Well, Mary Papenfuss, this old liberal too will call the protesters Great People, for they have been long the backbone of this Great Nation, the builders in the workplace, the fixer uppers at home, the great energy and muscle that builds America and renews her every day. Start with Whitman and wind it down in the vicinity of Studs Terkel: wherefore your contempt for the hard working men and women of the United States?
I’m aware of potentials for class resentment once involving education, income, and shoe polish (perhaps) and the general demeanor and plumage of the wealthy, but who are you talking about — and to whom are you speaking — these days?
These very fine people who have worked their asses off to hold their place in America, specifically to keep a roof over their heads and their families safe, and own some part of what their labor built in freedom — or investments acquired — have suddenly been introduced to absolute power of the sort that may shutter their businesses by edict and throw employees out of their jobs without debate.
Perhaps they want their country returned to them.
My fear for America is the enslavement of Americans through peonage and the cultural, political, and spiritual degradation of ordinary Americans who may find themselves at the mercy of an economy that may not have much in store for them but addiction, crime, desperation, exhaustion, stress, and suicide.
While President Trump’s demeanor, history, and track record well reflect the interests of the most selfish among the wealthy, his intent to get America back to work (and into economic recovery) would seem agreeable even to old liberals.
The raging public debate over statewide coronavirus lockdowns is running parallel to a series of legal battles in state capitals — and the lockdown skeptics got a big boost this week.
The decision by Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to toss Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide shelter-in-place order set off a scramble in cities across the state to impose their own local restrictions. Elsewhere, bars and restaurants shut down by the order declared themselves open for business.
President Trump told governors on a conference call Monday that he “will step in” if the federal government disagrees with state reopening plans, as he largely expressed satisfaction with how the governors are moving to lift coronavirus restrictions in their individual states, according to a report.
Trump, whose administration last month revealed guidelines for when states should begin lifting stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures meant to slow the spread of the virus, has vocally pushed for the rapid reopening of the economy. The president said in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo last week that his critics want the economy to remain shuttered until the November election, calling Democrats’ reluctance to lift the coronavirus measures “a political thing.”
Inspiration: the fearful now hiding in their appointed tombs before their time; the politicians intent on institutionalizing the separation of individuals (in our most gregarious species) by way of the bludgeoning force of law; the observation that the “Greatest Generation” of WWII has passed and the most ambitious, rambunctious, and rowdy of the “Baby Boom” generation has found itself nearing the end of its crazy, dangerous, wealth-building, wealth-reneging ride through history, the oldest being today 75 and the youngest of the ultra-conformed and ultra-rebellious having attained age 60. Once upon a time, 18 meant that one was old enough for the national draft and the possibility of finding death in Vietnam; today’s 60 in America has become old enough for being the clay target on life’s shooting range and 75 cranky and settled down behind one’s computer and cell phone.
Some will live to see their 100th birthday.
Most?
From the Awesome Conversation
Deja Vu – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu We’re neither going to accommodate nor defeat nature in any absolute sense, but we may respond — and may have responded to — COVID-19 with both greater foresight capability (we KNEW something like it was coming) and community-wide responsibility. The collective “we” as expressed through public policy and budget decided against the funding of an ever-ready position in relation to potential public emergencies. We chose not to be ready with field hospitals, masks, and ventilators as well as caskets, burial grounds, and related facilities and services. Who knew, right? Well, look at the demographics, backward and forward. The oldest of the “Baby Boomers” has hit 75 (and little brother here 65, almost). The whole of the generation will not be here in the next quarter of a century. Well, some will break through 90 and some expire sooner than expected. What is an appropriate rate of morbidity for a population of 328 million? Is there a good target for population x space x organization? Can we defend and embrace freedom — choice, free will, independent moral agency, independence in fact — through fear laced with totalitarian behavioral coercion and “guidance”? https://thelastenglishprince.wordpress.com/2020/05/09/the-anathema-of-freedom/ From a practical perspective, we really needed — and need now — facilities and services and systems — and flexibility — sufficient for handling what is now present and some basic portion of what’s possible. We’re not helpless. We should never have tanked our own economy!
