkness of mans heart.

In Goldings view, humans are monstrous beasts enshrouded in a thin veneer of civilization that is little more than an illusion. Given the opportunity, humans would cast off that lie in a second and show the world what he really is.

Im very grateful I went to a Catholic high school. I was given a list of 500 classics on the first day of school and was told I had to read 100 by the time I graduated. Its commonplace for me to meet recent university grads whove never read a book in their lives including the ones with degrees in English Literature.

Herein lies a difference between the Catholic worldview and the secular one.

For Catholics, truth or more specifically, Truth really exists. Beauty exists. Justice exists. Catholics call these three eternal truths, transcendentals (Latin: transcendentalia). They correspond to three certain aspects of the human experience. To science belongs truth (i.e., logic). To the arts belong beauty (i.e., aesthetics). To religion belongs goodness (i.e., ethics).

If youve been paying attention in church, to the Bible and keeping up with your commitments to yourself and others, the existence of these transcendentals should be apparent to you. I was reminded of them when I read Rutger Bregman article The Real Lord of the Flies, which then directed me to an historical account of an actual situation of boys shipwrecked on an island.

Goldings The Lord of the Flies was just a fictional piece that told only one side of mans nature. There is another. One of peace and cooperation and respect and kindness and compassion as is exhibited by the case of the Catholic Tonga kids in Ata. A real-life example to discredit what naysayers and doomsters when about. But there are by far more examples of altruism and self-sacrifice

Apparently, in 1966, 13 years after Golding published his The Lord of the Flies, six boys from a Catholic school in Nukualofa on the island of Tonga half European and the other half Pacific Islanders, ranging from 13 to 16 years old thought it would be better to ditch school one day and venture out on a lark on the ocean without a map, without a plan and without a clue. (Coincidently, this perfectly describes my childhood. You gentlemen know what Im talking about.)

Their plan was to make their way to Fiji (500 miles away) or even to New Zealand (1600 miles further). They liberated a boat and took with them little more than some bananas, coconuts and a small gas burner. A storm overtook them after the boys fell asleep and they drifted for eight days without food or water. They carefully shared the water they managed to collect. They were shipwrecked for 15 months on a deserted island named Ata.

The boys in The Lord of the Flies starting fighting simply because they allowed the signal fire to burn out. These actual kids managed to keep the fire burning for more than a year. The Catholics kids on Ata agreed to work in teams of two, creating a work schedule. They sometimes quarreled, as boys do, but all problems were resolved with a timeout. Every day began and ended with songs and prayers.

Disaster struck when a boy fell off a cliff and broke his leg. The other boys tended to the injury and managed to set it like professionals, according to the physician who examined the kids after they were brought home.

Captain Peter Warner was en route home when he encountered Ata. As he swung by it, a young boy leapt from the tall cliffs and swam to his ship. He introduced himself as Stephen and explained that he and his schoolmates had been on the island for more than a year.

When Captain Warner examined their camp, the boys showed him their huts, vegetable gardens, chicken coops, gym, badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent signal and cooking fire. They survived initially on fish, coconuts, seabirds they drank the blood and ate the meat and eggs. The boys later discovered a village that had been abandoned a century earlier, chickens and gardens of wild taro, and bananas still growing.

Captain Warner ferried the boys home and they were reunited with their families.

Golding later explained in interviews that he drew the idea of the dark, beastly nature of man described in The Lord of the Flies from his own life experiences. He admitted he was an alcoholic who often suffered from depression and would beat the students in his care. I have always understood the Nazis, Golding conceded.

For centuries, Western culture has labored under a Manichean dualism that we never could completely excise from Western culture. People affected with this outlook celebrate death and destruction and have brought about some of the worse anti-humanistic ideas our species has ever birthed communism, nihilism, occultism, Freudianism, feminism, gender theory, extremist environmentalism, positivism, scientism, fundamentalist atheism, postmodernism and anthropological structuralism all of which embrace anti-rationalism and anti-scientific outlooks.

To them, humans are wayward genetic accidents spawned by a violent and uncaring universe. Christians, on the other hand, have Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself for us (John 3:16). Hes been our model and standard all these centuries.

Whereas Goldings The Lord of the Flies is a dark, twisted and depressing view of unredeemable human nature as barely above that of a beast, the story of the Ata castaways is a testament to friendship, hope, altruism, devotion, Christianity, the goodness of human nature and the innocence of children.

Life or death. The choice is set before you. Choose life! (Deuteronomy 30:15-20)

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Micronation – Encyclopedia Westarctica

Posted: at 3:22 pm

A micronation, sometimes referred to as a model country or new country project, is an entity that claims to be an independent nation or state but is not generally recognized by world governments or major international organizations.

Micronations are distinguished from imaginary countries and from other kinds of social groups (such as eco-villages, campuses, tribes, clans, and sects) by expressing a formal and persistent, even if unrecognized, claim of sovereignty over some physical territory. Micronations are also distinct from true secessionist movements; micronations' activities are almost always peaceful enough to be ignored rather than challenged by the established nations whose territory they claim.

Several micronations have issued coins, flags, postage stamps, passports, and other items. These items are rarely accepted outside their own community, but may be sold as novelties to help raise money or collected by enthusiasts.

The earliest known micronations date from the beginning of the 19th century. The advent of the Internet provided the means for people to create many new micronations, whose members are scattered all over the world and interact mostly by electronic means, often calling their nations "nomadic countries". The differences between such Internet micronations, other kinds of social networking groups, and role-playing games are sometimes difficult to define.

The term "micronation" to describe those entities dates at least to the 1970s. The term micropatriology is sometimes used to describe the study of both micronations and microstates by micronationalists, some of whom refer to sovereign nation-states as "macronations."

The term 'micronation' literally means "small nation." It is a neologism originating in the mid-1970s to describe the many thousands of small unrecognised state-like entities that have mostly arisen since that time.

The term has since also come to be used retrospectively to refer to earlier unrecognized entities, some of which date to as far back as the 19th century. Amongst supporters of micronations ("micronationalists") the term "macronation" is in common use to refer to any internationally recognised sovereign nation-state.

