To: Maurice Winn who wrote (155498 ) 3/29/2020 11:43:44 PM From: sense Read Replies (1) | Respond to Xenophobia will be an essential character trait. Don't buy into the BS that a rational fear of dying from an illness, driving rational precautions to prevent it... is the same thing as racism. Xenophobia... fear of the foreign... is just not an issue in the current situation. There are a number of stupid people out there, now, though who are suffering, and forcing others to suffer, as a result of their ignorance driving "virtue signalling" instead of taking proper actions... notably... in Italy... which has the extent of the problem they do as a direct result of a pairing of failed government policy and failed social leadership... where "the leaders" judged it more important to "prove" they weren't racist than it was to protect themselves and others from infection. Darwin was right. Hong Kong closed the borders with China... because the people of Hong Kong forced them to do it... not because the government was smart enough to do it early on ? But, it obviously wasn't EVER about the people of Hong Kong being afraid of Chinese people... it was ONLY about the people of Hong Kong being afraid of Chinese people who were infected with the virus ? And, now... China... who originally criticized others for keeping Chinese out... almost like they WANTED the rest of the world to get infected... are now erecting barriers to prevent their own citizens from returning to China from other places where the virus is still raging ? Does that make the Chinese xenophobic... against themselves ? I'm not critical of that move... because it makes perfect sense. We also should have disallowed the cruise ship carriers in Japan from returning... along with all the others who were outside the country in a hot-zone for the virus... And if we had done that... we'd not have the problem today that we do now in the U.S. ? China's governments did a LOT of stupid things... and it is that which allowed the virus to become the problem it is in China. But governments elsewhere... seeing what happened in China... had every opportunity to NOT make those mistakes... and prevent it spreading... and still failed. They had every ability to recognize what China did to begin limiting the virus, at least, reducing the rate of spread... and still they have mostly failed. Tempting, in the face of that... to point out that "government is the problem"... Reality is... people are stupid... and stupid people do get promoted to positions of power from which they can screw things up even more. Peter Principle. That is clearly is true in relation to origins... government working properly could have stopped this happening early on... but failed. But that makes it true "government is the problem" in the opposite sense... as the problem isn't that they exist... but that they exist without a real purpose for existing... when they're proven incapable of doing what needs doing... and allow stupid people to make the decisions. In this case, it isn't exactly correct that "government is the problem"... its just that LOUSY government is the problem... since things like this are the reason we do have governments... and we'd prefer that they NOT fail, as they have been, in solving problems, in things like this, where we'd rather them be able to handle it, and it do well, and do it well enough to not screw up... but actually succeed.