— On Thursday, Gov Abbott said in a news release: “Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen.”
“That is why I am modifying my executive orders to ensure confinement is not a punishment for violating an order. This order is retroactive to April 2nd, supersedes local orders and if correctly applied should free Shelley Luther.” —
In a letter to state District Judge Eric Moyé, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called Shelley Luther’s sentencing outrageous.
“The trial judge did not need to lock up Shelley Luther,” Paxton wrote. “His order is a shameful abuse of judicial discretion, which seems like another political stunt in Dallas. He should release Ms. Luther immediately.”
“As a current Member of the Bar, you certainly should be aware of the impropriety of this contact, as prohibited by Canon 3(b)(8) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct,” the letter to Paxton stated. “In this context, for you to “Urge” a Judge towards a particular substantive outcome in this matter is most inappropriate and equally unwelcome. Please do not communicate with the Court in this manner further.”
The cover of a national medical emergency — and so the emergence of COVID-19 was that for a brief period — made way for the absolute power of governors (whose states have rightly had jurisdiction over emergencies within their boundaries) who then got their constituents to shutter their businesses and leave their jobs, willingly or not, in the name of containing the (uncontainable) contagion. Now has come the time to reverse tracks, assess and address the damage done, and get America fully back to work — and then some.
Some rote —
More than 7,700 Americans die every day from all causes, for America’s annual rate of morbidity has been about 2.813 million souls annually (may all rest in peace).
COVID-19 continues to associate with preexisting conditions in the vast majority of deaths (may we please all stop ageing and remain healthy forever!).
From the Awesome Conversation
And the unfortunate story of money: exchange –> tax base –> public spending –> private earnings via contracts and investments; interagency exchange; $$$ in support of basically every system of defense and survival we collectively depend on for what we have called “The American Way of Life”.
Given our spending on defense and security, we really should have been ready to roll out treatment and morbidity facilities and services much, much more quickly than we have. Generally speaking, how we choose to assess and meet risk — whatever the source may be — has been up to us privately rather than collectively.
From global pandemic to the barber shop, there’s the whole story unless we “Earthlings” choose to do away with money altogether.
. . . .
Nope.
I’m not seeing it.
Rx. Avoid exhaustion and stress; find love; stay healthy and well; and for how it ends, inevitably, try to develop a good and noble philosophy with which both to fight a fair battle and, sigh, return to God, nature, and the universe in the way that all living must (with partial exception made for the elders among cedars and redwoods).
Every day I see Norman residents furious about reopening. These folks want to be “protected” by the Mayor and she must enforce “stay home” orders. They have no regard for the rights of others and they are encouraging despotism.
Wow.
So many are willing to cede dictatorial powers in excess of the Constitution.
The Founders explicitly avoided emergency powers. They exist only in statutes. In Oklahoma, it’s in Title 63. The main thrust of these heretofore rarely used laws is to reduce red tape and enhance agency cooperation and to request funding. These powers do not provide for long standing lock downs with criminal sanctions for exercising constitutional rights. These rights are natural rights and therefore cannot be circumscribed by executive fiat.
The Oklahoma statutes even for emergency powers make plain that the government is to use the “least restrictive” measures and to avoid infringements on civil rights.
There are no Supreme Court cases to support long term lock-downs with criminal enforcement for persons who are healthy.
The laws on quarantine and isolation are not emergency powers. This power is protect the public from those infected or likely infected by a communicable disease that threatens the public health. But the person infected retains due process rights that includes a right to a hearing before a neutral magistrate. In most states, the government decision must be supported by “clear and convincing “ evidence.
The sole justification for this latest unprecedented action over COVID-19 was to prevent the hospitals from being overrun.
It was not to guarantee you won’t get sick.
Any citizen has the right to self-quarantine or isolate if they think that’s best for them.
