It always restores a little of my faith in human nature to see people actually spend time thinking about difficult issues.

I remember a month or two ago you were skeptical about the vaccine - in a reasoned, principled way. Now you've thought more and are intending to take it - but again, in a thoughtful way.

Tuskegee was a long time ago, and yet so little has changed. Not six months ago the Cancer administration was (probably) forcibly sterilizing women of color: https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2020/09/18/allegations-forced-sterilization-ice-detention-evoke-long-legacy-eugenics

COVID has killed Americans of color at a far higher rate than Americans of pallor. Some portion of this might be an accident of physiology; much of it was deliberate malicious neglect.

(When I first visited New York City, in the 70s, it was the heyday of t-shirts. One of them had a screaming angel shouting, "DON'T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT!" I remember the image so well, and yet it seems impossible to find on the Internet, with so many other images from that time.)

With so much real cause for suspicion around, it's harder to actually think than ever. Our cortisol system is depleted from years of real threats.

We have to hold even tighter to rationality, fairness, and compassion, because that's really all we have left.