Not all micronations are small; some can be rather large, like Westarctica, or those with claims on other planets.

Micronations generally have a number of common features, although these may vary widely. They may have a structure similar to established sovereign states, including territorial claims, government institutions, official symbols and citizens, albeit on a much smaller scale. Micronations are often quite small, in both their claimed territory and claimed populations although there are some exceptions to this rule, with different micronations having different methods of citizenship. Micronations may also issue formal instruments such as postage stamps, coins, banknotes and passports, and bestow honors and titles of nobility.

The Montevideo Convention on the Right and Duties of States was one attempt to create a legal definition distinguishing between states and non-states. Some micronations like Sealand or Hutt River reject the term "micronation" and consider themselves fully sovereign states (feigning ignorance of the political reality of their condition); other micronations like Flandrensis or Molossia have no desire to be recognized as sovereign to the same degree as UN member states.

A small number of micronations are founded based on historical anomalies or on legal anomalies (deriving from disputed interpretations of law). These types of micronations are usually located on small (usually disputed) territorial enclaves, generate limited economic activity founded on[tourism and philatelic and numismatic sales, and are tolerated or ignored by the nations from which they claim to have seceded. This category includes:

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the foundation of a number of territorial micronations. The first of these, Sealand, was established in 1967 on an abandoned World War II gun platform in the North Sea just off the coast of England, and has survived into the present day. Others were founded on libertarian principles and involved schemes to construct artificial islands, but only a few are known to have had even limited success in realizing that goal.

Micronationalism shed much of its traditionally eccentric anti-establishment mantle and took on a distinctly hobbyist perspective in the mid-1990s, when the emerging popularity of the Internet made it possible to create and promote statelike entities in an entirely electronic medium with relative ease. An early example is the Kingdom of Talossa, a micronation created in 1979 by then-14-year-old Robert Ben Madison, which went online in November 1995, and was reported in the New York Times and other print media in 2000.

The activities of these types of micronations are almost exclusively limited to simulations of diplomatic activity (including the signing of treaties" and participation in inter-micronational organizations such as the League of Micronations) and contribution to wikis. With the introduction of the Internet, many articles on how to create micronations were made available on such wikis, which serve as a hub of online activity for micronations. The most notable wiki for the forum, MicroWiki, was created in 2005.

A number of traditional territorial micronations, including the Hutt River Province, Seborga, and Sealand, maintain websites that serve largely to promote their claims and sell merchandise. In 1999, the MicroFreedom Index, an academic listing of micronations created by Mr. Steven Scharff, went online and has served as a resource for the micronational community for nearly twenty years.

In international law, the Montevideo Convention on the Right and Duties of States sets down the criteria for statehood in article 1.

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

The first sentence of article 3 of the Montevideo Convention explicitly states that "The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states."

Under these guidelines, any entity which meets all of the criteria set forth in article 1 can be regarded as sovereign under international law, whether or not other states have recognized it.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, as an independent subject of international law does not meet all the criteria for recognition as a State (however it does not claim itself a State either), but is and has been recognized as a sovereign nation for centuries.

The doctrine of territorial integrity does not effectively prohibit unilateral secession from established states in international law, per the relevant section from the text of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Final Act, Helsinki Accords or Helsinki Declaration:

IV. Territorial integrity of StatesThe participating States will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating States.Accordingly, they will refrain from any action inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations against the territorial integrity, political independence or the unity of any participating State, and in particular from any such action constituting a threat or use of force.The participating States will likewise refrain from making each other's territory the object of military occupation or other direct or indirect measures of force in contravention of international law, or the object of acquisition by means of such measures or the threat of them. No such occupation or acquisition will be recognized as legal.

In effect, this states that other states (i.e., third parties), may not encourage secession in a state. This does not make any statement as regards persons within a state electing to secede of their own accord.

There has been a small but growing amount of attention paid to the micronation phenomenon in recent years. Most interest in academic circles has been concerned with studying the apparently anomalous legal situations affecting such entities as Sealand and Hutt River, in exploring how some micronations represent grassroots political ideas, and in the creation of role-playing entities for instructional purposes.

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Letter: The coronavirus was not created by humans – Thehour.com

Posted: at 3:21 pm

Published 12:00am EDT, Friday, May 22, 2020

It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, COVID-19 is not man-made or genetically modified..

The major research labs in the U.S. all agree (and our allies worldwide) as does the U.S. national Director of Intelligence who released a statement on April 30.

They can tell because human engineered viruses all have common obvious components not present in this virus.

It is also highly unlikely that it was a science experiment gone wrong as the new coronavirus is way different genetically than the SARS virus that originated in bats and was being studied in the Wuhan lab.

No one knows what the animal host source of the new virus is yet, but so far its not bats. Im no scientist so I listen to the experts on this.

So why President Trump would say, the day after this announcement was made by his Director of Intelligence that he has reason to believe it is man made?!

It is mind boggling that our president would make inaccurate statements during a major worldwide pandemic and scare and confuse the people at a time when they are looking for and need calm and reassurance.

The only reason Im bringing this up is because a lot of people Ive spoken to, mainly the presidents supporters, still think its man-made because of President Trumps statements.

So everyone lets remain calm, we are not under a germ warfare attack!

Yes, China probably tried to cover it up and yes, China is moving into world domination.

But lets not get fooled into starting WWIII over false information.

Matt Yordon

Norwalk

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Jesse Jackson: ‘The gated community does not protect you from the pandemic’ – The Guardian

Posted: at 3:21 pm

The Rev Jesse Jackson was born in the racially segregated south when Franklin Roosevelt occupied the White House and war raged in Europe. He was an eyewitness to the assassination of Martin Luther King, campaigned against the Vietnam war and twice ran for US president.

But, now an elder statesman of 78, he has never seen anything like the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed more in April alone than died in Vietnam over 15 years. The worlds most powerful and wealthy country also bears by far its biggest death toll: almost 90,000. It is enough to shake faith in American exceptionalism.

