April 24, 2020Updated: April 24, 2020 10:08p.m.

COVID-19 has left many of us uncertain about our future. President Donald Trump was doing exactly the wrong things while being warned of a killer pandemic by a chorus of scientists and doctors.

But the failings of American medicine can't be blamed on just one person. Both parties are owned by Big Pharma and the insurance lobby. Our profit-driven medical system will excel at only one outcome in this crisis, the piling up of more bodies than any other country in the world.

There are other existential uncertainties lying just below the surface. Our leaders seem obsessed with militarism, with battles being waged in multiple countries. Iran and Venezuela seem to be the next designated targets of the empire's war machine. If that wasn't dangerous enough, the United States has been shredding treaties like the Iran nuclear deal, the nuclear arms control treaties with Russia and the open skies treaty. All of these agreements were put into place to avoid the type of nuclear conflagration that would end life as we know it on earth.

Here, we sit in our houses because there is a raging pandemic outside our front door. Our foolhardy leaders have left us to face this killer alone. What makes us think that these same leaders won't let us stumble into a nuclear winter, too? The American system is run to make huge corporations billions of dollars. Nothing matters beyond this crude profit motive not we the people, nor our sweet land of liberty.

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Leaders motivated solely by profit in health crisis - Times Union