Weekend self-care open thread: Honor the heroes

The USS Theodore Roosevelt is a platform of death. It can sail around the world and deal death from hundreds of miles at sea. It is the supreme example of American strength, able to project power thousands of miles from our shores.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt was also being ravaged by coronavirus. Sailors were being infected at an exponential rate. The Department of the Navy wasn't doing anything to protect these sailors.

Its captain, Brett Crozier, sent letters up the chain of command detailing the deteriorating situation. Nothing was done. Then, somehow, those letters were leaked. The Roosevelt was ordered into port, and its infected sailors treated.

Captain Crozier was then relieved of his duties, for leaking the situation to the media.

This is the send-off he received from those under his command:

Real leaders stand up for the lives of the men and women who serve under them. Thank you, Capt. Crozier, for being a true leader. Your men and women appreciate you, even if Donald Trump does not. pic.twitter.com/UnPqyxOtRc

— VoteVets (@votevets) April 3, 2020

One of America's myths is that we always take care of our warriors. That their safety and wellbeing is paramount in our Republic. Of course, we know we fall far short of this ideal. But never have we fallen further from it than this episode. It took a captain to sacrifice his career to save his crew. I have no doubt that the Trump regime would have allowed the Roosevelt to become infected to the point of no return in a vain attempt to avoid the bad PR. The regime cares not a whit for lives; it cares only for how it looks. It looks awful; but it keeps trying to put lipstick on a pig. Capt. Crozier made a decision; he put the lives of his crew above his own career. He paid for it with the loss of his job, but gained the respect and love of a nation.

Then there's this:

“Every single morning, we pray together as a team, whether they’re religious or not religious. We pray in Islam. We pray in the Christian faith. We pray in the Jewish faith. We include everybody, and we pray every single morning.” https://t.co/QvG4URfbjt

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) April 4, 2020

From the story, this will break your heart:

NEW YORK — Janett Perez sings to her patients, though few can hear her. They are sedated, intubated, pushed to the brink of death by covid-19. They lie unconscious in their beds as she tends to them.

“They can still hear you,” the intensive care nurse at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center said. Besides, she is all they have.

“They don’t have family around. So we have to be their family.”

More from the story:

“Every single morning, we pray together as a team, whether they’re religious or not religious,” she said. “We pray in Islam. We pray in the Christian faith. We pray in the Jewish faith. We include everybody, and we pray every single morning. As a team.”

While our feckless soi disant president holds press conferences every day which serve only to inflame and deflate the population, these heroes are doing the work he is incapable of doing. They are comforting the afflicted.

Captain Crozier and Nurse Perez are why I have faith that we will not only make it through this catastrophe, but come out of it on the other end stronger. Things as they are can no longer last. It's no longer tenable. Donald Trump was elected—and yes, I will say "elected", because saying he was "installed" removes agency and responsibility from those who voted for him, or didn't vote for Hillary Clinton—based on many factors. Based on fear. Based on hatred. Based on "let's blow everything up."

Now everything is blown up, and the great middle of this country knows what that looks like. This is the great middle which just wants a comfortable life, and will rebel when that comfortable life is robbed of it. They care not a whit for ideologies of the left or right. They want the country to run. And they will be the soldiers of the movement to restore normality.

Americans will rise up against injustice, as the Civil Rights Movement showed. But they will not tolerate interrupting their lives for anything less. Too many were sanguine at Trump's ascension. Now they know the cost, and will work to rectify the damage. The far right thinks they have power sewn up. The far left thinks: After Trump, us. Neither take into account the actual people who will decide their fates. And yes, we will decide their fates.

Honor the heroes, and use their examples as your lodestars. The ideologues are whistling past their graveyards.