Our military cannot defeat this germ, Jackson says by phone from Chicago, one of the hardest-hit cities. Having the biggest banks, having the biggest military has no meaning in this kind of germ warfare. The frontline is not soldiers; the frontline is doctors and nurses. The planes are grounded, the bombs are irrelevant. It turns out that pride precedes a fall. Sometimes people have to learn that we dont control everything.

Despite lockdown and Parkinsons disease, Jackson is still working with gusto at the Rainbow Push Coalition, a progressive organisation he founded in 1996. It has convened thousands of black doctors and lawyers and released a manifesto suggesting that high-risk groups, including African Americans, be prioritised for coronavirus testing.

Jackson has twice written to Donald Trump urging testing for the 2.2 million people currently in prison. At a time when most Americans are looking inward, he has also called for massive intervention in Africa, a particularly vulnerable continent that is close to his heart.

Were working virtually, making conference calls, using this time to organise people, he says. Weve talked to about 2,000 ministers around the nation over the past 10 days, trying to convince their congregations to honour the protocols and stay in the house.

For a brief while it became voguish to indulge a comforting myth that the coronavirus was the great equaliser, touching the bus driver and Prince of Wales alike. But while infections do not discriminate, humans do. Despite making up only 13% of the US population, African Americans represent 30% of the deaths from the coronavirus.

A Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee report last month concluded that people of colour have less access to quality healthcare, are more likely to have a pre-existing health condition and suffer greater exposure to air pollution that puts them at higher risk of asthma. They also make up a disproportionate share of frontline workers, are less likely to be able to work from home and more likely to rely on public transport, and are hit hardest by poverty as layoffs continue to rise.

We know that people should honour the [social distancing] protocols, but some find it more difficult because of congested conditions or their transportation, says Jackson. A lot are untested and uninsured. If youre uninsured, you can go to the hospitals only to be told you cant get service, so you end up resorting to your own home remedies, or you end up in the hospital too late.

That points to disparity in income and education and healthcare. It shows the black condition in America. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is very clear.

Like Trumps regressive presidency, the virus is a shock to the system that forces a confrontation with class, race and structural inequality. What had been ambient noise for the privileged is suddenly vividly clear and difficult to ignore.

After 400 years of slavery, segregation and discrimination, why would anybody be shocked that African Americans are dying disproportionately from the coronavirus? Jackson asked in a statement published on 7 April, arguing that all past US presidents have failed to end the virus of white superiority and fix the multifaceted issues confronting African Americans.

He adds, by phone: America has decided the place of blacks in this society, which is beneath that of European immigrants. People say America is 244 years old, but Africans have been here 157 years before the constitution. We shouldnt say America was founded in 1776 it started with slavery in 1619; so were still invisible to that extent.

We still make less, live under stresses and dont live as long. Were still looked upon as the other based upon skin colour, as some kind of irreparable sin in the society. People try to adjust to it but, when a pandemic sets in, the data comes out.

Were about 60% of prisoners in this country. People are sick behind those walls. You can have 200 inmates sick with Covid-19 and the workers go home and they spread it. So the prisons become the epicentre of the untreated and untested and undetected.

Itching to revive their economies, several southern states led by mostly white male governors are already reopening bowling alleys, cinemas, hairdressers, restaurants and other outlets against federal guidelines. A group of activists, mostly black women, warned in a petition that reopening now is irresponsible and a death sentence for many of us.

White privilege will offer no immunity in an interconnected society, says Jackson. If blacks are the drivers and unprotected, the driven are hurt. If the cooks and waiters are unprotected, those they cook for are all unprotected. So were more integrated than we realise on a daily basis.

So we really must have healthcare for all as one of the by-products of this pandemic. Anybody whos left out is a threat to those who are left in. When people as affluent as Prince Charles and Boris Johnson and athletes are affected, it means that the gated community did not protect you from the pandemic. If the poor are not protected, the rich are in jeopardy, because you cannot separate by community the poor from the rich, the white from the black.

Roosevelt was tested by the Great Depression and second world war and rose to the challenge. George W Bush faced the 9/11 terrorist attacks; Barack Obama the financial crisis. Trump had his shot at greatness with the coronavirus pandemic and few, outside his most ardent supporters, would dispute he threw it away.

The first president elected with no previous political or military experience squandered a precious six weeks, instead golfing, holding rallies and prophesying that the virus would disappear like a miracle in warm weather rather than following the pandemic emergency plan bequeathed by Obama and building a rigorous nationwide testing programme.

Is Trump responsible for tens of thousands of deaths? He had an opportunity to move early on it and did not move early on it. The infrastructure that [George W] Bush and Barack had put together on pandemics was ignored. He dismantled the infrastructure and did not pay adequate attention to the threat.

As the threat changed, we didnt have ventilators and respirators. All our preparation was for a financial fight or a military fight. He should have declared a national testing mechanism. There should have been a national lockdown to break the back of it. The attention should have been early; it was not.

Trump has sought absolution at press briefings that sometimes run for more than two hours with a mix of self-congratulation, bloated exaggerations, broadsides at reporters and bad science. He recently ad libbed a jaw-dropping proposal to study the merits of injecting disinfectant into coronavirus patients. It has left his opponent in Novembers election, the former vice president Joe Biden, struggling to get a share of the limelight.

Trump is using the daily press briefing as a platform to promote his politics while Biden is facing lockdown in his basement. But theres a real chance the more he talks, the weaker he gets.

Jackson whose activism began as a student trying to desegregate the public library in his birthplace of Greenville, South Carolina ran against Biden in the 1988 Democratic primary. Bidens campaign fell apart after he quoted without attribution the then British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and was accused of plagiarism. Jackson, bidding to become the USs first black president, gathered 7m votes and finished first or second in 46 out of 54 primary contests. But he lost the nomination to Michael Dukakis, who went down to George HW Bush.

Does it hurt that he will never be president? No, it doesnt, he says firmly, because I was a trailblazer, I was a pathfinder. I had to deal with doubt and cynicism and fears about a black person running. There were black scholars writing papers about why I was wasting my time. Even blacks said a black couldnt win.

