This week the federal government called their Covid-19 Crisis America’s 9/11. It’s not my 9/11 because I remember where I was on September 11th and sat in Miss Kuzy’s World Culture’s class in dread but not in the same kind of dread that I am feeling now. This feels like days on end of holding your breath awaiting for the government to save you but unfortunately the American system (not people) elected a guy who can barely run a company let alone a country. When he (who shall not be named) first heard about this crisis he shrugged it off wasting ample time and now he’s playing God and worrying about his ratings.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton because it calms me. And winning was easy for the guy in the White House governing is extremely harder. At this point a toddler has more empathy in one finger. He’s full of conflicting advice, name blaming, and the worst leadership I’ve ever heard of. Every time I see “Make America Great” I question, when was America great? Honestly, as a black woman, America has it’s good moments at best but not great. I wont say we’re great until we’re all treated the same no matter race, ethnicity, religion, and class.

In the last month the country (with the exception of 8 Republican led states) is pretty much unemployed, self-isolating, divided, and angry. It’s time to stop looking for why this is happening, who is at fault, and focus our attention on how to fix it. Other countries are succeeding where we’re failing because there’s so much red tape. “What hospital do I go to?” “Will my insurance be taken?” “Do I even have insurance anymore because I lost my job?”

None of these should be our worries. We shouldn’t all be walking around holding our breath because we know our federal government isn’t interested in throwing out a life raft to save us on this sinking ship. Instead of talking about his ratings he should be talking about how to get more tests to the states (whether they supported him in the election or not), more protective equipment for people on the front line, and spend all the money in the world if necessary, on a vaccine or a cure. We don’t need the division here. The math all equals to a need for empathy and equality over trying to run the country like a company. It hasn’t worked so far and it’s not going to work now.

Opening the states back up is as good as an answer as trying to remove the water from the Titanic with buckets of water. The CDC knows we don’t have enough PPE for the people and the doctors to get legitimate masks so they recommended cloth. “Something is better than nothing,” has made us the laughing stock of the world.

It won’t work and the only people it will hurt is the American people. It’s not time to worry about the economy as if there are no people to stimulate the economy because we failed to figure out how to survive this pandemic, there’s no economy anyways. Every week feels like we’ve all been given a different map to get to the same place.

If anything this moment should make us all push harder to understand the politics surrounding us and the people who stand for us. This is not our 9/11 at all. This may be Agent Orange’s 9/11 as this showcases his poor judgement in a moment of crisis.