The War May Finally Be Over...Let's Not Start Another One

As a small child growing up in the 1950s I loved war. The romanticizing of military conflict had exploded after WWII. I was particularly fond of the American Revolution and the Civil War, what little I knew. When I played Civil War, often by myself with make-believe solders, I usually favored the Rebels, despite growing up an hour north of New York City. After all, they were the scrappy underdogs. I didn’t have the slightest concept of what slavery was or had been.

My love of history taught me much more over the decades with a clearer understanding of the conflict we know as the Civil War, but often referred to by Southerners as The War Between the States. The difference in title is telling. Civil War implies a conflict between citizens of the same country while the other is more simply geographic affiliation, e.g. Nationalism

When I moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1981 as an educated, employed, white male I recall being impressed with the displayed (almost) reverence to the Civil War and the allegiances that had supported the Southern cause. After all, north of Gettysburg the Civil War has a fairly small footprint across village greens. It was like going back in time.

I was also keenly aware of the results of discrimination in the South, resulting in the socio-economic deficits experienced by African-Americans. However, it was relatively easy – way too easy – not to associate the plight of poor, less educated Blacks with the conflict that had ended 160 years earlier and its foundational discrimination.

As the years past and we experience life in the South, my wife and I slowly at first and then almost constantly reacted to a societal reality. As “Yankees” we were able to objectively observe how those native to the region had embraced their heritage like a religion. Unfortunately, from our perspective, that “religion” included underlying hostilities, fears, and insecurities. Casting  African-Americans as a single lot (the essence of racism), viewing Northerners as foreigners, extolling Nationalism but with Confederate Flags were all too obvious.

Gun ownership clearly had long expanded beyond practical use and become symbolic of defiance to anything that wasn’t consistent with the Dukes of Hazard.

With a growing family, we found ourselves loving the area, the congenial nature and honesty of Virginians, economic opportunity, and friendship warmly afforded to a young family. Still, when we’d see what was happening around us, the “stars and bars” snapping in the wind everywhere, war reenactments, and what was on the news daily, we’d often say to each other, “when in the hell is this damned Civil War going to end?”

That day may have arrived. Let’s hope so.

The BLM demonstrations have been supported by a wide spectrum of individuals and organizations. As part of it they have shined a stark light on the affection given to a conflict where the origins and motivations have been so removed as to allow those that extolled the conflict to act like small boys playing with make-believe soldiers. Despite any historical reference, the removal of tributes to the Conflict (statues, flags etc) is not only appropriate, but also carries the weight of morality.

Let the Civil War surrender itself to former battlefields and cemeteries. However, I find myself conflicted with the apparent attempt to erase slavery as an historical reality, most recently in the attacking of a rash of monuments that have no representation to the Confederacy, but some connection to slavery (Washington, Jefferson, Keyes, Grant etc.). I’m afraid in doing so they are missing the point and playing into the hands of White Supremacists.

We live in an enlightened world. The immorality of slavery is no more in question, regardless that it was morally acceptable as an institution for 95% of recorded history. Embedded pseudo-slavery, as with indentured servitude, imprisoned individuals, and women generally has existed even longer, and we also know it’s wrong, though in many areas of the world it still survives.

The real crime to consider for Black Americans and ethnic minorities generally is not slavery, it’s what happened after slavery ended: the subjugation of an entire population based on race to keep them as a viable economic resource while simultaneously denying them access to the opportunities of a free society, social and economic. This was true in two essential and critical aspects: education and real property ownership and it was done through legal policy that let discrimination flourish.

The BLM movement needs to pivot from the emotional backlash against history to supporting policies that fundamentally compliment the new understanding of morality we’re experiencing today. Get rid of the Trumplicans and place in office people at all levels of Government that understand how to get policy done.  Protest those that are trying to suppress the vote, and then get out and vote the right people in. It is the issue that transcends race or ethnicity.

It's STILL About Politics

White America: get one thing straight. The demonstrations taking place in the US and around the World are not only proper but are steeped in moral authority. The only questions that come to my mind are why this social response is unlike those for similar incidents and will it make a difference?

It is certainly different in scope.

Six years ago Tamir Rice, an innocent 12 year old boy, was arbitrarily shot to death by a policeman in Cleveland. I say arbitrarily because no effort was made to assess or mitigate the situation before ending Tamir’s life. Instead of rendering aid, the only thing the two policemen did after shooting the boy was to tackle his 14 year old sister running to his side, handcuff her, and put her in the patrol car. Nether police officer was charged or even fired as a result of the incident.