Some of his foreign policy positions at the time, he points out, became widely adopted: a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa (he met Margaret Thatcher to plead for Britain to drop its support for the apartheid regime). In 2000 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the USs highest civilian honour.

When Obama won in 2008, he praised Jackson for making his run possible. As Obama delivered his election night victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago before a crowd of 240,000, Jacksons tear-stained face was among the most indelible images. It was a big moment in history, he recalls. I cried because I thought about those who made it possible who were not there People who paid a real price: Ralph Abernathy, Dr King, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, those who fought like hell [at the Democratic national convention] in Atlantic City in 64, those in the movement in the south.

Some felt that Obama should have pushed faster and further on racial justice in his two terms. But Jackson ranks him among the USs top presidents. First, given Americas history in terms of race, he inspired indescribable pride. No 2, his family and their decency and dignity were a big deal.

He points to the Paris climate accords, Iran nuclear deal, rapprochement with Cuba and rescue of the economy as signal achievements. He stabilised the ship when the ship was sinking and got it back above the water. And no scandal. Trump creates a desire for Barack all over again. When he travelled around the world, he was the best face Americas ever had.

In March, Jackson endorsed Bernie Sanders, returning a compliment from 1988 when Sanders backed his campaign. His ideas made the most sense to me, he explains. But after a promising start Sanders fell away, partly because of his failure to connect with older African American voters, where Biden dominated.

His campaign was [about] class without appreciating the caste dimension of poverty, Jackson explains by way of post-mortem. There are 55 black members of Congress and he didnt have one. Maybe one or two black mayors, but he didnt cultivate an African American constituency.

Biden, meanwhile, benefited from his kinship with Obama as well as Trumps repeated attacks that kept his profile up and his name on the front pages. The opposition had no infrastructure for the black vote. In many ways, he inherited votes he didnt campaign for.

In recent weeks, Biden has been endorsed by Sanders, Obama, Hillary Clinton, House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the civil rights hero John Lewis in a show of party unity. Will Jackson support him enthusiastically? Yeah, as an alternative to the present administration, but weve not had a meeting with the black constituency on what our demands are.

The ground is shifting under Trump and Bidens feet. Sanders argues that the pandemic, which has put more than 30 million Americans out of work, shows the failure of the US healthcare system. As an opportunity to reimagine the social contract, the present moment is being compared with Roosevelts New Deal or the post second-world-war consensus in Britain.

Biden won the delegates but Sanders won the issues, Jackson reflects. Sanders agenda will dominate the [Democratic national] convention. One of the by-products of this pandemic is going to be the need for healthcare for all. We cant afford not to have healthcare for all because if you see the gap between the 1% and 99%, the 1% cant hide from who it is thats caring for the masses. The real soldiers are not the investment bankers. Its the doctors and nurses. There is a new appreciation of the common people, doctors and janitors and truck drivers, what they call essential workers.

In many ways, he says, as African Americans, were at the the bottom of the foundation. The foundation is where it starts from. So when the foundations in trouble, the whole buildings in trouble.

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Investigating China: COVID-19 and the CCP The Diplomat – The Diplomat

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The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Dr. Xun Zhou reader in modern history at the University of Essex, expert on health intervention and delivery in China, and author of The Peoples Health: Health Intervention and Delivery in Maos China, 1949-1983 (forthcoming) discusses the origins of COVID-19 and the future of Chinas health systems.

Explain the decision-making and authorization process behind health intervention and delivery in China.

After the SARS outbreak in 2003 exposed grave deficiencies in the Chinese health system and the increasing public complaints in China over unaffordability and low quality medical care, the Chinese authorities acknowledged that an efficient health system is pivotal to Chinas overall social and economic development, the countrys stability, and the CCPs political legitimacy as well as Chinas image on the world stage. In 2009, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) and the State Council mandated major health reforms. The goal of this Healthy China Strategy is to establish an equitable and effective health system so that China would achieve Health for All by 2020. This entails strengthening healthcare delivery, health security, and provision of essential medicines.

At the top, the State Council set up a State Council Health System Reform Office to coordinate the relevant ministries to develop specific reform policies. The Office is also responsible for evaluating the reform work performed by different ministries as well as by provincial authorities. While this annual evaluation would have a direct impact on the allocation of the state health subsidy as well as promotion of individuals, neither the Office nor the relevant ministries such as the Ministry of Health responsible for formulating national policies have any real power over the implementation of the reform strategy.

To this day the health intervention, delivery, and financing systems remain fragmented. On the ground, each provincial authority is responsible for allocating resources to implement national-level health policies, which may be at odds with local interests. They often treat national policies as merely guidelines, and are not obliged to implement them, whether due to lack of funding, resources, or local interests. On the other hand, with their eyes fixed on more state subsidies and the next opportunity for promotion, local authorities and officials are always more interested in showing their superior in Beijing how well any specific locality is doing in terms of health, rather than being seen as a problem. Even at the national level, health resources in China are managed by different sectors. Coordination between them has always been problematic. In crisis situations, such as during the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the COVID-19 outbreak early this year, such fragmentation severely impeded crisis management.

Identify the factors behind growing international pressure to investigate Chinas handling of COVID-19 domestically and with the World Health Organization (WHO).

The COVID-19 crisis that first took hold in Wuhan in central China exposed the Chinese authorities consistent lack of transparency in acknowledging any disease outbreaks threatening public health. Local and national authorities unwillingness to report the onset of the outbreak as well as their failure to acknowledge the resulting tragedy in Wuhan turned it into as much a man-made catastrophe as a biological one. More importantly Chinas reluctance to share uncensored information with international communities has led some of its Western critics to condemn Beijing. In the United States, capitalizing on the growing public distrust of China that was fanned prior to the outbreak, several leading Republicans have waged a major anti-China campaign aimed at diverting voters attention away from the Trump administrations local mismanagement of the pandemic.

