Coronavirus - Contra Mundum

April 20, 2020April 21, 2020

The U.S. Doesn’t Work. We Need a Home.

When a baboon, monkey, or ape of any age gets sick or injured, its group won’t stop and seek shelter where they can nurture him back to health. That’s a decidedly human behavior, and it may help explain the depth of feeling we often have for our homes, that place where we can be weak, cared for, and feel safe.

If there’s one thing we’ve all had enough of as we’ve sheltered-in-place over the past month, it’s our homes. Not surprisingly, an international tracking poll released last week found that the one behavior respondents most planned to change when this pandemic subsides is to be outside more.

But while many people are clearly feeling pent up, I think our attitude toward–and even definition of–home will be one of the more lasting cultural changes this pandemic will have on America.

The same tracking poll, conducted by international communication firm Kekst CNC, found that many Americans think they’ll likely not travel as much–internationally or domestically–after the pandemic is over. Even more say they’re likely to stop going to concerts and sporting events. What that suggests is that as sick as we are of sitting on our couches, we don’t envision straying far from them in the years to come.

Like for so many others, the shelter in place order in California forced me to stay at home more than I have at anytime since I was a child. I’m the opposite of a homebody. Left to my own devices, I’ll eat out every night. And over the past decade, I’ve spent up to 20 weeks a year away from the address where I’m registered to vote. You’d think that this downtime would have driven me crazy.

But what happened as I plunked myself down to read and listen to music each day over the past month is that I began to notice my surroundings more than I ever had. During breaks, I looked out the window, and began to recognize the patterns in the movements of the ground squirrels, quails, lizards, and cottontail bunnies that live around my house. I started to pay more attention to the plaintive calls of Road Runners, which at first I thought was the cry of a hurt dog. One early morning last week, I watched a tag team of coyotes chasing a hapless Jack Rabbit in the backyard. The upshot of all this is that I became more in tune with the sounds and the rhythms of the little world off the dirt road I live on in the desert. All the time I’ve spent looking around me has made me feel more at home here now than at any other place or time in my life.

I’ve also found comfort in being a Californian. While I’ve always been proud of my home state, this is the first time I’ve ever thought it could save my life. News from Washington is as nasty and nonsensical as it ever was. But there’s nothing like a pandemic to reveal how confusing America’s federalist system is, and how little journalists and the public at large seem to understand it. The question of who’s in charge has never seemed so critical. I could safely ignore the President’s disturbing daily press conferences knowing that at least when it came to this pandemic, his words didn’t influence my fate as much as those of Gavin Newsom, who, by the way, starting referring to California as a nation-state. I felt safer knowing that we were placed under a shelter-in-place order earlier than any other state in country.

***

One of America’s least acknowledged weaknesses it its size. Our connection to our country is generally more ideological than visceral, more a matter of faith than lived experience. (More than half of Americans have visited fewer than 10 states of the Union.) In 1857, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote to a friend that it was the English who taught him what a “true and warm love of country is.” The United States, he wrote, were “too various and extended to form really one country. New England is quite as large a lump of earth as my heart can really take in.” He wrote that when there were only 34 states. It’s still true that the vastness of our nation can sometimes leave us wondering what it is that keeps us all together. It explains why American national cohesion has been so heavily dependent on war and the creation of external and internal enemies.

Our federalist governing system was designed to allow for multiple political loyalties. Indeed, the first states would not have signed on to the Constitution had it not protected their political interests. Two years before the Constitutional Convention and almost a decade after he wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson referred to Virginia as “his country.”

More than two centuries later, it’s hard to imagine Americans identifying primarily with their states. But the politics of this pandemic is likely to change that, at least in the states that, in the end, are seen as having done a better job protecting their residents than other states or the federal government.

Putting aside issues of shared history or ethnic affinity, people generally support and identify with the level of government that satisfies their fundamental needs. Protection from a potentially lethal virus would seem to fit that category. According to the late Czech political scientist Ivo Duchacek, “Gratitude for benefits received and expectation of more to come constitute the foundations of political loyalty.”

Not surprisingly, given its slow and chaotic response to the pandemic, the Kekst CNC poll found that 35% of Americans have decreased their confidence in the U.S. federal government. Conversely, 40% of Americans say their confidence in local government has grown. Similarly, the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index survey found that only 45% of respondents said they trusted the federal government “to look out for people’s best interests,” a figure twenty percent lower than that for state government.

