Dealing with a wild swing of emotions | Columns – Frederick News Post

Theyre throwing a lot at us lately almost too much to know what to make of it or how to deal with it. Were dealing with fear and worry over the coronavirus; elation and excitement with the SpaceX launch; and more recently, despair and disappointment with the police killing of a black man in Minneapolis and the reaction of protest and rioting.

The protests should have been expected. They are a protected and legitimate avenue to join others in addressing grievances and demanding change. But their cause is considerably weakened when the protests turned into rioting, vandalism, arson and looting. One bright spot was the attempt by some of the protesters to try to prevent some of the illegal activity and in one case even form a barricade around a business to curtail the looting. The governors and mayors of the hardest hit areas are blaming, without proof, non-local extremists for the worst of the incidents.

Then there is the extremist in the White House, who asked the governors to crack down hard on the protesters, but has been sadly lacking in any leadership role, like trying to bring the nation together during a volatile time.

The most bizarre image was the presidents meaningless, ridiculous stroll from the White House to St. Johns Episcopal Church on Monday, surrounded by security, after the streets had been cleared by police. He stood in front of the church, held up a Bible and gave a short speech before posing for photos with some White House officials. Not sure what the purpose of that was.

Regardless of the outcome, most of the damage has been done to our comfortable assurance that we are making so much progress in race relations. We may think weve come a long way, but recent events havent proven that to be the case. Its hard to imagine that after years of similar incidents, followed by this can never happen again, extensive training and education by law enforcement, it does happen again. No doubt, this is not the last time we will see a similar incident, followed by rage and protests. You have to wonder what it will take to bring about meaningful change.

These painful incidents of peaceful protests getting out of hand, of the threat of military intervention and a vacuum at the leadership position, is only compounded by the late and uneven response to the coronavirus pandemic. Its hard to imagine that this previously unknown virus has managed to kill more than 100,000 of us, and were still struggling to find ways to effectively deal with it until a vaccine is developed.

In the middle of all this we got a temporary lift. At any other time, a successful launch of a private/public mission to the International Space Station would be an uplifting event, a positive step in our quest to advance science and reach beyond the bounds of Earth. One of the commentators at the liftoff called it a triumph over fear when we need it. Its possible that we could have found a cheaper triumph over fear than this overall $2.5 billion project. And our reaction to the pandemic is probably more like a determination to deal with it effectively and contain it before a predicted return in the fall.

The money spent on our revived space program, supposedly designed to return to the moon do we really need another moon trip? or to explore other planets, could be better spent on exploring solutions to some of our problems here on the ground.

Some that come to mind are ensuring that all our citizens have enough to eat; have affordable and safe housing; that all of us rich or poor, of whatever age have access to the best medical care available; that our children have equal access to education; that our seniors are not warehoused in inadequate nursing homes; that we are prepared medically for the next pandemic; that our bridges, roads, tunnels, dams, railroads, utilities and whatever else is considered infrastructure, are safe and maintained on a regular basis.

Thats probably a short list. But a lot of this could be accomplished by trading the money spent on one or more whiz-bang space shots for some down-to-earth fixes. In place of colonizing Mars we could work on colonizing our planet with some vision, hope and leadership.

Bill Pritchard, who worked in community journalism for 40 years, writes from Frederick. Reach him at billpritchard.1@gmail.com

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Dealing with a wild swing of emotions | Columns - Frederick News Post