In the U.S. war on COVID-19, China is portrayed as the Patient Zero that has contaminated the rest of the globe, and hence is responsible for costing nearly 30 million American jobs as well as the federal government trillions of dollars in emergency spending. China is blamed for the deepening economic recession not only in the United States but globally. Around the world, as a variety of interests intersected to replicate the horror of the pandemic in different contexts, China has become the ultimate scapegoat. Australian Prime Minster Scott Morrison, for instance, has accused China of having caused the huge loss of lives across the world as well as the global economic shutdown.

The WHO now serves as a political and diplomatic arena in the current health/diplomatic war between the U.S. and China. This is not new, however. From its onset, as pointed out by one of its founding fathers, Dr. Sze Szeming, the WHO has really had more to do with politics than medicine and health. As my book illustrates, throughout the Cold War, the United States, China, and the USSR regularly used the World Health Assembly (WHA) as a political and diplomatic arena to battle each other. China, for example, after rejoining of the WHO in 1973, began to use the WHA meetings to promote its new Third World policy and to combat the First World superpowers such as the USSR and the United States.

Explain the correlation between the CCPs legitimacy and ability to control the COVID-19 narrative on domestic and global health policy as well as geopolitics.

Throughout Chinese history, epidemic, war, and natural disasters, including famine, had been seen as signs indicating the loss of the Mandate of Heaven that inexorably led to the downfall of many dynasties. In the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) politics and health have always been inextricably linked. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized power in 1949, locally endemic diseases such as schistosomiasis were seen as threats to peoples livelihood, social stability, and national security. Public health campaigns aimed at eradicating such diseases linked allopathic medicine and public health work with the ongoing legitimization of the new order. Fighting the disease came to stand for fighting for socialism. As such the CCP leadership made eradicating diseases and improving the health of the entire population a central pillar of its policies. As the promise to improve the peoples health has been a central tool utilized by the CCP in establishing political legitimacy, its failure to deliver such promise could also cost the party its legitimacy. Hence, the CCPs campaign to control COVID-19 is simultaneously political. At the same time, as public health work in the PRC has served as one of the central means of impacting and influencing the masses, the CCP has also turned the political campaign to combat COVID-19 into a moral crusade involving the entire Chinese nation. This way, the CCP has managed, with some success, to rally support from a large section of the population.

Nationalism is on the rise in China. In the meantime, with the spread of disease globally as well as the xenophobic anti-Chinese discourse in some Western countries, the official propaganda in China is turning COVID-19 into an external menace. This has allowed the CCP to further gain support from Chinese populations both within China and overseas in an alleged united effort or common goal to fight the disease. Such nationalistic rhetoric is also diverting peoples attention away from the earlier tragedy in Wuhan.

Get first-read access to major articles yet to be released, as well as links to thought-provoking commentaries and in-depth articles from our Asia-Pacific correspondents.

Globally, capitalizing on the growing crisis in the United States and Europe, the official media in China has been trumpeting Chinas purported success in controlling the disease. China has also sent medical missions to countries such as Italy. Sending medical missions abroad had been a strategy the PRC used during the Cold War to promote a new international order: a peoples revolutionary movement against colonialism, imperialism, and hegemonism. In the 1970s, the PRCs increasing medical humanitarian activities, and the bonds of friendship created through such undertakings, helped the PRC win its battle against the Republic of China (Taiwan) for the permanent Chinese seat at the UNs Security Council and membership in the General Assembly. This time, the PRCs medical humanitarian efforts have once again won praise from the WHO as well as those who wish to criticize the Trump administration or their own governments failures in tackling the crisis. On the other hand, its also ironic that while health and humanitarianism played pivotal roles in the political and diplomatic negotiations within the White House that eventually led to the opening to China in the early 1970s, currently both the White House and Beijing are using health as a weapon to engage in a new Cold War.

Assess the CCPs strategy to counter global calls for China to be held accountable.

With mounting pressure from some Western countries threatening to bring China to international courts, China has become the global pariah for failing to alert the world about the outbreak. Faced with such a challenge, the CCP, assisted by its official media and the scientific community in China, has been working hard to try turn the tide by propagating itself as a global hero for its successful containment. At the same time, Beijing has launched a major propaganda campaign, backed up by purported scientific evidence, blaming the U.S. military for bringing the disease to Wuhan in the first place. Such strategy is nothing new, however. It resonates with the CCPs campaign against the alleged American germ warfare during the Korean War in the 1950s. On the other hand, China has launched a diplomatic as well as propaganda campaign to attack Western imperialists by evoking the memory of the Hundred Year National Humiliation. In it, the COVID-19 is the new opium plague that the West, in particularly the United States, is using to hobble Chinas rise. But this time, China is determined to not be defeated.

Similar to what happened in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, the CCP leadership took to the decision that China would remain open to the outside world, and perhaps open wider than before. While last time, Deng Xiaoping sought the help of his old friend President George H. W. Bush of the United States to get China out of the crisis of international isolation, this time President Xi Jinping of China telephoned President Putin of Russia to agree on building stronger ties. Stating that the attempt by some to smear China on the question of the origin of the virus is unacceptable, Putin assured Xi that Russia is ready to continue to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with China in fighting COVID-19 and in other areas.

The day after Xi and Putins communication, on April 17 at the CCCPC Politburo meeting, it was announced that China would facilitate the smooth flow of international logistics, strictly control the quality of epidemic prevention and control supplies for export and jointly advance high-quality development under the Belt and Road Initiative. On the same day, the Wuhan authority published a revised mortality and morbidity figure that increased the citys total COVID-19 death toll by 50 percent. That took the national total in China to more than 4,600. The official statement states that this revision was a result of efforts by authorities to ensure that information on the citys COVID-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the data [is] accurate. At the exact moment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman attacked the United States accusations of a cover-up by China as false: Well never allow any concealment, he said. Clearly China has crafted this new statistical campaign to deter external criticism. At the same time, by ceremoniously increasing the mortality figure, authorities hope to win back peoples trust, hence to ensure the stability of the country.

With U.S. and European policymakers questioning Chinas credibility on health policy and data transparency, why does cooperation between Chinese and Western scientists and health experts remain crucial to containing COVID-19?

