As I remember it, only a few weeks ago we were ALL focused on understanding, containing, stopping, beating, or otherwise thwarting a potential pandemic of something we have come to know all too well as COVID-19. We ALL wanted to neutralize the threat and protect our people; we had our focus on the greater collective results.

With a little effort a shift took place, from our initial collective focus on neutralizing the threat and protecting our people, to a broader set of varied focus points with their own individual — versus collective — results in mind.

The shift was gradual and then all of a sudden. “Blamesmanship” has not only entered the discourse but has already shifted into high gear. The original focus of neutralizing the threat and protecting our people seems to have become a cliché (“we’re all in this together”), or worse, a gossamer thin veil to wrap around and disguise special interests, many of which have nothing to do with neutralizing the threat of the pandemic or protecting our people. 

I am still amazed at my mother’s brilliance at how there is nothing so bad that, with a little effort, can’t be made worse.

In Other Words…

“No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.” ― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“That’s one of the remarkable things about life. It’s never so bad that it can’t get worse.” ― Bill Watterson

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In The Word…

“But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.” –Matthew 9:16