The human tragedy that befell a child and his family, by any reasonable gauge of compassion, certainly equals or (in my opinion) exceeds that which was inflicted on George Floyd. So what made Floyd’s death set the world off while the crime of Tamir’s death was thrown on the 155 year heap of racial injustice and essentially forgotten?  I believe the answer can be summed up in one word: reality.

There was grainy distant video of Tamir’s death, but the vivid video of Floyd’s homicide has taken the plight of African Americans beyond the abstraction lodged in the heads of most white Americans. His death was no different than if he had been hanged, with all of America watching as his feet slowly left the ground. Add to that the methodical and apparent indifference of his “executioner” (dear God, the cop had his hands in his pockets) and there was no wall for the viewer to hide behind.

This may explain the open floodgate of revulsion coalescing a movement that could possibly have legs. I also believe the tension and disillusion created by Western Democracies mishandling of the Corona Pandemic has instilled a degree of empowerment to populations wanting change. But what would that change look like and how could it happen?

The “Greatest Generation” (those Americans born 1900-1925) had, like most generations, several characteristics that were less than great. That generation was the last to live their formative years in an America where racial discrimination was not only prevalent and tolerated, but was also considered ethically correct. There was virtually no moral imperative for the vast majority of white American to combat racism or most ethnic discrimination. Nationalism trumped post-Civil War inequality. It was how things were and, as most white people felt, how they were supposed to be. The success of WWII was used as justification.

The white Baby Boom Generation grew up in a transitional period regarding discrimination, experiencing both the clash of civil liberties against moral injustice, but also the carryover of their parents world view. As adults enjoying material growth, boomers along with their parents didn’t (or wouldn’t) comprehend the painfully slow cadence of social change.

A relentless surge of economic inequality separated the two worlds of those landed and educated, and those who were not. The police, in a very real sense, evolved into a domestic army “defending” one against the other.

However, an important transformation took place since 1960 and it accents the significance of the demonstrations we are seeing today. There are no corners left in this Country where racial, ethnic, or sexual discrimination is considered morally and ethically correct. Opposition to the necessary changes or bravado that supports White Supremacy is now only founded in contrived fear; fear of losing power, property, lifestyle, and hubris.

I have great faith that as the ethics of Millennials and their children drive the social structure in the US, real decline in ethnic, racial, and sexual discrimination (including immigration) will occur. However, systemic inequality needs help and protesting by itself won’t do it.

Economic inequality, veiled white supremacy, and even response to natural disaster (e.g. pandemics) exhibit real flaws in representative democracy. We can’t avoid the System and we shouldn’t, given its merits and history. However, a real political tsunami is needed and it can be done within the System.

The Republican Party, at all levels, needs to be voted into insignificance, where it rightfully belongs. The Republican Party has totally lost its moral compass and has become bonded only by limited special interests and the type of self-aggrandizement personified in Donald Trump. It survives primarily through disinformation, which is consistent with a Party that truly represents a precious few.

Special interests by definition are not bad. The Democratic Party is diverse enough to corral large numbers of interests into a coherent set of policies. It could actually enhance the possibility of a viable new ethically based major party.  My hope is that Biden chooses his VP and Cabinet based on their proven ability to get things done…to compliment the emotions of the times, not wallow in them.

Searching for Empathy

Never in my lifetime has public leadership been so needed or so lacking. We are living in a paradox where a pandemic, a crisis if you’d prefer, is impacting a vast majority and at the same time only impacting a thin minority.

We easily know how we’re impacted; businesses closed, jobs lost, jobs furloughed, massive debt, economic restructuring (online way up, bricks and mortar way down), restricted mobility, families split, savings exhausted, and so on. But what about the sickness and death, or the overworked, endangered healthcare workers? Not so much impact there.

Take my home state of Virginia as an example. As reported in the New York Times May 22, Virginia has reported a total of 34,137 confirmed cases of Corona infection which has resulted in 1,099 deaths. Put another way, 1 out of every 250 Virginians has been diagnosed with the Corona virus and 1 out of every 7,700 had died from COVID19. 