In the past 40 years, the West had made much effort to integrate China into the neoliberal world order. This Western enthusiasm to draw China in had been matched by Chinas willingness to participate in it. Chinas ascendance to the worlds second biggest economy, however, has had unintended and catastrophic consequences. Rapid modernization accompanied by unrestricted deforestation and unprecedented scale urbanization have threatened the capacity and resilience of the countrys ecosystems. The ever-increasing human efforts to exploit land, from agricultural expansion and intensification including the animal husbandry industry to produce high protein food for human consumption due to the rise in living standards to the construction of roads, railways, mining, and other large scale modernization projects such as the Three Gorges Dam drove much wildlife into populated areas due to the loss of habitats and led to closer integration between livestock and wildlife. This has increased human exposure to new pathogens threatened public health.

South of the Yangtze River, including the regions around Wuhan, as well as Chinas southwest have become the golden triangle, the ideal environment for the emergence and transmission of a number of infectious diseases (EID), from SARS to the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and COVID-19. All are zoonotic in origin. Yet China is not alone in this nor is China the sole culprit for the pandemic the world is now experiencing. Throughout history, the link between modernity, globalization, and epidemics is obvious. The expansion of global trade and travel have set us free but also left us exposed, ever more vulnerable. Geographical distance, the barrier that used to separate us but also slowed the transmission of infectious diseases, has been mitigated with our improved transportation network.

Today, in China as in much of the world, to catch an airplane is likened to catching a bus. The improved and increased aviation has also accelerated the spread of diseases and the rapidity of occurrence of a pandemic such as the COVID-19. The connectedness of everything in this universe, not only in geographic proximity, also meant science can no longer just rely on isolating particular causes and their effects. There is more than ever before a greater urgency and need for a better understanding of the drivers and causes of the emergence and spread of infectious diseases as well as for closer collaboration between international agencies and national governments together with scientists and health experts across the world and disciplines to strengthen animal and public health surveillance, response, prevention, and preparedness systems at the national, regional, and international levels.

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Covid 19 Pandemic | Bioterrorism Market 2020 Competitive Landscape and Growth Opportunity, Industry Status and Forecast to 2025 – Cole of Duty

Posted: at 3:21 pm

COVID-19 impact will also be included and considered for forecast.

Global Bioterrorism Market research report provides detail information about Market Introduction, Market Summary, Global market Revenue (Revenue USD), Market Drivers, Market Restraints, Market Opportunities, Competitive Analysis, Regional and Country Level.

Bioterrorism Market Size Covers Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, CAGR, Trends, Forecast And Business Opportunity.

>>Need a PDF of the global market report? Visit: https://industrystatsreport.com/Request/Sample?ResearchPostId=11949&RequestType=Sample

Latest research report on Bioterrorism Market delivers a comprehensive study on current market trends. The outcome also includes revenue forecasts, statistics, market valuations which illustrates its growth trends and competitive landscape as well as the key players in the business.

Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, fungi, or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form, in much the same way in biological warfare.

Bioterrorism refers to form of terrorism that involves intentional dissemination or release of biological agents. The agents can be viruses, bacteria or toxins and can also be referred to as germ warfare. Biological agents are mainly found in nature but sometimes they can be modified by the terrorist as to make agents more toxic. Biological agents are used by the terrorists to attain their social or political goals and are used for killing or injuring people, plants and animals. Biological weapons are dangerous as some of these agents are transmitted from one person to another and infection might take hours or days to become noticeable.

Bioterrorism is an invaluable tool as biological agents are relatively inexpensive and can cause widespread fear beyond the actual damage they can cause. They are mainly used by the terrorists to create mass panic and disruption of state or economy. The global market for bioterrorism is segmented on the type of different biological agents currently being used and their mode of delivery. Agents such as anthrax, tularemia, small pox, bubonic plague, botulinum toxin and viral hemorrhagic fevers pose a high threat to national security.

This report focuses on the global Bioterrorism status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the Bioterrorism development in United States, Europe and China.

The key players covered in this study Altimmune Bavarian Nordic DynPort Vaccine Company (DVC) Emergent BioSolutions Acambis Achaogen Cleveland BioLabs Elusys Therapeutics

Market segment by Type, the product can be split into Anthrax Smallpox Botulism Radiation/Nuclear defense Others

Market segment by Application, split into Military Government

Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers United States Europe China Japan Southeast Asia India Central & South America

The study objectives of this report are: To analyze global Bioterrorism status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. To present the Bioterrorism development in United States, Europe and China. To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies. To define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.

In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Bioterrorism are as follows: History Year: 2014-2018 Base Year: 2018 Estimated Year: 2019 Forecast Year 2019 to 2025

For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2018 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.

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Table of Content:

Market Overview: The report begins with this section where product overview and highlights of product and application segments of the Global Bioterrorism Market are provided. Highlights of the segmentation study include price, revenue, sales, sales growth rate, and market share by product.

Competition by Company: Here, the competition in the Worldwide Global Bioterrorism Market is analyzed, By price, revenue, sales, and market share by company, market rate, competitive situations Landscape, and latest trends, merger, expansion, acquisition, and market shares of top companies.

Company Profiles and Sales Data: As the name suggests, this section gives the sales data of key players of the Global Bioterrorism Market as well as some useful information on their business. It talks about the gross margin, price, revenue, products, and their specifications, type, applications, competitors, manufacturing base, and the main business of key players operating in the Global Bioterrorism Market.

Market Status and Outlook by Region: In this section, the report discusses about gross margin, sales, revenue, production, market share, CAGR, and market size by region. Here, the Global Bioterrorism Market is deeply analyzed on the basis of regions and countries such as North America, Europe, China, India, Japan, and the MEA.

Application or End User: This section of the research study shows how different end-user/application segments contribute to the Global Bioterrorism Market.

Market Forecast: Here, the report offers a complete forecast of the Global Bioterrorism Market by product, application, and region. It also offers global sales and revenue forecast for all years of the forecast period.

Research Findings and Conclusion: This is one of the last sections of the report where the findings of the analysts and the conclusion of the research study are provided.

