The U.S. Department of Defense, with its $700 billion annual budget, was unable to defend us. Nor was the Department of Homeland Security, with its $50 billion per year, able to secure our homeland. Instead, the front lines are being heroically held by our health care and emergency-services professionals and their support staff.
While the big-three pompous autocrats of this world strut their stages — Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Xi Jinping in Beijing, and President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., shading the truth of the coronavirus plague — citizens in each of their nations are dying by the thousands. Once we get through this biological disaster, in addition to the lives lost, we will have poured trillions of dollars into the black hole of debt that will burden us far into the future, jeopardizing our Social Security programs and our younger generations' prosperity for decades to come.
One way out of these dark times would be to re-evaluate how we have fallen for the ravenous military-industrial appetites that have brought our world to such ruin. We are an adaptable and resilient species. We can use this crisis as an opportunity to reposition ourselves toward a far more positive world of caring and cooperation. It is time to beat our swords into respirators.
Peter Krause
Duluth
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