Sure, you can assume that partisan affiliation predetermines at least some of these answers. But there’s something different going on here than in a routine political poll. During a pandemic, the question of whether you trust government becomes, “do you trust government with your life,” and that will likely have deeper and longer lasting consequences than mere partisanship.

While I was writing this, I received a text message from an old researcher of mine who now lives in rural Georgia. There was no salutation or preamble. I hadn’t heard from her since my birthday last July. Her message simply said, “I feel like we’re watching the buildup to another civil war.”

I don’t know about civil war, but the fact that blue and red states have not found common cause even while facing down a global pandemic does call into question the nation’s integrity. At the very least, the pandemic will likely leave us with stronger state and regional identities, which will change not only how we think about the federal government but about the country itself. Already, three groups of states have created alliances to plan how they will emerge from their pandemic stances. We shouldn’t expect this centrifugal trend to end with the coronavirus.

***

By mid-April, it had became clear that America’s slow and disorganized response to the pandemic would lead to more deaths in the U.S. than in any country that had previously been hit. This shameful fact made the usual bluster and blame seeking at the White House all the more pathetic. The wild-eyed Trump had become a dangerous Norma Desmond.

But blaming presidents for the country’s failures isn’t all that unlike Trump blaming anyone and everyone for the coronavirus. It’s a deflection from a bigger problem, which is that we’ve turned the idea of American Exceptionalism into mere triumphalism. The desperate attempt to restore some sort of national glory leads us to deny our national failings. And to deny one’s failings means that they’ll never be fixed, which leads to yet more failure.

Pulling away from the imperial center—the proverbial swamp—could encourage Americans to find a new sense of rootedness and love of country more powerful than the empty pride in being citizens of the strongest or richest nation in the world. A healthier balance between state and federal identities might also reorient the nation more toward satisfying our domestic needs than competing internationally.

Of the many things the coronavirus has already taught us is that our national arrogance is misplaced and unearned. We need a new sense of mission. We should start by remembering what a home—and homeland–is good for. If we don’t, we’re no better off than baboons.

April 2, 2020April 2, 2020

Why America Needs to Weep for the Dead

It’s so hard for Americans not to grasp for a silver lining during a tragedy. So engrained in us are the narratives of happy endings and second chances that even a global pandemic can’t dampen our zeal.

If anything, the human and economic toll of the coronavirus has heightened our desire for redemption. Things are bad, but at least the air is clean and there’s no more traffic. And is it true that the city has finally housed the homeless?

When it’s all over, some have hoped, Americans will see how essential it is to have socialized medicine. With any luck, maybe this virus will kill globalization. Your ideological tilt generally predetermines the brave new world you desperately hope this pandemic will bring.

My personal hope is that the coronavirus will finally destroy the distorted vision of reality that Americans like to call optimism.

***

Three years after 9/11 shook the country, an independent commission concluded that the attacks had exploited four types of governmental failures, the most important of which was “one of imagination.” The strikes did not come out of nowhere. They were the result of a threat that could—and likely should—have been foreseen. America’s leaders underestimated the gravity of the threat.

In the end, the same will likely be said about America’s slow reaction to the coronavirus pandemic. It was not unforeseen. Last September, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a group co-convened by the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization, warned that there “is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5% of the world’s economy.”

Presumably the report, which was funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, was sent to all sorts of officials at all levels of American government—federal, state, and local. I imagine that scores and scores of public servants in Washington, D.C., state capitals, as well as big cities across the nation glanced at it and said, “But what are the chances?”

***

In his 1913 essay, “Tragic Sense of Life,” Spanish existentialist philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote that “It is not enough to cure the plague: we must learn to weep for it.” What he meant was that it is just as important to learn emotionally from a tragedy than it is to overcome it.

He urged us to recall the mythical tragedy of Adam and Eve, who became subject to disease—and death—after tasting the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the biblical story, progress—whose tools help humankind to overcome illness—springs from original sin. Unamuno wondered if progress itself isn’t also a sickness.

After all, science doesn’t so much expel harmful germs and viruses from the world as it teaches us to accommodate our bodies to them through vaccination. That means that the modern notion of healthiness is more an artificial than a natural reality.

To Unamuno, suffering–physically or spiritually–is a prerequisite to love. It is only through the knowledge of suffering that we attain wisdom and discover the meaning and value of life.

“A prayer for mercy sung by a multitude tormented by destiny,” he wrote, “is equal to any philosophy.”

