Mike Huckabee
Welcome to a very special edition of the Huckabee Show here on TBN. Special because we are now in our 2nd week of the Coronavirus version, without our studio audience, our guests coming to us mostly from their homes via Skype, and your host actually in government-imposed exile, some 461 miles from our theater and coming by way of a fiber-fed transmission line from a virus-free studio.
The Coronavirus and the resulting shut-down of our nation is proving to be a genuine hardship for all Americans, especially those in the service sector whose jobs virtually disappeared overnight, and for many, may not return. The travel and tourism industry is decimated. The stock market imploded, and of all things, toilet paper became a more precious commodity (or should I say commode-ity) than dollar bills. If you are from the rural south and grew up several decades ago, you weren’t worried about the toilet paper shortage—you knew just to eat more corn on the cob…and save the cobs. When I mentioned that on Twitter, I was excoriated for my lack of sophistication. But I ask my snobby critics, so what is YOUR solution when there’s no Charmin to squeeze? I don’t think I even want to know.
Are there any positive things to come from this pandemic and the economic and social disaster it’s caused? You bet. For one, maybe we’ve finally learned that globalism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and we ought be thinking more about America being strong, self-sufficient, and independent of countries like China, whose communist government kept hidden the blunt force of the virus until they finally slammed their fist on the population of Wuhan, China and turned it into a gulag. But by then, it was too late, and the virus had already started to spread throughout the world. President Trump immediately put a halt to travel from China and of course was promptly labeled a racist by Nancy Pelosi, other Democrats, and their co-conspirators in the media. Interestingly, even publications like the Washington ComPost and the NY Slimes themselves demanded a travel ban in the early days on what even they then called the Chinese virus. Now the use of that term is of course racist, which means all those years we’ve dealt with the Spanish Flu, German measles, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), and I never knew we were ALL racists for calling it a disease from its point of origin.
We’ve learned to appreciate some real heroes we take for granted. Like truck drivers. As bad as this has been, it’s the truckers who have kept this country moving and stocked with food and supplies. When you see a trucker on the highway, say a prayer of thanks for him or her. They’ve been your lifeline. We should be more grateful for health care workers, and not just the doctors who get the attention, but the nurses, front office staff, nursing home workers, technicians, and even the people who clean the buildings where all those folks work. They have been exposed to more germs in a week than most of us will be in a lifetime. And our policemen, fire-fighters, and 1st responders. They don’t get to stay home and wait it out. They are on call 24-7, to clean up the messes humans make. And be grateful for those who deliver mail and packages—whether Post Office, UPS, Fedex, or whoever. I’m getting stuff shipped to my house to keep from venturing out. And those folks in the warehouses, shipping platforms and the drivers getting it to my neighborhood are real heroes to help the rest of us practice social distancing. And grocery clerks and stockers, and pharmacy workers also deserve our deep thanks.
Finally, we are shaken to our roots to realize that with March Madness, the NBA, Major League Baseball, and every sporting event canceled, athletes can’t save us. With the theaters closed, and movie sets shut down, Hollywood and actors can’t save us. And with the financial meltdown, money can’t save us. And with the Congressional bungling of a rescue bill and Pelosi trying to add money for non-virus nonsense like funding abortions and NPR and the Green New Deal, politicians sure can’t save us—in fact, they may end up killing us! But when human institutions fail, God never does. His comfort, His healing, His promises bring us peace when nothing or no one else does or even can. And that’s something we’ve learned from all this.