Our President-elect says to heal our partisan divide we need to view others not as enemies, but as opponents. Better: We must be allies.
Shortly after the election, Joe Biden tweeted: “To make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies.” That’s a step in the right direction of saying to survive we must treat our opponents as allies.
Websters defines an ally as “...one that is associated with another as a helper: a person or group that provides assistance and support in an ongoing effort, activity, or struggle.” We are all confronted with a struggle to the death with the pandemic and with global warming.
A forecast from one of the country's leading coronavirus modeling groups projects more than 170,000 people could die from COVID-19 between now and Feb. 1, bringing the pandemic's overall death toll to nearly 390,000.”
If that’s not bad enough, a conservative estimate by the World Health Organization in 2014 is more than 250,00 people may die each year due to climate change beginning in 2030.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/climate-change-health-emergency-study/index.html If that estimate were made today (6 years later), it would certainly be much higher.
Yes, on at least two fronts we are confronted with a struggle to the death. We need allies!
It’s relatively easy to find people that “…provide assistance and support in the ongoing effort” to curb the pandemic by wearing masks and socially distancing. See the CDC guidelines: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html) When I walk downtown with my mask on, others have no idea if I am a political opponent. All of us wearing masks are allies in containing the virus.
It's harder to find allies among my political opponents in our effort to help people survive global warming. All the people I know who talk about trying to reduce their carbon footprint are progressives. I assume that’s true of the folks lobbying for a national carbon tax and dividend in my local chapter of CCL: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ The bill, HR 763 has only one Republican among its 82 co-sponsors in the House – hardly a good example of bi-partisan allyship.
Nation-wide, though, more Republicans than Democrats support the Baker-Schultz Carbon Dividends Plan. https://www.clcouncil.org/media/YaleGMU-Poll-October-2018.pdf https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/ There we do see bipartisan allies working, or at least wanting, to reduce carbon emissions. Where I personally am finding allies is in our CCL chapter’s effort to influence Connecticut to become the first state to declare a climate emergency, joining 1800 governments in 30 countries: https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/
If you browse each of the above websites, you’ll see that millions of people of goodwill across the globe are allying with each other in the struggle to curb the pandemic and prevent the impending climate catastrophe. Redouble your efforts to join them. BE AN ALLY.
Theists and mystics would say Spirit is expressing itself in these millions or billions of allies. Look at this video by Mooji, where he says globally we are one, and we must win, taking on what threatens us all. He says our true nature is not fearful, but peaceful and kind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3wTOKjH3xM