But there is not one clause in our constitution—the supreme law of the land—that supports coercion to remain indefinitely at home unable to exercise your natural rights. Any law or regulation to the contrary is subject to constitutional challenge where the government action will be closely scrutinized. This is a nation of laws. The opinions of Dr Fauci or the WHO are not binding and we are not a technocracy.
Even within the medical and scientific community there are diverse views.
More and more, the data suggests an extremely low lethality to this virus. The elderly with preexisting problems are most at risk.
Do as you please—it’s your right—but there’s is no basis to deny livelihoods and destroy other aspects of society and health based on opinions and feelings that this is required.
I would caution against encouraging officials to exercise these Draconian measures.
You won’t like the results.
Iraq war veteran and attorney Mitchell Gray serves today as an adjunct professor in Energy Legal Studies, Oklahoma City University. He is the author of the 2015 retrospective on 9/11, I Heard You Were Going on Jihad (Mill City Press, Minneapolis).
You know the kid: the pint-sized disruptive force of nature. No willful schoolmarm with a calm down is about to keep this little fellow from jumping up on a school desk or three and leading the revolt of a righteous legion of one.
There has been now a long period between the Rule of the Tsars, the Dictatorship of proleteriate’s self-serving nomenklatura, the Cold War Era, the ongoing but passing Region of the Phantoms of the Soviet, and, alas, the dismal mini-epoch of COVID-19 hysteria. Arkady Polishchuk’s reminiscence from the early portion of his now long life — the author was born in 1930 — proves less political than delightfully romantic. With Stalin’s dictatorship an omnipresent and worrisome fact of life, the same proves somewhat ignored by those not directly in its path. Life just proceeds beside it — or acquiesces to it in major part while elsewhere stubbornly evading it and working around it.
What may most charm in this part of Polishchuk’s memoir is Russia eternal, from the rustic home of the 1930s and the Primus stove to the charms — for the youngest of boys — of playing in the attic of a building equipped with radiators —
We didn’t need coal or firewood anymore; alas, I was unable to sit on the radiators of central heating – they were half-hidden under both windowsills. It made it impossible to turn the paunchy radiators into a reconnaissance aircraft, although I drew on them our red five-pointed stars and stuck out there our world-famous red flag.
While the author’s life moves forward, his experience moves backward through time, i.e., to rough wilderness and lives of lumberjacks and milkmaids certain to age and weather in the remote wild winters.
There is too the timeless “realpolitik” of business — how things really get done — known to all frontiers but perhaps Russia’s wild timber lands with both arch observation and bemused appreciation.
When one willful woman in the back of beyond flirts (seriously) with the (unwilling diplomatic) author, she whinnies in the ageless way.
She was an agent of some collective farm from Southern Ukraine, in Russian terms, a pusher (tolkach). Her job was to buy timber for the construction of a new dairy farm and stables, of course, if she told me the truth.
“Are’ye here to get some raw wood?” the head asked.
“No.”
“Live wood? Logs?”
“No.”
“It’s great,” she said.
“What’s so great?” I said.
“It’s great that you aren’t here for the timber. Are’ye a prosecutor or a policeman?”
“No, I’m a pediatrician.”
“Is that the type who helps pregnant women?”
“Kind of.”
“Could you help me?”
“Are you pregnant?”
She whinnied like a breeding stallion.
“Do you have a child here?” I asked.
“No, my children are in Moldova.”
“I can’t treat children from a distance.”
“You can treat their mama right here.”
“I have to go,” I said. “A child is waiting for me.”
In Western terms, she could be called an expediter or even a mover and shaker. The law did not back her activity though it was as necessary for the Soviet economy as a lubricant for trucks and trains. These agents traveled across the country to get scarce material and parts for state plants, factories, and farms, whatever the cost. Their main tools were bribes and what could be delicately called barter arrangements. If needed, or if in the interests of authorities or an extortionist, these pushers could easily fall under the penal code. Without them, though, the five-year plans of the USSR would not have been implemented. No doubt, this proprietress of the luxurious black tresses did not know a thing about the very existence of the State Planning Commission. However, this powerful institution have always conceptually known of her existence. The Socialist System worked!