***

San Francisco was the first big city in the U.S. to issue a shelter-in-place order to slow down the spread of the coronavirus. It preceded L.A.’s—and indeed California’s—by five days. It was 7 days earlier than New York’s.

I can’t help but think that Mayor London Breed’s quick action was informed by her knowledge of her city’s tragic history. Every April 18^th at 5:12 a.m., city officials gather around Lotta’s Fountain at the corner of Market, Geary, and Kearny streets to remember the massive earthquake that struck the city in 1906 and left more than 3,000 dead.

Last’s year’s ceremony was Breed’s first as mayor. She arrived decked out in Victorian-era clothing. In her remarks, she spoke of how the earthquake and the fires it unleashed taught San Franciscans about resilience. They learned how to bounce back and rebuild. She could have also said that they also learned to remember. Tragedy is part of the city’s lore. And then, of course, there was another epidemic—HIV/AIDS–that killed more than 20,000 San Franciscans between 1981 and 2015.

***

Plenty of ink has been spilled on the advantages—particularly the material ones—of America’s forward-thinking orientation. But rarely do we explore the downside of our aspirational culture. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., once called optimism America’s “national attitude.” But doesn’t it stand to reason that the land of glorious rebirths is also home to just as many painful deaths?

In some instances, America is good at remembering the dead, particularly when it involves revenge and racism. Remember the Alamo, Pearl Harbor, September 11th. Never forget. Vengeance is another national attitude.

Yesterday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that the effects of the coronavirus pandemic “is going to be imprinted on the personality of our nation for a very long time.” Trauma will follow pain and loss.

How we choose to remember the dead this time could determine how prepared we are for the next pandemic. Remembering tragedy—absorbing it into our national story–could very well save lives in the future. But then again, I’m desperately searching for a silver lining.

March 24, 2020March 24, 2020

Non-Essential Americans?

If you were president, would it bother you if 2 million Americans died in the next few months from Covid-19? What about 1 million? What sort of financial hardships would you be willing to have the country endure to save many of those lives?

Because Austria reacted quickly and severely, the rate of new cases of Covid-19 has gone down in the past 24 hours. Italy seems to have reached its inflection point, when the rate of increase begins to slow. With any luck, Spain will reach its inflection point this week. To be clear, many more people will test positive and die as the curve flattens, but the point is that the rate of growth should continue to slow as long as the quarantine measures are still in place and working.

Today, President Trump said he’s thinking of rolling back social distancing measures before all the states have even enacted shelter-in-place orders. While public health measures are under state control, a shift of message from the White House could nonetheless encourage states to allow low-risk people back to the workplace. This suggests that Trump is comfortable with a certain number of deaths. Is he OK with .6 percent of the population dying? That would be roughly 2 million mostly elderly people, plus younger people who suffer from heart conditions, asthma, or autoimmune diseases. Do you think he’s fine with .3 percent dying?

If the nation’s low-risk (under 60) workers go back to the workplace, we’re likely to see a wartime draft situation. Millions would seek exemptions and the upper middle class would get their doctors to write notes to allow them to stay home. (Hell, their doctors help them get their dogs on planes!) Ironically, the uninsured, who don’t have access to doctors who can write them notes, would all be obliged to go back to the workplace. And despite the fact that the rate of death for the young who contract the coronavirus is low, some young people would inevitably die, and the blame would be placed squarely on the government. If you were president, how many deaths would you feel comfortable with?

March 14, 2020April 2, 2020

Will a ‘Foreign Virus’ Destroy Our Border Obsession ?

The coils of razor-sharp concertina wire that drape the 18-foot-high border fence that runs like a scar through Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, are low-tech weapons in a 21^stcentury psy-op. Installed last year by the U.S. military ostensibly to add an extra deterrent to illegal crossings, it’s more likely intended to affect the hearts and minds of residents on the U.S. side than on anyone in Mexico.

For one, the wire is draped exclusively on the Arizona side of the fence, and two, crossings are relatively low within the city limits where much of the wire has been placed. Presumably, the Trump administration was trying to send a message to Americans that it was willing—and perhaps eager–to use lethal means to stop undocumented immigration. Walk up to the wire, as I did on a recent visit to the border, and you can imagine how its blades could easily slice into your flesh and even kill you.

I say psy-op because the sight of six coiled rows of concertina wire, which is mostly used by the military or in detention centers, is intended to provoke a reaction in those who see it in in person or in photos. It’s a clear display of aggression on the part of the U.S. Government. It also happens to be the physical embodiment of this president’s efforts to encourage Americans to distrust and fear countries and peoples outside our borders.

