I'm Okay With Politicizing This - Also, It's Not Too Late

Today I'm going to talk about why I don't mind that people are politicizing this disaster. I actually recorded a version of this video yesterday in my new house in my basement, but it was unusable.

I was going to try to make it work, but I didn't have my real music and there were some people doing some work on my new house, and so it didn't really work out.

Plus it was a little bit too alarmist for me, so I didn't want to record it, or I'm sorry, I didn't want to upload it, but I wanted to get the message out.

I really don't mind that people politicize this whole situation. In fact, I think we ought to. We really ought to.

Now on the one hand, I do understand that we need to get past it first before we really start talking about the future, and on the one hand

I do kind of agree with that, but I also disagree with that. Like what it reminded me of is a few years back when

I started realizing that I had maybe a slight blood pressure problem, which I don't anymore ever since I went keto.

I had a slight blood pressure problem. My doctor, because I had ended up in the hospital, my doctor put me on pills for a month, and then he also, at the same time,

I was getting asthma again. I think it's interesting. After I moved out of New York City, I started getting asthma again, which you would think would be the opposite, but anyway, so he prescribed me an inhaler, and I asked the doctor,

I said, doctor, is this inhaler okay for someone that has high blood pressure? And he looked at me and he said, think about what you just asked me.

And this is the kind of doctor I had. He's a good guy. He wasn't trying to zing me. And I said, okay, what do you mean? He goes, let's just say it did for a second.

It doesn't, but let's just say it did. Breathing and your ability to breathe oxygen is way more immediately important than your blood pressure situation.

So we need to get you the rescue inhaler just in case, and you can take it, and then we, you know, we need to figure out the blood pressure too, but in the order of operations here, your breathing is more important.

That's very true. We need to prioritize things in life. We have immediate issues. I've got immediate issues right now.

I'm a small business owner and my business is, you know, it's not completely reliant, but very much reliant on companies wanting to hire.

So this is a big problem for me. I've got immediate issues, but then we've got long -term issues as well. And so we don't want to ignore them.

They're both important, just like my breathing and my blood pressure are important, but one is definitely more immediately important.

And so on the one hand, we do want to set aside our partisan squabbles to make sure that we solve the issue that presents itself right now, this pandemic that's sweeping across the land and all of that kind of thing.

Also the economic issues that have kind of come to fruition in the midst of this.

And I don't think that coronavirus, let me just get one thing straight. I don't think coronavirus caused our economic problems.

I think coronavirus exposed them, but the issues were there for a long time.

Anyway, so, but here's the thing though, at the same time, we have to understand that the politics of this matters for everyday life and everyday people.

Like what we do now is driven by our political ideologies and our political beliefs, and they actually do have an effect on how long this thing goes, how it's prolonged, how it's shortened, if we get out of it, if we don't, all of that, it all matters.

And so, yeah, we ought to politicize this. Why not? It's not like politics is this thing out there, esoterica doesn't really touch us in reality.

No, it matters in reality. And I think when this thing is all done, we're going to see a difference between countries that had socialized medicine and countries that didn't have socialized medicine.

Countries that had a lot of red tape that you had to get around and countries that didn't have a lot of red tape that you had to get around, where you could be agile and adjust when your circumstances change, adjust how you approach things, how you treat people, how you organize your own space.

Trump's speech the other day was, I thought was very good, but he said something that just made me want to go, oh, like smack my head.

Because it's like, he's talking about how we're getting rid of some of these regulations in the past that make it harder for hospitals to organize the right way.

And I'm just thinking to myself, what is the case for those regulations? If this is good in an emergency situation, why isn't it good all the time?

And likewise, when Trump kind of floated the idea of eliminating the payroll tax for a year, payroll tax holiday, that's great.

If that's good for the economy, when the economy is struggling, why wouldn't you want that all the time?

If it's good now, it's good then. I mean, what's the case for a payroll tax that doesn't hurt the economy?

If the payroll tax is good for the economy, which it most certainly is, it's just very hard to understand why people would support these kinds of things.

Now, this is the thing that I've been thinking about lately. So before I get into that, my mind's kind of going a million different places.

Let's politicize this thing. Yeah. Let's eliminate the payroll tax, but then let's say, let's do that permanently. If it helps, it'll always help.

Let's get rid of this red tape for hospitals and for clinical trials and stuff like that.

Let those businesses handle that, because there's no money in it for them to have a cure that doesn't work.

There's no money in it for them to just be willy nilly about their policies and stuff like that. Look, if we trust our hospitals and our hospital administrators to do the right thing in an emergency, to figure out how they should organize their

ERs and their rooms and their beds and stuff like that, if we're trusting them in emergency, why wouldn't we trust them when everything's peachy?

It just doesn't make any sense to me. It makes absolutely no sense. And so let's politicize that. Let's take this opportunity to eliminate these regulations, yeah, for the short term, but also for the long term.

They're not needed. We don't need them. The government's response always makes things worse. This is something

I've been thinking about lately. This seems to be a very serious situation, and the government's starting to shut down small businesses.

Well, no restaurants for two months and stuff like that. And I'm thinking to myself, first of all, what authority do you have to do that?

Number one. That's not to say that the government doesn't have anything to say about pandemics and quarantines. It certainly does.

I quoted, one of my friends quoted a Rushdini quote about the quarantine laws of Israel.

When someone had leprosy, basically there was laws that basically showed them to quarantine themselves and to make sure that people knew you were coming when you were coming and stuff like that.