So Polishchuk’s Russia has its magical old world, one where horses gain more traction than trucks in some places and prove themselves more reliable as well, where the farmer may hope to waylay the stranger for hitching to one of his comely daughters, so that she and stranger may be more permanently way laid and put to work in the ways of the countryside. It has too its thieves, the lonesome hood out for mugging and a wallet, the organized gang set to wrangle a truck load of felled timber bound for sale at other than its intended destination, and there’s the permanent fixture of the fixer, bribing, cajoling, dealing where the state’s dogma and ideals fail to motivate the deals that get done.
Still, Stalin’s actions and a modernizing Russia’s accomplishments are always near in memory and in conversation. For Polishchuk’s young adulthood, the war was over but the world remained ragged and scattered, unsettled, and in some parts channeled or herded by the Soviet effort — Stalin’s effort — to move around particles of populations. Speaking with a forester for his story, Polishchuk hears both the boast of industrial advancement and the covering of Stalin’s propensity for broad and compelled mass displacements.
“It’s a revolution,” his voice relaxed, the tension almost evaporated. “You’ll see the most advanced methods of labor brought to life by the “Friendship” brand chainsaw. Difficult to believe that until recently we used axes and two-handed saws.”
“Just like a century ago?” without knowing it, I touched an open wound again.
“You can say so,” now he was nervous anew. “After the war. No-no, the workers weren’t prisoners, they were deportees. The winter in Karelia was harsh. The barracks were built slowly… I was young. Just like you. It was my first job after the Forestry Academy.”
Note: Russia had warred against Finland for Karelia and after annexation had used the depopulated space to sort displaced persons of uncertain or negative political loyalty to the Soviet.
Polishchuk continues with memory:
“Soviet prosecutors have a long history of poor judgment,” I tried to comfort him, but my joke sounded ambiguous.
He returned to his memories, “At first, I took all deported for enemies. They were continually arriving.”
I mumbled some sort of soothing nonsense like, “The whole country did. Patriots are blind.” After that, I asked a wrong question again, “Who were they?”
He ruffled his hair, “Russians, Poles, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Volga Germans, and Chechens,” he stared at me almost in a panic, “The families with small children…” he looked in the window, his voice faltered, “Have you ever seen a concert pianist chopping down a pine with an ax?”
“We all remember what we want to forget,” I said.
What the author may have wanted to forget himself may be present in his first book, Dancing on Thin Ice: Travails of a Russian Dissenter (DoppelHouse Press, 2018), a book that begins with the nastiest of prison stories. As I Was Burying Comrade Stalin — perhaps by living adventurously and critically on top of the dictator’s memory — presents more the underlying character of Russia in its more comfortable and natural cultural habits.
(Disclosure: Arkady Polishchuk and this editor have been friends on Facebook for quite a few years now).
I don’t know how bad the Draconian fascist / socialist COVID-19 edicts may really be given two broad variables: the ratio of confirmed infections to morbidity. In the rural county in which I live, we have had 173 confirmed “cases” and three related deaths, or 173:3 or 0.0173 (so far).
Who am I threatening with C19 and who is threatening me that I must wear a mask?
The classical liberalism of conservative Americans suggests the nation has not only bungled the handling of an alien virus but too willingly given over and been driven from businesses and jobs to assuage fears built up by those who today knowingly convey big infection numbers while minimizing information related to death: how old was each “victim” and with what prior conditions in play, including related exhaustion and stress on the way to catching C19?
How many nursing home grandmas have to die before family and others realize that getting up there in age becomes just plain risky no matter what? Add the complication of preexisting conditions. BackChannels has now often reminded its readers that of 328 million Americans, it is perfectly normal for 2.813 of the same to die (from all causes) in the course of a year.
Add age, infirmity, or otherwise deeply compromised health, and, yes, C19 has just made those operating conditions a little more interesting.
