World Gone Mad

World Gone Mad

This Sunday morning I am feeling ill at ease more so than normal, even for this new normal in the time of Coronavirus. I would point to three specific things that are troubling me. Yes, I am watching MSNBC while I update myself this morning and yes, I know that has a liberal bent to it, but I am a thinking person who can filter things that seem logical, things that seem overplayed and things that seem biased. I like the MSNBC formats and newscasters better than those on CNN for the most part. I find Rachel Maddow, Brian Williams, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell and Ari Melber to be the kind of people I respect and like listening to. Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour on CNN are good too, but the rest on CNN leave me cold. As for Fox News, I can stomach Chris Wallace, but the rest literally turn my stomach and leave me muttering about why some people hate people so much. Be it as it may, I have formed my world view long before I started watching MSNBC and nothing I have seen or heard over the last four years has done much to change that, but rather has reinforced it.

Let me lay out the three events which have me troubled today:

1. I was sent an FT article on state and municipal pensions that warned of the coming crisis in the vastly deteriorated underfunding condition of those funds just as states and municipalities are under extreme pressure from being the front line combatants against the Coronavirus and the seriously impaired tax revenue base. The person sending me this, challenged me to voice my concerns in an op/ed given my work in the pension crisis space.

2. I got an email from a dear friend who spends half her year in New Zealand, the country that has perhaps done a more convincing job of killing out Coronavirus by extreme lockdown and closed borders than any other. She and her husband are soon flying back to spend their summer at their home in Maine, a state that is one of the early re-opening states. She expressed deep concern about what the Coronavirus lockdown in NZ has done to some great businesses that relied on tourism. What I heard come through was a skepticism that such extreme measures were and are necessary and for the best.

3. A member of our local community out here in northern San Diego, a decidedly red-leaning, pick-up truck driving, gun-toting part of the world, sent a video clip on the Next Door platform saying he wanted to share this, but wanted no comments and no debate for sending it. It is a conspiracy theorist video that claims to have been censored by mainstream media and social media (specifically taken down from You-Tube) and that fundamentally decries the Coronavirus pandemic as a hoax and even further decries everything about its handling from the U.S. scientific community to the way in which Trump has been browbeaten into responding.

These three inbox items have sent me into a tailspin because they highlight my worst fears about a world gone mad…and by that I mean BOTH insane and angry. I can’t keep this visual image out of my mind of a swarm of bees being attacked by a seeming predator that both wants their honey and is fearful of the bees’ sting. The bees are so upset that they lash out at any and every thing around them, even one another, going so far as to give their lives to sting whatever they can that might be threatening their sense of well-being. Of course, if the bees stayed calm and let the predator take some honey and be on their way, allowing the bees to regroup and rebuild, all would be well. But bees aren’t built that way and fearful yet fearless aggressiveness are their genetic nature. One should add that Darwin would suggest that this is the behavior that has served them best through the millennia to retain their place in the world. But man is not an insect, presumably man has evolved to have a cerebellum that can process thoughts and actions more clearly than the instinctively reactionary bee. But current events indicate otherwise.

On the pension front, pensions are the best of man’s collectivism instincts. It is the act of saving for future need, caring for the aged and weaker of society, and providing in advance for the unburdening of the younger generations. It takes collectivism of the highest order to accomplish and the fact that pensions got their start after WWI and then were set in place broadly after WWII are signs that at the times when man was most devoid and fed up with his own aggressive and unkind ways, he reached within and saw the value of collective compassion. The United States pension system is somewhat commercial (private plans) and somewhat public (Social Security and State/Municipal). It is fairly unique in differentiating the public backstop between Federal and State/Municipal, especially since the States/Municipalities cover the essential workers of teachers, fire fighters, police and infrastructure workers. Now that the Republicans, who have traditionally wanted less big government at the Federal level and favored State’s rights, have decided that states need to fend for themselves, an interesting dynamic has come to light. The fact that the more Democratic and liberal states (New York, et al) are facing the biggest post-Coronavirus burden, the Republicans have decried Federal aide for states even though the red states (Mitch McConnell’s own Kentucky at the head of the pack) have been the historically biggest receivers of Federal aide, funded by the New York’s of the country. This clear partisan directive wants to cut the legs out from under the Democratic liberal base. If the November election doesn’t overturn the Republican Senate and the Presidency, this is what will happen. If the November election does shift things left, who knows what retaliatory efforts (both Democrats retaliating against the Republicans AND Republicans and their gun-toting supporters refusing to accept the new order under Democrats). The bees could easily sting themselves literally to death is their fury. So much for collectivism and enlightened pension provisioning.

The concern I have for my NZ/Maine friend is simply that the world is too confusing to figure out. It seems illogical to fly from a successfully contained state like NZ into the wild and wooly woods of Maine, where early opening could lead to another resurgence of the deadly virus. My friends are of an age where once caught, the virus will play on the wide array of age-related weaknesses that often exist and suffer an inordinately increased risk of harm. But they are Americans and their family hearth is more in Maine than NZ, so that must be governing their thinking. We will all eventually face this sort of decision because none of us is getting younger and life must event usually go on, only when and how will determine if it goes on for long and for whom. That is as a classic Hobbesian Choice of the most dramatic order.

And all of this leaves me with the conspiracy theorist. I just shake my head and view it as a sign that the world has most definitely gone mad. It’s mad as hell and its not going to take it anymore…one way or the other.