The chances that any given uninfected Virginian knows someone who has been infected is remote. Knowing someone who gets seriously ill even more so. Knowing someone who has died from it becomes minute. If you skew those numbers by removing those sickened or died in nursing homes and prisons, populations which Americans have a shameful way of discounting by easily forgoing compassion, it is no wonder why people cannot “feel” the effect of the actual disease in a personal way. In most other states it is even more so.

Nationally, there are about 300,000 nurses working in critical care, or about 1 out of every 1000 Americans. Doctors number far less. The number of those nurses who get infected amounts to 1 out of about 22,000 Americans. Exact numbers are not known, but these are reasonable estimates.

The bottom line is this: of those Americans rebelling against economic restrictions, mobility restrictions, and behavioral directions, the vast majority has had no direct, personal experiences with the disease itself…devastation for a few, a news stream for the rest.

Initially the prospect of getting terribly sick and even dying generated enough fear to curb the behavior of most people. Living a confined lifestyle felt more like participation in a greater effort. Then communications from the Federal Government became disjointed, rambling, contradictory, or even bombastic.

In time there became an almost carnival believability to the predictions and estimates. With no plan for everyone, we began to watch fifty different plans evolve, mostly piecemeal in States that were being infected at different rates and at different times. Now we're seeing it again as restrictions are removed.

Only three weapons were disbursed to fight this invisible enemy and late at that; keep distance between yourself and others, wash your hands, and don’t touch your face. The importance greatly depended on what television network a person watched. It was good advice, but for many it did not feel commensurate with the social upheaval.

If you were deemed a person at risk for COVID19 mortality then the dire nature of the messages (or at least some of the messages) made the sequestered times seem even more uncertain. If you were a person considered not at risk, the sacrifices (liberty, mobility, economic security e.g.) began to appear excessive as one’s individual situation was weighed against amorphous predictions.

The incompetence of Trump only widened our already polar political and social divisions. Medical directions or even the entire Pandemic itself has become attached to political conspiracies or infringements of “patriotic” liberties.  Liberal obsession with the past and future dire consequences of Trump’s ineptitude only exasperated the disconnect between what is and what should be.

Real leadership finds a middle ground between fear and blind trust. For example, we have known since December that an airborne, person to person virus was loose in the world. If an American President had only prepared the nation to make the initial, simple sacrifice of wearing masks in confined public spaces and other large gathering the consequences of the virus would have been substantially reduced, both health and economic.

Now today wearing or not wearing a mask has political considerations. How crazy is that?

Leadership can help people understand something they can’t feel, to empathize when experience provides no basis for empathy. It’s done with honesty, humility, responsibility, and by example. It could have made small but critical sacrifices not a restriction of individual liberty, but an enhancement to it.

What Is Religious Freedom in America...Really?

Well before the end of 2019 I received a large 8x11 flyer in the mail. When opened to its full size it showed a 2020 Congressional candidate’s face filling the page, hands together on a table and eyes closed in deep, contemplative prayer…nicely backlit. Next to her, appallingly, was her adorable daughter, maybe 4 or 5 years old, in an identical pose.

This was a political flyer, of course. The copy throughout contained a single message. The candidate, Tina Ramirez, was seeking political office to primarily protect my “religious freedom”. I’m uncertain as to what her daughter was there for. My guess it was for the treat she’d receive after the photo shoot.

Most of the copy in the flyer focused on the claimed efforts Ms. Ramirez has made regarding the violation of religious freedom internationally through organizational affiliations or employment. Religious conflict and discrimination in various countries around the world, while often tragic, is not an eye opener. However, at the top of her brief resume on international religious freedom were in big, bold, and red letters: FIGHTING FOR OUR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.  

“Our” religious freedom? Just what is being sold…and to whom?

When I tried to research what religious freedom in America means to a self-described “Christian Conservative” like Tina, I found it frustrating. I wanted either a definition or some description of the violations to religious freedom that needed thwarting.  What I found instead was constant references to just how important religious freedom was. I mean…religion…freedom…need they say more? I guess not. It’s like fighting for MOM and DAD.  No point wallowing in the detail.

For example, the respected opus magnum of Conservative literary thought, The Heritage Foundation, waxes on about how religious freedom is “one of the most pressing issues in America today”. They also say it has nothing to do with…well…religion. Like other proponents of religious freedom they point out the obvious ability to worship your faith in America is not inhibited in any way.

What they claim is that certain laws can conflict with certain ethics that are part of one’s religious faith. Interestingly, they include agnostics and atheists in this conflict, so you’re left with wondering what religion has to do with it at all.

