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Times Like These
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
So here we are, in a big pandemic, or depending on who you talk to, pandemic scare. Or we are in between someplace. I fall into that middle camp. What I can say is that America has faced far worse in the past, and I know we will emerge from this as well. We will be different, in some ways good, and in some ways bad.
The quote above was written by a man who watched his young friends die in the trenches of WWI. I’ll take his acceptance of life as it is, married to a quiet faith the good people can make a difference over falling to panic, or falling into scorn over the panic of others.
Published in General“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
Beautiful!
The problem is that World War I basically destroyed Britain’s institutions. What we are going through is also a test of institutions above all else. Our institutions were already at a very low point in trust because of mismanagement and an inability to articulate a vision for the future.
Awesome. Thanks. One of three or four great, quotable speeches in those books (and movies).
For some reason I am not afraid of the virus at all, I assume it will run its course and fall into line with all the rest of them.
Perhaps one day there will be one that does us in – see The Stand, Galapagos, every zombie movie, etc. But today is not that day. One day another meteor will hit us, and that will be that for us. But today is not that day, either.
But watching the reaction this time, the shakeup in all of our normal, comfortable systems, is sublime. While the damage is unpredictable, and undoutedly costly in every way, I have confidence that people acting with their own self interest, and consideration for their friends and neighbors – their “platoons” – we will find a way to stabilize all of this and move on, wiser maybe. (Hahaha – this from a supreme skeptic!)
We will move on different.
I think the destruction from this hysteria is worse than voting in socialism.
I think the hysteria will allow socialism to creep further into our lives once this passes.
From the post’s title, I thought you were going here:
Mithrandir! Mithrandir! Mithrandir!
Great Britain ruined itself economically in the course of two world wars, after which it plunged itself into decades of slow recovery as the people embraced socialism. The question we are about to answer is whether we voluntarily ruin ourselves over this bug, never to be able to respond to military threats in the way we could before, and then drive ourselves down in both health and wealth with an embrace of socialism this November.
That seems unlikely to me. I am not sure why everyone wants to make how we respond to things today always somehow worse than how we responded yesterday. Apparently, we are like the Elves and it is all, always downhill.
Well, I always like a post with hobbits….
Me too