Enough of war

Please quit calling the COVID-19 crisis a war. As a war baby, war student, war veteran and war resister, I’m weary of glorification and trivialization of unwinnable, selective wars serving the powerful by destroying the voiceless and their environments.

I hope no one in the pandemic struggle is trying to kill people as war does, although COVID-19 victims are as random as noncombatants who bear the brunt of all wars. Blame’s assigned for faulty intelligence, bad logistics and strategies. Costs are infinite, yet fortunes are made and the wealthy compensated. Heroes are sacrificed. Truth and liberty perish, but the economy must be restored.

​ Behold unlikely protesters and Sunday’s editorial (4/19), great war propaganda, but lose human lives to win the economy? Wealth, privilege and growth trump a healthy, egalitarian community? Subsidized, profiteering corporations and investors are not accountable for the fiscally insecure? When the ultra-rich discuss helping small business, remember President Reagan thought “mom and pop” operations were anything smaller than General Electric.​

I can live on corporate crumbs and socialized medicine, but let’s don’t “re-open the country” to kill the vulnerable, preserve war, and revive a psychotic stock market. Don’t return to smug military power, polarization and plutocracy. And, I’m offended you want me dead so capitalism gets my ventilator. ​

Rusty Nelson​

Rockford