So I go looking for examples of how the oversight of society (i.e., governmental laws) has violated the ethics of Christian Conservatives so as to make them have to behave in a way that violates their faith.  I look and I look and I look. I find a handful of references to restricting Christian scripture on governmental property or public schools, or “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays”, but it is hard to see how such issues restrict a Christian to “live their faith” independently. I could really only find one reference which made that claim and it revolved around homosexuality.

It seems that as sexual orientation has become a protected class (in order to stop the associated discrimination) it has butted up against Christian sensibilities. It actually appears that, figuratively, the whole defense of religious freedom in America focuses on wedding cakes for gay marriages. The implied argument is that this ominous hook, forcing Christian Conservative bakers to sell cakes to gay couples getting married, is the slippery slope to religious oppression. Thank goodness we have Tina Ramirez fighting to make this not happen.

Here’s the reality. We live in a marvelously free country that is constantly fending off special interests trying to undermine that freedom. Tina Ramirez may not want to protect religious freedom at all. It can’t be just about cakes and gay weddings. What is certain is that Ms. Ramirez wants to be elected to Congress and she is willing and enthusiastic about using faith and fear to garner votes, and she is flat out not interested in non-Christian support.

We have religious freedom in America because our Government is secular. Our Constitution is just words on paper. What gives it strength is a strong and independent Judiciary and the blanket willingness of the electorate to accept the conclusions of that Judiciary.

If Ramirez were elected to Congress I am lost as to what Tina would do to promote religious freedom. If her efforts, in some vague and ethereal way, would be to bring more Christian ethics to Government, especially by seating bias judges, then the word “freedom” shouldn’t be part of her handle.

However, I’m cynical enough to believe that “religious freedom”, like abortion, immigration, and health care, e.g. are just marketing tools. Once a Congresswoman she would join the rest of her Party to fight against the great unwashed, the fake free-press, and the looming Deep State…primarily by cutting taxes for the wealthy.

When Good People Go Wrong

In a (properly distanced outside) discussion with good friends about the COVID19 pandemic, one person mentioned how he had gone to Lowes recently and that it was quite busy. He continued that many of the patrons weren’t wearing masks. I find myself in some awe at that reality, which I have seen in other places as well.

I then volunteered that if I were an employer, for the sake of my employees, I wouldn’t allow customers in without a mask. One who is a fine and caring person (and a very good friend), looked at me and said “are you some kind of Nazi?” I was taken aback. Defensively (I hope calmly) I told her she’s been watching too much Fox News. She retorted that I hadn’t been watching enough. Exchange fini.

What troubled me as I left, without malice, was the fact that I had been watching plenty of Fox Cable News, probably too much, in my attempt to understand the sources and motivations behind the manipulative messages they convey. I also find it informative since our POTUS puts into action and policy much of what he watches on Fox, since he feels it reflects his so called “base”. That in itself is extraordinarily sad testimony.

Most masks, especially the homemade t-shirt variety, don’t do squat for keeping micro monsters from sneaking in, but they help immensely from keeping wet splatter from flying out. The fact is much of the general population doesn’t understand that the purpose of wearing masks during a mostly airborne viral pandemic is to cover the mouths of infected individuals who don’t know they're infectious. The metaphor on the (obviously facetious) Nazi comment was more about perceived (via Government) social intrusion into personal “liberty”. That a mask somehow inhibits my liberty is (pardon me) on its face…ridiculous.

This whole encounter, like others, drew me back to 2003-2006.

My son, graduating from high school, had been recruited to join the Virginia National Guard, which he (and I) thought an opportunity for the limited service and benefits. At the time we had no idea that Bush/Chaney would decide to use National Guards across the country as a backdoor draft to carry out their plans in Iraq. My son ended up spending two years in Iraq, risking his life to varying degrees every day (I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it literally).

Less than one percent of the American population was directly impacted by that War, as he and our family was. He was wounded in year one. No one even had to pay for the conflict, it being totally financed by borrowing. I knew it was ill-conceived before it started and a fiasco soon after. Yet I had to listen to the clap trap Conservative echo-sphere go on continuously about the honorable mission, the patriotism, the American retribution for 9/11, the heroic sacrifice to Flag and Country, and, of course, the despicable nature of those that dissented the actions of that Republican Administration, the Liberal Deep State conspiracy.

