WE ARE THE WORLD

     Remember that song? Back in 1983, I think, over 40 musicians got together and sang and sold this song for money to help stop the famine in Africa. The song, in today's terms, went viral. It was a major hit and influenced others to do similar songs and projects for other areas, including Hands Across America, wherein there was to be a line of handholding Americans across the entire country, all at a certain time as they sang the song. I participated in that along with family and some students of that time. It felt good and raised money.
     Today, in these times, we need some of that same spirit. What we have instead are food banks and pantries closing from lack of donations. We have panic and stocking up buying of random items and categories. Aliens looking in on us from space must believe that our diet here is paper in various forms and that wearing various kinds of face masks and gloves of different colors is a custom, perhaps according to class or ethnicity. In other words, the world, not only this country, has gone mad.
     But we have gone mad selectively. Some countries have all but shut down their citizens and economies. Others have fought doing that, but to a grim outcome as the virus rages on and people die in greater numbers, as the sick and dying overwhelm the hospitals and facilities. It seems that all over the world there is no one system or response that works all the time, clear in its objectives and parameters, and contains within it a continuing vibrant and healthy economy. We truly are, all of us, no matter the country, the ethnicity, the continent, are the world. The sooner recognized the sooner we can heal wounds common to all of us.
     Some survivalists believe they have won the day as they depart to their hideaways, prestocked with food and supplies, armed to the teeth and closed off to the world. Well, we all cannot do that, can we; thus, we need to work in better and more cooperative ways. Unfortunately, over the past four years, the world has devolved and turned from  unity to division, from cooperation to anger and threats, allies turning away from each other,  no one sharing ideas and brains. Bad news for the rest of us, for the concept of we are the world, even as we orbit in space around the same sun on the same small globe.
     As South Korea beats back the situation from the worst to the best, we have a ridiculous leader who whines how everyone hates him. Perhaps we ought to teach him the chidhood song of eating worms as everyone seems to regard him with hate. I believe it is more that people regard him with contempt, as useless, incompetent, egocentric to a sick degree, and has been hands off the helm for too long with disastrous results. He is a pathetic creature who is, unfortunately for us, leading us down the road to perdition and at the very least to the demise of this country in many ways, including existentially.
     So as the businesses of the world shut down; as the people disappear off the streets of ghost town capitals; as airlines cut and cut until flights, both international and domestic, are cut to the bone, even going so far as amputation! we need, all of us, a strong degree of cooperation among the nations and leaders of the world. We need to remember that  we ARE the world. What happens in one country happens in others. No avoiding it, only somehow, to differing degrees, to contain it, control it, cut the death rate and come to a realization that if we, the earth, are to survive, then we must change our ways, sing the song again and never mind the virus. We must hold hands , this time across the globe, a new equator of humans, caring for each other. 
     We will not solve these worldwide problems any more the old fashioned way. No country can go it alone any longer. We have cut connections to the bone, cutting noses despite faces. That must stop, come to an immediate halt. 
     WE ARE THE WORLD. WE ARE THE ANSWER. 
     We but have to dig deeper, heed our wisest leaders, not the uselesss dangerous ones and we, the world, can come through this and other crises, if we but and just remember that we are one. One can run, yes, for a while, but one cannot hide, certainly not forever and certainly not successfully in terms of the survival of the human race and its abode, Earth. 
           WE ARE THE WORLD