Letter to Editor | This pandemic is a portal

— from Michael Johnson —

As an early Phase 2 of the health crisis re-opening begins setting in we find ourselves as a community and as a society contemplating what normalcy means to us. 

We can see that the same “powers that be” that were ramping things up before the health crisis have never stopped. They’re still in power, and they’ve been at the constant ready to help steer us back to where we were before… back to their version of normal. 

Their never-swaying message cloaked by the pretension that health comes first in spite of actions that show differently does at first glance seem like the logical path forward, back to the way things were before… back to normal. But, at a closer look we are left with the question of, “what’s wrong with this picture?” 

Given limited choices by a lesser of two evils mentality continuing to govern our path forward only gives false hopes for a future that could otherwise represent the common good, and put social responsibility above profit. “It is not a sign of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” In moving forward, I feel that as a community we deserve, and that we can do better.

I invite you to listen to this short video which resonates with me–

Arundhati Roy: “The Pandemic Is a Portal”

“What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus.”

This is an excerpt of an essay called “Pandemic Is a Portal,” a selection from author Arundhati Roy’s forthcoming book Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. (Haymarket, September 2020). The Man Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist (The God of Small Things, 1997) is a longtime activist for antiglobalization movements and an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy.

“Some believe it’s God’s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.”

“Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality,’ trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.”