Conservatives no longer defend the Iraq war given the waste, the tragedy, the devastation, and futility of that meaningless and contrived adventure. You never saw any retractions on Fox News. They also don’t remember it much either, which is easy when it’s lived as a passive news feed.  I haven’t forgotten it. I never will.

Now that same son is a nurse, working long hours in a COVID19 bio-containment floor at the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore. He and his co-workers are the bottom line dealing with the impact of this pandemic. As this disease plays out either over time or by vaccination, many Americans will never have to face much more than inconvenience and their fears. Many will not care to understand that by acting collectively we could reduce the need for medical intervention. They will not bother to question why, adjusted for population, our death rate for COVID19 is 35 times higher than South Korea’s, which was on an identical timeline.

Too many good people will immerse themselves in Fox & Friends, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity, e.g.  They will not listen to other sources of information (nearly all other sources) of which they have been convinced are “fake”. There is currently a drumbeat in the Conservative echo-sphere promoting behavior in this pandemic to compliment a dangerous and erratic President on the hope that enough ‘good times’ will emerge before November. So fearful are they that “Liberals” are coming to take their money, kill babies, ban their religions, and confiscate their weapons.

I suspect that a year or three from now the 100,000 or 200,000 American dead will be forgotten, possibly considered just as a cycle of life by some of those who considered collective behavior as antithetical to perceived American “Freedom”. It will fade, just as Iraq has turned virtually invisible.

Those that are currently knee deep in the crisis working to save lives will not have forgotten. Perhaps they will have the courage to wear masks in the future when they are ill and out in public, as is already done in many parts of the world. They may just think of that as kind, and the right thing to do.

Pessimism or Realism?

It is beginning to appear obvious that the United States is heading down a road to defeat the Corona Virus and CoVid-19 through Herd Immunity. If true, it will not likely be a pleasant road to travel and the end of the road will not lead to a past which we lament as “normal”.

Perhaps the US is just too big. Maybe it is our current lack of central leadership. It could possibly be the independent nature of our citizenry or the divisiveness that feeds off that independence. Perhaps the dissemination of information is too compromised or we’re too mobile or we’re too selfish or too ignorant or too fearful. Maybe it is all those things…and more.

So it appears we can’t do what has been done in South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Iceland, France, Norway, and many other countries we categorize as “free”, and other countries, like China, which are not.

The United States, undirected by our Federal Government, has decided to ride out this virus and the disease it causes with an attitude something along the lines of let the chips fall where they may. Our “curve” will not look like the countries who have decided to limit the infection as a means of curtailing both the mortality and the stress on medical services.

Our “curve” will be long and drawn out, more like a bumpy, gradual slope. The major effort will be to apply treatment to the disease once contracted as a means of reducing mortality rates. However, the strain on our health care system will be enormous. It will become the unstated position that (figuratively) all Americans will catch the virus eventually, barring a vaccination which seems unlikely for years.

We can already see and hear in the Conservative outpouring of dissatisfaction that sickness and death are simply a cost factor in the quest for maintaining a lifestyle. Freedom from disease seems to not come under the general heading of Freedom.  Much of it is wrapped in politics and Fox News profits, buffered with Conservative conspiracy promoters (at rallies to end shut downs there are more professionally made Trump 2020 signs than any other). It may not matter at this point.

Those that have gone along with the concept of reducing the contagion through seclusion and distancing to a point where the virus can be managed through testing and tracking are increasingly being compromised by authority. Staying at home, faithfully washing, and maintaining distance are going to start feeling like just delaying the inevitable. If enough of the population is encouraged to defy the science, the futility will become manifest.

The great irony, of course, is that the beloved lifestyle that the dissenters want to go back to will not be anything like it was before. Likely it will be at best disheartening and at worst disastrous.

Death rates could be socially debilitating, especially as more and more of those advocating “back to normal” become directly affected.  Health care costs will be catastrophic. If Trump and Republicans are removed from power in November, the fight for central control of medical costs will reach a new level. The need for such controls will be bordering on economic survival. If Trump is re-elected I believe our health care system will collapse for a majority of the population. Americans attempting to travel may become international pariah, requiring testing wherever they go and/or being quarantined.

The easiest place where pessimism can fade into realism is the understanding that a protracted impact of the Pandemic will have a greater overall negative impact on the economy then the short term constriction we’re currently experiencing. We will learn to live with the disease, but good economic times rely on reasonable predictability by an influential majority. Under the shadow of a lingering pandemic, the future will hold precious little assurance in its outlook.