And obviously the specifics of that law don't necessarily apply, but there's a principle here. There's a general equity. So the government does have things that it can do in quarantine situations and just to preserve life.

I mean, that's one of the commandments is to preserve life. So not to say the government doesn't have anything to say, but we've got governors here that, you know, they're just like, yeah, shut down all the restaurants for two months.

And it's like, first of all, who gave you the authority to do that? Second of all, what are you going to do if I don't?

What am I going to do? Go to jail? Probably. This is probably the answer. So what kind of authoritarian nonsense is this?

And third of all, this is good. This is a death knell for many small businesses. I'm a small business owner myself.

I'm a small business owner myself. If I couldn't do business for two months, that'd be a big problem for me. That'd be a big problem.

I do have cash reserves, but most small businesses don't have a lot of cash reserves. And let's just be honest. They're not going to get the bailouts.

No, the airline industry is going to get the bailouts. The banks are going to get the bailouts. So this is a death knell for many businesses that governors are just saying, yeah, you know, we need to stop this virus.

So screw your business, stuff like that. Excuse my language, but that's what they're saying. And they have the audacity to not simultaneously say, look, and it's going to be okay because we're also going to cancel your tax payment that's due on April 15th.

We're going to cancel that tax payment that you have due. So it's not that they're just closing down. They're not saying anything about making it this easier on people because that's the least they could do.

They could say, look, you got to close your business down for two months. It's for public health situations, but look, you're not going to owe us taxes for this quarter.

That's the very least that they could do. What they should do is say, and you won't owe us taxes for next quarter. And they, and, and they should say, and we'll, you know, we'll guarantee your loans and stuff like that, that you have to pay back and stuff like that.

Like that's what they should be doing. If they're going to close down your business. Now, I don't think that they should have the authority to close down your business, but if they're going to do that, then they need to make it easier on people because there's so many small business owners that are absolutely going to be up the

Creek without a paddle, if you know what I mean. And there's no, there's no, one of the reasons the economy's tanking is there's no like word from the government of what we're going to do for you kind of thing.

The very least they could do is cancel the tax payment. That's due. The very least they could do is say, let's push back the date for 2019 taxes.

Plus you don't owe us 2020 taxes for this quarter. At least should be two quarters, but at least one quarter, why are we hearing nothing about this?

Nothing, but they're just saying, I'll just close your business down. That's an easier said than done. You see life's a risk.

My friends, life is a risk every day during flu season. People go out knowing that they could contract the flu, knowing that they could spread it to their elderly, knowing that could kill them, but they have to weigh that risk against not going out and not working because not making an income is also a risk for your family.

It's also a risk for your family. They may not die right away. They may not die in two weeks, but not, but losing your business is a risk that you have to weigh against each other.

And we should let people make that decision for them. Now, again, hear me saying, this is not to say that the government has nothing to say about quarantine has nothing to say about what you do.

If you're being what to do, if someone's being foolish, that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is you're going to close down businesses.

You need to actually do something to make sure that they understand these business owners understand that it's going to be okay.

Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. I hope that you found it. I guess it's just helpful.

God bless. One more thing.

I've seen a lot of people that I would generally call pretty level headed, kind of losing their minds a little bit, but in a low key way.

Well, they'll say they've been talking about this situation for weeks. Good for them because they've got a lot of people out there preparing weeks ago.

I prepared for this whole situation. I did my first kind of bulk buying of food and stuff like that about two weeks earlier than everybody else.

But I think I did it about two weeks too late. So it's kind of better than most people, but I still should have done it earlier. Now, that being said,

I've seen a lot of those people that very level headed saying it's too late now. If you haven't gone out at this point, then sorry,

I don't know what to tell you. And the reality is that that's not true. Don't buy into that. There's a

Chinese proverb that I saw the other day. Providentially, it's a Chinese proverb. It's a very good one. It says something like this.

It says the best day to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best day to plant a tree is right now.

What this means is, yes, you should have prepared for this. You should have been preparing for this all along. All of that stuff.

But you can't change the past. And so start your planning right now. It's not too late to make a plan for the next couple of weeks, the next month, the next two months.

It's not too late. You can you can still go to the store and plan. If you're in a place where there's a lot of shortages and stuff like that, you can figure something out.

You need to get on the phone, get on the horn, make some connections, call some churches, call some food banks, whatever you need to do.

Make it happen. This is the second best time to plan is right now. Don't give into despair because that's the that's the voice of despair telling you it's too late.

That's the voice of despair. I see people say, well, if you're still in the market, well, good luck. No, there are plans.

You can make plans right now. You might not be able to do much about your losses, but you could do something right now to mitigate further losses.

I'm not saying so. That's probably a bad move at this point. But you can make plans.

You can do this. No despair. Do not give into it. Refuse. If you're a been prepared for a situation like this, you don't have the funds.

You don't have the cash on hand. You don't have the processes in place to deal with this. Okay. You can't change the past.

You can't change the past. If I was a pastor right now, I'd be thinking, okay, what do I have to do to keep my people safe? What do

I have to do to keep my people? Well supplied, stocked, things like that. Do I have to organize something? What do I have to do?

Start planning today. Today is the second best day to plan. You should have planned. You can't change the past plan today because your people are going to need someone to show them what to do.

So that's my advice to you. Do not give into despair. I see a lot of very level -headed people that are kind of throwing their hands up at this point.

And I just refuse to accept that. Refuse to accept that. You haven't planned in the past. You missed out.

That's fine. Get over it because we need action. We need decisions. We need plans starting now.