Please Know...

I have never cried while reading a piece of literature, but it is hard not to cry in a play that was so real. The reality and hysteria of the situation was real, especially when Kramer wrote about how a loved one's s/o was clinging to life on a plane to Phoenix. That almost made me cry, but what did it for me was the last scene and the afterword. It was hard, really hard. The afterword was Kramer's researched researched of the play and it was very heart felt.
              "Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague.
              " Please know that no country in the world, including this one, especially this one, has ever called it a plague, or dealt with it as a plague.
              " Please know that there is no cure (123)."

Those three lines made me think about what I should do. But has has to be political. Kramer made sure that the audience knew how much the U.S. was not going to help their cause. The organization in New York reported more cases than the CDC per week, and the government was not going to give any hospital any money to research the plague that was attacking only one group of people. But the one thing that comes up in the play is love. The love between two people and how the disease horrific as it was never affected the love between the two men. The love is what drove Ned Week's to be as tactful as he was trying to get what he wanted.

As Thomas Foster has said since the beginning "It's all Political". The amount of politics in this book is astounding, because this plague was something that was being swept under the rug from the smallest form of government in cities to the biggest form of government of the presidency. It is sad to think that the government would try to ignore something that was affecting people, but the government does not do much to help big groups of people without a big push. It was seen since colonial times when the Patriots rebelled against taxes. It was seen by women in the early 1900's who were doing all they could so they could earn the right to vote. It was seen when blacks lead civil disobedience protests in the South to end segregation. Should I go on?

So I will be examining the elements of human rights and the place of the government in this situation. There were 7 deaths by Tylenol in a span of 3 years, and that got millions of dollars of funding. While thousands of men were being diagnosed and dying from an unknown disease, that was not being researched because the government would not give the hospitals any money. I am curious when it became a serious issue that the government got their act together.