EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2021

The Coincidence of Opposites: Bringing the World to Its Senses, Before a Pandemic Brings It to Its Knees

May 26, 2021 (EIRNS)—Though there are forces that clearly intend to prevent even President Joe Biden from meeting with President Vladimir Putin, using everything, including the bogus Belarus affair to do so, Russia intends to do its part to not play the provocation game. Meanwhile, the physical reality of the coronavirus pandemic and its implications, whether in Palestine, India, or Honduras, are not a game: That deadly reality, even for countries like the once-protected Vietnam, has forced the truth to the fore: “Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” The bankruptcy of the United States’ policy on making vaccines available to the world in a timely fashion was luridly on display in the press conference addressed by the CDC’s Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Biden’s Covid coordinator Andy Slavitt, who, after blathering about “80 million vaccines distributed to the world by the end of June,” was caught covering up for the fact that over 100 million vaccines are already produced and not about to be used, not counting the 67 million that the states already have, and are having problems finding people to take. The issue, however, is not whether to vaccinate either American children, or Indian physicians. The issue is: What are the hypotheses that must be the foundation for a world physical-economic development policy?

Only the philosophical method of mass organizing developed by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, in his 1440 “De Docta Ignorantia,” is adequate to the challenge faced by mankind today. One sub-chapter of LaRouche’s May ‘83 “Argentina” document is entitled: “ ‘Mad’ as a Malthusian Dogma.” Truly, the trans-Atlantic thermonuclear war-fighting policies presently being considered, such as “Prompt Global Strike,” reflect a cult-like form of religious belief, not rigorous strategic thinking in the 21st century. Besides being a rejection of the 1983 SDI breakthrough by Reagan and LaRouche, preventive war and thermonuclear first strike is, together with the “Great Reset,” a pathetic front for the inevitable demise of the $2 quadrillions-plus bankrupt financial system. Neither scheme can work, except to exterminate all, or most of the human race. (Malthusianism also often has the ugly habit of destroying its proponents first.) But, though this “new world order” will fail under any circumstances, what will succeed?

From a physical-economic standpoint, the opportunity afforded by the merciless, “Masque of the Red Death”-like prompting of humanity to change its ways, by the coronavirus pandemic and its implications, has, for perhaps the first time since the successful LaRouche campaign for the SDI in 1983, brought mankind and its governments, face to face with self-development, or self-destruction. A world health platform, demanded by elected officials, medical personnel, clergy, military, and all persons interested in justice, whether for Palestine, the African continent, or the urban poor in nations all over the world, can overturn every axiom of geopolitics, can take exception to every “rule of law,” can reset “the Great Reset,” solely by forcing an insistence on the idea that the world needs more people, at higher standards of living, achieved even without and independent of the prior resolution of outmoded forms of conflict and division that have characterized the relationships among states up to now.

The deeper enemy we are facing, as pernicious as with the Dionysians of the Great Reset, is Kantian pessimism, seen, for example, in the cynical reflections of University of Washington Prof. Karen Levy: “With COVID-19, thinking like a pathogen leads to an inevitable conclusion: Getting the vaccine out to everyone in the world as quickly as possible is not just an ethical imperative, but also a selfish one.” This will, and should, inspire no one. The antidote to it can be found in the optimism of genius.

Such a construction of a durable world order, devoid of thermonuclear and population warfare, composed of free, sovereign, economically developed nations, is the task of the moment. In this 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth it is worth reflecting, that the genius of optimism about humanity that Beethoven expressed is the method by which national and international policy is made—as the 70-year creative life of Lyndon LaRouche and the 50-year record of his association attests.