Three years and four months ago, a new government, cocooned in ignorance and dedicated to the proposition that only the wealthy truly mattered, was imposed upon us by the Electoral College.
We are now embroiled in a great pandemic proving the failure of this government's principals. The brave first responders living and dead have battled the virus despite shortages of essential equipment and supplies. They were and are being betrayed by a government lacking vision and coherence. First responders and the countless dead doomed to a horrid death are victims, not just of a virus, but also of the fatally flawed idea that government can never be a constructive forced in society. Those dead lying in unmarked and unmourned graves cannot be recalled. The first responders who gave their lives will not know that we acclaim them heroes.
To honor these dead, we must restore faith in the positive powers of government. We must nourish the understanding that our government is not an alien imposition. Instead it is our joint project to protect ourselves from common harms, whether foreign invasion, natural disaster, or epidemic disease. We can, and should, debate the effectiveness of methods adopted and their costs. However, the bottom line is the We the People are the soul of government. We cannot let that vanish from the Earth.