***

I’m keenly aware that America has often relied on the threat of enemies to give its diverse population both purpose and cohesion. Our rivalry with the Soviet Union justified the building of the federal highway system, hastened racial integration, and got us to the Moon faster. Likewise, in American politics, there’s nothing like stirring fear and disdain for the other side to get people to the polls. But what Trump has done over the past few years is less targeted, sloppier, and more about self-aggrandizing chest thumping than about forging unity or rallying Americans to step up their game.

U.C. Berkeley political scientist Wendy Brown argues that in an era in which so much labor and capital move across international lines, border walls are almost always more about political theater than actual deterrence. She thinks the demand for them comes from a desire to shore up people’s crumbling sense of national sovereignty. I suppose that the segments of society that think their nation is losing control of its destiny are the ones who feel they’ve lost control over their own. Whatever the case, walls and concertina wire are supposed to make those Americans feel better about being Americans simply because they are not them.

***

Most Americans’ understanding of international borders comes from the constant grandstanding over the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump certainly didn’t invent the issue. We even refer to our Southern boundary as the border. As such, in the American imagination, borders aren’t merely about jurisdiction or even culture. They’re not even about national security. Instead, they are hugely symbolic boundaries separating little old us from a menacing world. If only we can hold the line on the border, we are told, we can rid our society of all rapists, drugs, terrorists, criminals, and now viruses.

Of course, all borders are places of contrast and differentiation. In my travels, I like to ask people who live near one—international or domestic–what they think of their neighbors. Whatever the boundary, most people on one side will readily give you their opinion of what and who resides on the other side. Nebraskans like to say that Iowa stands for Idiots Out Wandering Around. Even the humblest of Tennesseans might tell you that Mississippi is like the “third world.” Lithuanians can tell you that going to Belarus is like going back in time, a bad time. And you know what Oregonians and Arizonans say about Californians.

A decade ago, after giving a talk at a university in Matamoros, just south of the border from Brownsville, Texas, an earnest Mexican undergraduate in a sweater vest asked me a question that would change how I think about the United States. “Why,” he asked plaintively, “are you Americans so scared of us Mexicans? After all, you are so powerful, and we are not.”

I could have given the young man a variety of cheap, easy answers. Fear of strangers, demographic change, or the history of nativism in America. But I felt the way he posed the question obliged me to go deeper. The average American, I told him, is not a small-scale Uncle Sam who speaks softly but carries a big stick. Believe it or not, I explained, despite our nation’s global power, the life of a typical American is actually full of an inordinate amount of insecurity. We talk a big, loud game to compensate for our fears. The flipside of the forward-thinking culture of opportunity is constant instability, and living with so much instability is not so easy.

The sight of the most powerful nation in history portraying itself as the hapless victim of impoverished migrants is unseemly at best. Talk of building a 1,000-mile-long wall is a testament to our profound sense of insecurity. It sheds light on the way Americans behave in the world—both as individuals and as a nation. Despite our military might, our posturing or even our largesse, we have an awful tendency to cower in the face of both real and imagined foreign threats.

If the world is a big, bad place from which we need protection, then what does that make Americans? Small and good, I guess. And isn’t righteous what Americans want to be seen as most, both as individuals and citizens of a nation? Our obsession with being protected from the world, then, is infantilizing. While Uncle Sam fights the bullies, the public remains innocent. Our hands are clean.

***

For decades, social scientists have said Mexican migration to the U.S. served as a social safety valve that released pressure on a corrupt system that left too many Mexicans un- or underemployed. Were it not for mass migration northward, the logic went, Mexico would have exploded in revolution years ago.

In our own way, Americans have offshored too many of our problems and relieved ourselves of responsibility for facing them head on. It’s always someone else’s fault. If we can only hold the line on the border . . .

***

The coronavirus pandemic has shown us that the well-timed closing of borders, however temporarily, can help slow down an aggressive virus. But it doesn’t stop it, and it doesn’t mean we don’t have to take care of the sick, help protect the most vulnerable, and prepare the public once it reaches our towns and neighborhoods.

This morning, my German father-in-law called to check up on my wife and me. She had never heard him so worried. “Why isn’t the U.S. Government testing Americans or dealing with the crisis? Why is it so slow to respond to this outbreak?” My wife, who became a U.S. citizen 6 years ago, was speechless. I wanted to tell her that now that she’s an American, she’s free to tell her dad that it wasn’t our responsibility. After all, it’s a foreign virus.