Those that are at high risk have the uncomfortable prospect that as isolated as they might try to be, they most likely will catch the disease from those that have abandoned collective solutions. Ultimately they may die because of it. They will be the chips fallen where they may.

The herd will survive, of course, we always knew it would. Just be aware that the herd, and the fields it roams, will not resemble the Nation before 2020. That’s not even the pessimistic part. The real pessimistic view is that because of our discord and lack of leadership we will not end up any better for the experience.

Hooverville to Trumpville

In 1959 I entered a dark elevator in a Manhattan, NY apartment house, taking me up to the penthouse residence of Herbert Hoover, the 31^st President of the United States. The purpose was to meet President Hoover and have my picture taken with him as I had been given the totally arbitrary distinction of being the 1959-60 poster boy for the Boy’s Clubs of America.

            At age 9 I had little sense for the history behind Herbert Hoover or for that matter the organization of Boy’s Clubs, other than being a member and occasionally using their facilities. The Boy’s Clubs of America, under that name, began during Hoover’s first year in office.  Four years after he left office he became Chairman of the BCA and was credited with its national expansion. By the time I met him he was 85 years old and his designation as “Chairman” had long since been prefixed with “Honorary”.

            I grew from that time with a fondness for Herbert, and why not. My picture with him (a handwritten note to me and signature on the photo) was always on a wall in my father’s house and, after some years of storage, eventually made it to one of my walls, although somewhat ignominiously on a wall of an outbuilding we call “the studio”.

            In the past I never looked too deeply into Hoover’s responsibility for the turbulence that erupted during his Administration. I have looked of late because of some important similarities I believe I see with what is clearly a turbulent time this country is currently facing. The details between the two periods are vastly different, but the common broad realities are severely compelling.

            One of the major differences was in character of leadership. Hoover was self-made, worth hundreds of millions of dollars (in 2019 dollars) by the time he took office. His father was an Iowan blacksmith. Given the handle “The Engineer”, he had honored himself in both business and post-WWI public service. Though smart and highly educated, his world view was nearly etched in stone by his business acumen, nationalistic fervor, and the nature of post-war excesses. An unbalanced  economic class structure had evolved and neither Hoover nor his Conservative Republican Party and any desire to disassemble it, but rather, in fact, to reinforce it.

            That world view limited their ability to deal with the crisis that began in late 1929, but I believe it would have limited them regardless of what crisis they may have faced. A major change had to take place, and it eventually did at the ballot box.

            In 1932 Hoover, a decent and respectable American, lost every state but five in the Presidential election of that year. A reversal of only 114 thousand votes and he would have lost every state. Coming into office Hoover had Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. In 1930 he lost the House, but the Senate remained barely Republican. In 1932 the House turned 72% Democratic and the Senate 62% Democratic. A seismic shift had taken place. The United States began a path to make it the preeminent nation on Earth, politically, economically, and socially.

            Ignoring the reprehensible character and personality of Donald Trump (really the antithesis of Hoover), it not hard to see that he and the Republican Party have brought us to a similar precipice.

The gross inequality of wealth (which will be exponentially magnified by the CoViD-19 Pandemic), the authoritarian assault on Democracy, the undermining of truth, the exploitation of social divisions, the international isolationism, the disregarding of science, the acceptance of incompetency, and the manipulation of religious belief for political gain (to name a few) have pushed this Country to the point where confronting a crisis like a pandemic is tragically problematic.

            Donald Trump needs to be removed from Office, just as Hoover did. The Republican Party, with all their tools of conspiracies and fear mongering of social change, need to be removed from power as well. However, the change needs to reflect what the American People saw in 1932. A message needs to be delivered to the World that the narcissism and the self-interest of a few is not the rich tradition that made American leadership the stable center of free democracies.

            Trump, Trumpism, and the Republican Party’s self-interest need to be defeated as Hoover and the Republicans were in 1932...totally. It is critical for another seismic change to take place. In 1932 Hoover still received 40% of the vote. In 2016 Trump received 46% of the vote. After four years of Trump and McConnell it may be that only 6% of the American electorate is what we need to retain Democracy as we know it.

Stop It...Just Stop It!!

In our newly sequestered lives I decided to add HBO for some variety and escapism, and also because I had been wanting for quite a while to watch the docudrama miniseries Chernobyl. In just the first three episodes I was involuntarily hurled back to our COVID existence given the similarities between that Soviet disaster and what we are experiencing today.

