He Was Right
Over the last week Donald Trump has held an array of rallies where he has said many outrageous and untrue things. We as a country are unfortunately becoming immune to his rantings and have come to expect little or no truth in his words. I don’t actually think most Trump voters think his words are truthful, but rather they just enjoy his brashness and unconventional handling of every situation regardless of the norms they may breach. One of the things that was most outrageous and seemingly more political than scientific was that on November 4th we (the media and those of us of the blue persuasion) would suddenly and completely stop talking about COVID and the rampant infection rates and deaths it is causing us. He was right. I am seeing very little about it in the headlines this morning as a we rub our eyes and our necks over the partial outcome of yesterday’s election. I, like most of the people who’s views of the world I respect, are stunned with the outcome so far even though we do not have a definitive electoral result telling us who will be inaugurated as President at the end of January. It has been disappointing and somewhat disheartening that nasty and swamp like creatures such as Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham have prevailed in their respective southern states to retain their Senatorial seats. It is perhaps even more upsetting that the blue wave in the Senate has not overwhelmed the red wave to take control of this critically important body politic. But mostly, it is upsetting (and I am only one of many people who are thinking and saying this today) that this Trump phenomenon, whatever we choose to call it and however we choose to characterize it, was not just an electoral fluke four years ago, but is being reconfirmed as a mainstay political and societal reality that represents the collective views of approximately half of our nation, and an expanded half given the higher electoral participation this time around.
But then, here’s the thing, remember that fake COVID thing? That thing that we would not be talking about anymore since it was only a fiction of the blue wave and the fake media. Well, that thing created 92,600 new infections across the United States, heavily dominated by infections in the states that voted in the majority for Donald J. Trump, the self-proclaimed immune Command-in-Chief of these United States.
I have spent a lot of the last few years fuming and waiting for a change in the way this country is being governed by Trump and his acolytes. I was hoping that the next four years we could change the course and undo some of the harm inflicted by Trump. I am less convinced today that enough of that will take place since Democrats, despite plentiful financial resources, seem unable to orchestrate wins in key districts to oust Republicans that truly deserve to be relieved of their duties. It will help a great deal to have a leader like Biden with a House of Representatives as his side, but blocking is what Mitch McConnell does best and he will be blocking key legislative initiatives every day until he is removed as majority leader of the Senate. This all bothers me a great deal as it should every American, blue or red, but that is not what is plaguing the country the most right now. That would be the actual plague we are suffering through.
My sense of social justice is very near the forefront of my consciousness these days because I actually see it impacting my children and their children, and that is what I care about the most at this stage of life. But in the way we all prioritize our existence, the Coronavirus Pandemic is a far more pressing impact on life as we know it than anything else on the horizon for 2021. I complain all the time that my red friends worry too much about the here and now and not enough about the future, but this time I am all about the here and now of the COVID-19 crisis BECAUSE it affects our future so very much. I truly believe that this is about far more than whether I will get to see my family the way I have always seen them during the holidays this year. I believe it is about where people will choose to live, how they will have to go about their lives day-to-day, and most meaningfully, the fullness of the opportunities that will exist economically in the world.
We are already being severely hampered in our ability to travel and our ability to embrace the global community at large. Europe is now back under the gun of the early winter surge that everyone feared. The first question we all ask when we talk to or about someone in a place other than ours is what is the status of COVID in that community. It is very quickly changing every aspect of our lives and not for the better. It is simply not possible to put a global economy back into a nationalistic or even regional box and expect that it can thrive or even survive. That means that we will be forced to drop our guard and the virus will have its way with our species. It will undo a century of longevity gains and it will undo more than a century of economic wealth distribution and movements toward greater racial harmony. It is already doing exactly that. This virus is more Darwinian than any evil intent conceived by man other than perhaps the Holocaust.
This is a reality we must face regardless of who sits behind the Resolute Desk or who has the gavel in the House or Senate. The COVID-19 pandemic has already shown itself to disproportionately impact minorities (especially African Americans and Latinos). The CDC report on the subject suggests that the causes for the disparity are the usual suspects of discrimination, inferior healthcare access, occupational orientation (especially essential worker prevalence), educational differences leading to income and wealth gaps and housing arrangements that have more minorities crowded in with one another. Let’s face it, poor people get sicker faster and can’t afford to socially distance themselves by virtue of their jobs and their living conditions.
I am on a economics kick these days of saying that an 8 billion populated world cannot afford libertarian economic models and that unless everyone is comfortable with death and disease at our very thresholds, we must find a system that shares prosperity enough so that people can satisfy the modern equivalent of Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs sufficiently to do two things; get most people off the street and create a broader, more robust economic engine that drives a consumer economy to both higher productivity, but also higher utility and satisfaction levels. This need have nothing to do with thoughts of social justice (though it should), but is rather simply a matter of economic logic and security thinking in the biggest possible context for a world bursting at the seams. Yes, Donald Trump was right that he and his ill-fated attempts to seek re-election are displacing our logical focus on COVID. Believe it or not, asshole, we actually consider COVID a serious existential risk and not a political football. And yes, Donald Trump is right to stress the importance of the economy in our thinking about solving COVID. But what Trump is deathly wrong about is what it takes to solve our economic modeling problems, especially in the face of a global pandemic. Trump is a man who always has to be told he was right, so as he exits and prior to his incarceration into whatever prisons will dominate his life and psyche, let’s show him how right has been and fix the economy by fixing COVID.