My Virtual Reading Room

Evelin Dacker

Covid CARE:
Link to Elephant Journal:
https://bit.ly/2TSX0rT

This is the R, Risk Tolerance
This is the most controversial and difficult place to navigate as we reduce social distancing and open society back up. We each have our own personal tolerance for illness, disease and death. It is imperative that we understand this in order to take into account everyone else in our container and community at large. This is why physical distancing is called for right now. It is the most effective means to reduce the spread of this virus. Yet, I cannot foresee a world where we no longer go to church, get our hair cut or see our friends and lovers. Humans are social creatures and connection to others is fundamental to life itself. Forsaking joy, love, pleasure and others for the period of time until herd immunity is reached, will cause inordinate suffering.

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The problem of policing isn’t bad apples. It’s a diseased tree.

(...And demilitarizing police departments. Under a 1997 law, more than $7 billion in surplus military equipment, from grenade launchers to armored vehicles, has been transferred at no cost to local police departments. Boys with toys are too tempted to use them, and these toys are lethal. As researchers Ryan Welch and Jack Mewhirter explained in 2017, even controlling for household income, population characteristics and violent crime levels, “more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police.” In short, “Militarization makes every problem — even a car of teenagers driving away from a party — look like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer.”)

...I see I wasn't the only one who thought of Maslow's famous quote, recently...


Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.

(...In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.)

...I like his vocabulary; he's certainly erudite...

Here's why we don't see protests when police unjustly kill white people

Trump's soulless nature has done the nation incalculable harm

Riots, a pandemic, a law-and-order presidential campaign: Why 1968 and 2020 feel similar but aren’t