The arrogance in the way the Soviet bureaucracy responded to the accident, the denial of science, the refusal to err on the side of caution, the need to assess blame, unashamed disregard for public safety, a deficiency of preparedness, lack of transparency, and just general incompetence has been played out in the United States, albeit in slow-motion by comparison.

It is a perfectly reasonable argument to suggest we need to set aside anger and focus on making the absolute best from where we currently find ourselves, that there will be plenty of time to deal with the folly of our history. However, the tragedy of our Federal Government’s ineptitude is ongoing and we need it fixed, not tomorrow…yesterday.

There are two critical pieces that need repair immediately: communication and trust.

I have tried to slog my eyes and mind through the daily “briefings” being conducted by Donald Trump, but no more. I am disappointed in myself in waiting for the ordination of Jared Kushner, the latest principal in dealing with this pandemic, to be the last straw…but he is. It has been a confusing political sideshow, as we watch the walls around us go up in flames. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has succumbed to soft pedaling his observations so as not to induce El Duce’s ire.

However, just my or others turning away from the clown car is not enough. Not nearly enough.

We are not in the Soviet Union of 1986 or even authoritarian Russia today. It is time in this crisis for the American Fourth Estate to search way down deep and see if there are any cojones still dangling from their respective observations. The major news networks ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, BBC, and (yes even) FOX, need to join forces and provide our Nation with competency and transparency, with as little bias as possible.

First, they need to stop broadcasting the Trump Show. They are under no requirement feed the public the political drivel, administrative confusion, and misstatements that flow from those broadcasts. Summaries can be reported later. In fact, they should require that, given this is an election year; any live broadcasts must result in equal time by someone in the Democratic Party.

Second, the networks need to assemble a panel of experts, perhaps three or four, primarily in epidemiology but also in logistics (this could include Fauci representing the Trump Administration), to provide daily briefings and answer questions from the press. These briefings would be broadcast by each network.

It is fine if Evangelicals want to prepare for Armageddon, or Right-Wing conspiracy nuts want to wear tin foil hats, but the rest of us need more. This slow-motion Chernobyl we’re living through right now is likely to last for months, and its ramifications will probably mirror the progression of cancers that Ukrainians still face today.

Our first defense to this emergency is reality, truth, and candor. Give the Nation what it needs. Stop the sideshow…just stop it!!

Predicting Uncertainty

Okay…it’s easy, too easy to observe and comment on the confounded eccentricity and unstable idiocy of Donald Trump. It’s often a problem for me. It can become a trap, making it difficult to see that there is actually a road cradling all those potholes.

Sure, there currently is a dearth of leadership, but many governors across the Country have stepped in and taken charge. They, by contrast, have been competent in their efforts. The understandable problem, however, is that each approach is generally unique. It’s not reassuring, for example, to see Kentucky successfully dealing with the crisis while neighboring Tennessee is flushing reality down the toilet. That, along with Trump’s self interest, is the imperceptible boogeyman in this national nightmare.

What all people want in life is certainty. We’re all sold it, governments tout it, and religions thrive on it; e.g. .We all know, however, that when it comes to the future, and even interpretations of the past, certainty doesn’t exist. It can’t. We can only have certainty in the present moment. Only that kind of almost meditative awareness has the ability to vanquish anxieties that grow uncontrollably and proportionately with uncertainty.

As certainty in the future is impossible, what individuals, economies, markets, governments, and organizations of all kinds actually long for is predictability. The more comfortable we are in our ability to predict an outcome the closer we come to the unattainable fantasy of certainty. The further we are away from it the more life can evolve into stress and panic.

What is so important to note is that the accuracy of a prediction is less important than the comfort one feels about its accuracy. Predictions and outcomes are constantly changing with changing circumstances, even in Science. Equity markets, for example, rise, fall, then rise again always based on the comfort (or discomfort) of predictions, which in turn are based on underlying circumstances existing in a world of uncertainty.

Sound philosophically complex? Not really. Although it feels like homes built on shifting sands, it’s what we need as human beings to deal with that over which we have little or no control…which is just about everything.

What we don’t need is someone with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder and access to mass media to feed worried individuals a buffet of knee jerk predictions that have little basis in reality; “we have it under control”, “it will all wash through”, “it will disappear with the season”, “our numbers are beautiful”, “I knew it before they gave it a name”, and so on. Trump, as we should have expected, was the wrong person at the wrong time.