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Covid 19 Pandemic | Bioterrorism Market 2020 Competitive Landscape and Growth Opportunity, Industry Status and Forecast to 2025 - Cole of Duty

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The Trump effect: Why conservatives are downplaying the coronavirus – Vox.com

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In recent years, theres been an explosion of academic work on the psychological foundations of our politics. The basic theory goes like this: Some people are innately more suspicious of change, of outsiders, of novelty. That base orientation will nudge them toward living in the town where they grew up, eating the foods they know and love, worshipping in the church their parents attended. It will also nudge them toward political conservatism.

The reverse is true, too. Some people are naturally more oriented toward newness, toward diversity, toward disruption. That base orientation will push them to live in big cities, try exotic foods, travel widely, appreciate weird art, sample different spiritualities. It will also nudge them toward political liberalism.

In Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences, John Alford, John Hibbing, and Kevin Smith summarize the evidence:

Numerous studies have linked these personality dimensions to differences in the mix of tastes and preferences that seem to reliably separate liberals and conservatives. People who score high on openness, for example, tend to like envelope-pushing music and abstract art. People who score high on conscientiousness are more likely to be organized, faithful, and loyal. One review of this large research literature finds these sorts of differences consistently cropping up across nearly 70 years of studies on personality research. The punch line, of course, is that this same literature also reports a consistent relationship between these dimensions of personality and political temperament. Those open to new experiences are not just hanging Jackson Pollock prints in disorganized bedrooms while listening to techno-pop reinterpretations of Bach by experimental jazz bands. They are also more likely to identify themselves as liberals.

Researchers have sliced, measured, and analyzed these psychologies through dozens of schemas. NYUs Jon Haidt is known for moral foundations theory, which emphasizes the value structures underpinning our political beliefs. Political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler study fixed and fluid personalities. Michele Gelfand tracks tight and loose societies. Some scales measure openness. Others measure authoritarianism.

But all of them converge on the same psychosocial cleavage. Put simply, conservatives are psychologically tuned to see threat, and so they fear change. Liberals are tuned to prize change, and so they downplay threat.

Liberalism and conservatism are rooted in stable individual differences in the ways people perceive, interpret, and cope with threat and uncertainty, write Christopher Johnston, Howard Lavine, and Christopher Federico in Open versus Closed.

Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is, write Hetherington and Weiler in Prius or Pickup.

Conservatives react more strongly than liberals to signs of danger, including the threat of germs and contamination, and even low-level threats such as sudden blasts of white noise, writes Haidt in The Righteous Mind.

If thats true, though, why is it conservatives who are downplaying the coronavirus, and liberals who are sheltering in fear of it?

A virus isnt just any threat, some researchers say. It is the threat at the root of these psychological cleavages.

Infectious disease has, historically, been humanitys most lethal foe. Our immune systems have evolved to protect us, but so, too, have our cultures, societies, and psychologies. As Haidt writes, Its a lot more effective to prevent infection by washing your food, casting out lepers, or simply avoiding dirty people than it is to let the microbes into your body and then hope that your biological immune system can kill every last one of them.

To some researchers, much of human civilization is a lightly disguised effort at pathogen avoidance: The purity laws of the Old Testament are, from this perspective, a spiritually branded public health campaign. Spicy foods are more common in pathogen-rich areas because they kill bacteria.

How a society treats strangers is of particular importance. Strangers carry novel pathogens, diseases to which you and your community have amassed no immunity. A mix of psychologies helps strike the right balance between being overrun by outsiders spreading infection and reaping the benefits of trade and cooperation.

Dozens of studies have confirmed the relationship between the rate of disease and political attitudes. For example, in a 2008 paper titled Pathogens, Personality, and Culture, Mark Schaller and Damian Murray showed that worldwide, people were less open, less extroverted, and more sexually conservative in regions rich with disease. In another study, Randy Thornhill, Cory Fincher, and Devaraj Aran found that a high prevalence of infectious disease regionally predicted more conservative political values. Gelfand has looked at US states and found the tightest political cultures are in the states with the most disasters and pathogen prevalence.

But here we are, in the midst of a pandemic, and its conservatives seemingly dismissing the danger, opening states and counties prematurely, refusing to wear masks, waving off the deaths of older people as a small price to pay. One day, its like a miracle, it will disappear, said President Trump.

And, more often, it seems to be liberals whore locked in their homes, who are warning the worst is yet to come, who are shaming anyone who dares step foot on a beach or forgets to don personal protective equipment. A recent Pew poll showed 61 percent of conservatives fear that state restrictions wont be lifted quickly enough, while 91 percent of liberals worry theyll be lifted too quickly.

This is the opposite of what a straightforward read of decades of political psychology research would predict. Early in the pandemic, it was plausible to argue that the divide reflected the virus hitting blue cities first, and sparing red counties its punishments. But Covid-19 has made its way into Trump country, and at any rate, studies show that political beliefs are a more powerful driver of views on the virus than personal experience.

So I asked political psychology researchers: Why are liberals more afraid of the coronavirus than conservatives? And what does that say about political psychology more broadly?

In conversations with more than half a dozen political psychologists, three theories dominated.

One is that we arent seeing anything unexpected at all. John Jost, at New York University, suggested that my reading of the reaction was mistaking its psychological foundations. Liberals were acting out of care, not fear. And conservatives are panicked, he suggested, but showing it in odd ways.

The fact that liberals are taking the scientific evidence and medical recommendations seriously does not, in itself, mean that they are more threat sensitive than conservatives, he wrote over email. All of the liberals I know have been self-sequestering to flatten the curve to save other peoples lives.

As for the right, some conservatives are denying and repressing fear, but that doesnt mean they are cool cucumbers. Fears of economic devastation (and the anger by conservative activists in Michigan and elsewhere) may even reflect displacement of the fear. For all we know, Americans who are explicitly denying the problem are experiencing (even) more stress and anxiety than those who are not.

A second camp argued that the tension is real, but it was being swamped by partisanship. Perhaps, in laboratory conditions, conservatives would be more afraid of the virus. But politics doesnt play out in laboratory conditions. Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, and his decision to downplay the threat, his dismissal of masks, and his clear desire to reopen is the stronger signal.

