I have recently been in conversation with varying groups of people who believe a powerful elite is using the pandemic as a way to test our obedience. The fear is that they will use this knowledge to manipulate the masses in ways far more sinister than shelter-in-place. Some go even further and believe the virus was engineered in labs to hit certain populations and to spread in a certain way. I do not believe either, but see how the obedience factor may be observed by those with bad intent. My first reaction was amazement at how aligned the population had become: masks, businesses closed, information in the media, ads for more advanced masks, statistical updates ........ I had never imagined anything like this could happen.

Did banks really put a moratorium on mortgage defaults? Did the government stop aggressive tax collection? Were we really all in this together?

Then we come to the important questions asked by Ridley Cooper. The freedom question, of course, will always require analysis, but the idea of principle being only valuable in service of its outcome is new to me and fairly profound. It requires more thought for me to address, but I appreciate the deeper questions being posed, as they will bring more enduring solutions to the vast challenges we face.

With George Floyd's murder, we have entered a realm that I would like to call surreal, but cannot. This realm is all too real. Where we go from here is significant in that it will tell us about our judgment in the freedom question, and our humanity and resolve in the George Floyd case. Their simultaneous occurrence is what in literature we have called the juxtaposition of disparate elements - always a challenging circumstance, requiring the very best of ourselves in our attempts to balance logic, common sense and emotion.