There are reasonable predictions that could have and still can be shared with the American people. With reasonable and honest predictions, come stability, cooperation, and order. Life can start to feel doable. Such as:

-         ---   If everyone on the planet would remain isolated from other people this pandemic would be essentially under control in about two weeks, as we could identify all those infected and most asymptomatic carriers. Even if not realistic, the closer we can get to that goal the shorter the duration will be.

-        ---   Even without a vaccination, the historical duration of pandemics is measured in months; with a vaccination it would be even shorter. Once some control is obtained, as the Chinese have done, we should competently and successfully live with it until the vaccine is developed.  It will end.

-        ---  We have the opportunity to work internationally with allies and competitors alike toward a common goal. To do so could leave the world more aligned than it ever has been and perhaps save many more lives than the pandemic takes.

-        --   The expected duration of this pandemic does not equate to periods that preceded other great economic downturns that undermined economic instability. We should have a realistic expectation that a bounce back to a healthier economy will initially mirror the angle of the recent decline.

-       ---    After this pandemic is over this Country and the World generally will be a better place, at least for a while, as we will have a better understanding of the vulnerabilities all people face without regard to nationality. That has been the critical missing ingredient, for example, in the effort to deal with climate change.

There is real tragedy for those directly impacted by this and other crises. What we want is to run toward those tragedies with empathy, not run away from them in panic. It will be necessary that honesty and transparency, things our Federal Government has recently cast into a conflagration of self interest, be resurrected like a Phoenix. There really can be a lot to look forward to.   

America, This is No War

It seems now popular to use a metaphor of war to describe the national response to the Coronavirus pandemic. The “new” Trump (new only in the fact he is holding regular press conferences for the first time in his presidency) actually said in one conference I watched (albeit under his breath) that he was a “war President” (I believe he meant wartime President). The craziness of that concept did not escape me.

Nevertheless, the media and other politicians have taken up the metaphor with gusto. It should be noted that the only War they or Trump are referring to is WWII. This was the War in which most of these politicians grew up watching Romanized depictions on TVs and movies, as oppose to all those other “little”, unpleasant wars that could be turned off nightly with a push of a TV off button, such as Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.

The idea, of course, is that we need to “recruit” national involvement in a conflict. They are suggesting that the American people need to rally in a patriotic way, as what occurred with the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. New York Governor Cuomo actually compared pandemic responses to "WWII missiles”, not considering the fact that the US didn’t use missiles in WWII. It is a Romantic application of history that has no place with this new reality. Its use is the foundation for Trump’s manic insistence to assess blame for the outbreak and divert attention from his own actions.

This infection is not a war with an enemy of defined resources. Trump is no “wartime President” and has, along with most of his supporters, shown themselves to be ineffectual in dealing with the crisis. Like Keystone Cops called in to bring law and order, they have mostly wrought confusion and dangerous delays. It would be humorous were there not so much peril to their folly. At this point I think it unlikely they will ever be able to fully gain the Nation’s confidence.

If there is any war in progress, it is the three year war waged by Trump and the Republican Party against Science. Good Science demands that ego, cupidity, and exploitation yield to objectivity, analytics, and ethical behavior. Trump is so far off the mark I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him tossing rolls of toilet paper to the Press Corps, as he threw paper towels to Puerto Ricans.

His action in 2018 to eliminate the National Security Council’s Directorate for Global Health and Security, mandated to prepare the Nation to respond to a pandemic (simply because it had been created by Barack Obama - his psychotic nemesis) was criminal, as any crime would be before a victim surfaces.  

His singular inability to truly focus on anything but himself has, and continues to, thwart the most important element of a pandemic…it is international. Donald Trump’s America First has clearly come to mean America Alone. This has been obvious for the past three years as it has impacted such things as immigration, commerce, and climate change, but the negative ramifications to those issues are not even close to its dire impact on this pandemic. This is true not only for the health aspects of this crisis, but also for the economic consequences.

Donald Trump will not improve and he will be held accountable. But what we need now is the application of Science combined with international cooperation, not declarations of war. We need clear communications from trusted sources. The world will be so better off if somehow the media, Congress, and the scientific community would stop deferring to Trump as if he were some kind of leader.

C’mon Obama, step into World and earn your damn Nobel Peace Prize.