Yes, I would expect conservatives to be more worried about virus X coming in from abroad, said Haidt. When Obama was president and America was threatened by Ebola, it was conservatives freaking out, demanding a more vigorous government response to protect us, while Obama kept steady on following scientific advice.

Trump, its worth noting, was at the forefront of the Ebola panic. Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admitting, he tweeted in October 2014. Spreading all over Africa and fast. Stop flights.

Here, though, its been the opposite. Trump laid out his view of reality very early: This is nothing to worry about, its a plot to discredit me, and it will magically go away, Haidt continued. Trumps leadership overwhelms the small average difference in disgust sensitivity which would, ceteris paribus, have Republicans more concerned about contagion.

Federico made a similar point. Chronic sensitivity to threat, disgust, and disease is one factor that should influence concern about Covid-19, [but] it is not the only one. Partisanship itself is perhaps the most important factor in shaping how people respond to issues or public concerns.

Gelfand said much the same. Even though groups tighten up under threat, that signal can be weakened. Groups follow their leaders.

This would confirm what weve seen throughout the Trump presidency. A 2018 paper by Michael Barber and Jeremy Pope showed that the more conservative someone believed themselves to be, the more likely they were to follow Trump when he took an unexpectedly liberal position on an issue. Trumps connection with his base has often, well, trumped his heterodoxies.

A third argument, which acts in some ways as a bridge for the first two, is that everyone was scared, but for conservatives, fear was coming out more through acts of xenophobia than epidemiology in part because thats where fear of the virus and Trumps natural politics find harmony.

I cant resist noting that current events are perfectly consistent with my claim that those on the right, and especially the Trumpian right, are not generically more threatened but rather only more attentive to those threats they believe to be emanating from human outsiders (defined broadly to include welfare cheats, unpatriotic athletes, norm violators, non-English speakers, religious and racial minorities, and certainly people from other countries), wrote Hibbing. Thus, disembodied threats such as climate change, Covid-19, and economic inequality are not primary sources of concern for them.

That would explain why Trump oscillates between downplaying the threat of the coronavirus and escalating tensions with China over its response to it. When Trump wants to bludgeon the Chinese, he plays up the threat of the virus; when it comes to domestic governance, he plays it down. More than 70 percent of Republicans now hold an unfavorable view of China, a doubling of anti-Chinese sentiment since George W. Bushs presidency.

In some ways, this pandemic was tailor-built for right-wing xenophobia, and we are fortunate (thus far, at least) that Trumps response was to downplay it solely to keep the stock market from tanking completely, said Jost.

And that thus far is ending quickly. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has sent campaigns a detailed, 57-page memo authored by a top Republican strategist advising GOP candidates to address the coronavirus crisis by aggressively attacking China, reported Politico, and Stephen Miller is using the coronavirus to push a broader anti-immigration agenda.

Heres my view: Political psychology is like the soil in politics. There are differences in the liberal and conservative soil particularly in how they view threat, change, tradition, outsiders, and diversity so different kinds of politicians, tactics, and movements take root on the two sides.

Trump is, at his core, a suspicious, threat-oriented, traditionalist figure hes nostalgic for the way things were, hostile to outsiders, angry over demographic change (hes even, in normal times, a germaphobe). Theres a reason he took root in conservative soil.

By contrast, former President Barack Obama is optimistic, cosmopolitan, and temperamentally progressive he looks at change and sees hope, he looks at other countries and sees allies, he sees diversity as a strength. Theres a reason he took root in liberal soil.

But once a politician captures a party, other dynamics take over. For one thing, partisans trust their leaders and allied institutions. Very few of us have personally run experiments on the coronavirus, or gone around the world gathering surface temperature readings over the course of decades. We have to choose whom to believe, and once we do, were inclined to take their word when describing contested or faraway events.

For another, we all fall prey to motivated reasoning, in which we shape evidence, arguments, and values to align with our incentives. As Upton Sinclair said, It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Many Republican officeholders, led by Trump, think the coronavirus threatens their reelection because the lockdown threatens the economy. As such, theyre motivated to believe that reopening the economy sooner is better, and attracted to evidence and arguments that support that position. Sometimes that means downplaying the coronavirus. Sometimes that means accepting its risk but suggesting the costs of reopening are worth it. In both cases, the argument is working backward from the desired conclusion.

The political tragedy for the Republican Party, and the actual tragedy for America, is that the politics and the substance here should have been aligned. If Trump had taken the disease seriously from the outset and mounted a competent and consistent response, his approval ratings would be higher today, and the country would be in a better position to reopen safely, and sooner. As it is, Trump has been denied the polling bounce other governors and world leaders have seen, and hes split his own coalition, forcing them to choose between their fear of the disease and their trust in him.

The thing people often miss about moral foundations theory is that the foundations are just foundations, says Haidt. People dont live in the foundation of their house. A house must be built upon those foundations. Moral and political entrepreneurs build structures, over time, and invite people to live in them.

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The Trump effect: Why conservatives are downplaying the coronavirus - Vox.com

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Letter: Does Balentine really hate liberals this much? – Press Herald

Posted: at 3:20 pm

Does John Balentine actually despise liberals so much that he will gloat over the fact that, due to the pandemic, we are all being forced to use plastic bags rather than reusable ones? And does he really want to make it a liberal issue that our garbage dumps are rapidly filling and we can help by using less plastic? He says Heres hoping the bag bans disappear forever, so I guess so. I hope John does not cut off too much nose while spiting his face. And is he really gloating over the fact that mass transit has helped spread the virus faster? I never realized that promoting mass transit was a liberal issue, but live and learn. And apparently living in big cities is a liberal thing and living in rural areas a conservative one and the pandemic will teach those liberals a lesson for living so close together. Its really a shame that good writers like John have to waste their time echoing the moronic right wing edge in these divisive times rather than actually doing some serious independent thinking and finding the intelligent middle ground that might help pull us closer together. He does go there sometimes and its very refreshing when he does.

Peyton HiggisonBrunswick

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Letter: Does Balentine really hate liberals this much? - Press Herald

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