During this deadly pandemic we are seeing the best of Americans working at great risk to their own lives providing the health care and the goods and services we need to weather this storm. We are seeing the very best of many local governments doing what is necessary to get us through this with the minimum of illness and deaths.

Conversely, we are seeing the worst of a segment of the population and a group of our politicians, including the President, doing just the opposite. Defying science, and their duty to protect the public, politicians are propagating lies and misinformation, working against public health policy, leveraging this deadly pandemic for personal and political gain. They are deflecting the blame for their own mismanagement of this crisis and making matters worse.

Greedy corporations and the very wealthy put their employees at risk, snap up bail-out funding targeted at smaller businesses and take every opportunity to enrich themselves.

Some wealthy reactionaries in the United States are bankrolling protests against state governments, taking advantage of justified fear and anger to further actions even to the point of armed militia storming a state capitol. This is a cynical, dangerous and truly evil threat to the public health, waged solely for their own greed and sick political ideology.

Because most Americans are good and decent people we will get through this no more politically divided than we were before this crisis began and hopefully more cognizant of what we share than that which divides us.

David Larsen
Portland

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