Policy Prescription

Domestic Policy:

Launch a campaign to destigmatize the virus drawing on experience from the H.I.V. struggle. Most carriers of the Coronavirus are not severely ill and we, in our unprepared state, could have been hit with a worse plague. But the stigma of the virus is truly terrible. If you think of it, we want all American residents to have a health professional they see, so we can have viruses on our radar as they emerge, so we can catch future plagues when they're still containable... which I'm afraid Covid is not. We can cure those who catch it, but we can't prevent it from circulating... and efforts to rigidly contain the virus could have unspeakable humanitarian consequences on top of the dire tribulation we have put vulnerable Americans through as we responded to this virus with draconian steel and half baked notions of health and medicine. We called the afflicted 'Coronavirus suspects,' criminalizing their innocent tragedies until the President and his court became virus positive. But we're going to be victorious in this struggle against the virus and its stigma.

Aid the poor: Many fine Americans have been living without a lot of material wealth and have thus been in quiet need for many years; but now with the virus having shut down our offices and marketplaces there is a great horde of recently unemployed citizens. Citizens should be able to get a hand up from the government without filling out mountains of paperwork or going under the microscope. We must remember that the state should want to stabilize citizens in crisis especially, to give help where it is most direly needed; and people in crisis may not be composed and organized enough to navigate the labyrinth of government bureaucracy.

Foreign Policy:

We the people of the United States should recognize that the Earth has a diversity of human cultures and a diversity of social systems, some being democratic, and some not so much. America should engage with foreign cultures where they're at, advancing our ideas and interests such as democracy, but realizing that the people of each nation must walk their own path. American foreign policy should promote global stability and peace; and I am not so sure that spending more on military enterprises than the next 10 nations combined is in the interest of peace, even peace through strength. When we invest so deeply in armaments and station our machines of war throughout the world, a paradigm of conflict is established where what we want is to shift to a paradigm of peace and cooperation.