From the Awesome Conversation (Online)
Declaring a National Emergency in haste and watching that power transfer to governors intent on saving face while accomplishing political agendas appears to have handed over to the same unchecked power. I’m calling this massive phenomenon stoked by fear and made broadly controlling “Yo-Yo Fascism and Yo-Yo Socialism”. Governor: “May we . . . ” drink in a bar, go to church, worship together in warm company (“Zoom” ain’t hackin’ it), or go out and get lost in the garden center of the hardware store without wearing the Hijab of Science Nazis?
This is not about reasonable and reasoning conservatives or liberals although some zealots would like everything evil to be identified with their blue or red flag enemies: the willingness to wear the mask may have to do with the near impossibility (for the moment) of organizing a smart opposition to such display both of power and ready acquiescence to it.
Yo-Yo Fascism & Yo-Yo Socialism
American political power has acquired the rope needed for strangling freedom.
It’s attached to COVID-19 and the impression believed about it. When it appears to be receding, the rope may be let out a little bit; when it appears to be resurgent, it may be tightened.
In natural and normal American custom, we are each responsible in reasonable measure for our own practical personal defense, financial, health, and security needs. We do the things we need to do, and we don’t expect our healthy neighbors to alter their behavior to accommodate what in general have been regarded as special needs.
If you need to live in an hermetically sealed bubble, do it, but don’t ask or expect your fellow American to play along with you or nod in social agreement while steaming silently over what today’s policies have done to his business, employment, and family.
Once an public emergency has fully emerged, it ends.
The rest is public policy and either in keeping with the nation’s Constitution or not.
As tens of millions of Americans now struggle to make ends meet — the government’s “stimulus checks” are hardly reimbursements for car, credit, insurance, mortgage, rent costs, not to mention groceries and utility bills — the business of blame may heat at this juncture. At the core of all: ambiguous and mysterious “black labs” and “dual use” scientific research programs. While BackChannels favors the hypothesis that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it remains in deliberation. America’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) note four “patient zero” without a known locus of transmission:
Differences in the timing of introduction and early transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) across jurisdictions might explain some of the observed geographic variation. The first documented U.S. cases of COVID-19 were among travelers returning from China and their immediate household contacts (4). During the third week of February, California, Oregon, and Washington reported the first U.S. cases with no known travel to China or exposure to a person with confirmed COVID-19. Case investigations indicated community transmission in these jurisdictions. Although one case of COVID-19 with an unknown exposure was reported during the fourth week of February in Florida, other cases with unknown exposure (i.e., community transmission) were not widely reported elsewhere until early March.
Inspiration for this post: the sensationalizing of both the numbers of infections, which count doesn’t mean very much, and the number of deaths, which do matter, but for the public, the same have been rather sloppily derived. BackChannels, incidentally, always refers to CDC numbers when it cites statistics.
From the (Still) Awesome Conversation
Our nation’s population is a little more than 328 million; our annual morbidity: 2.8 million. C19 morbidity associates deeply with both age and seriously compromised health, most deaths affecting persons within the 65-85 cohort.
The Baby Boomers of the post-WWII era have arrived.
Two questions: how could a nation so heavily invested in defense, disaster management, and preparedness not have expected an attack or episode in or related to “CBRN Warfare” and not have kept itself readied with contingency plans, field hospitals, and basic emergency equipment and supplies? Given the demography and the fit of this virus to it, how could we not have expected this kind of a shock over the toll?
For focusing so well on the trees — and not so many — we seem unable to have a look over our now financially suffering continent!
I’m an old liberal who long ago got an introduction to statistics, and reason now tells me to take the partisan politics out of the matter and deal with what the data has been telling us.
I don’t like him either, but I don’t want that animosity to color how I’ve viewed this issue.
Afterthoughts
Three things in life are now certain: Death; C19; and Taxes.
🙂
The world will not eradicate a virus globally distributed by mouth.
It would certainly be helpful and polite to use handkerchiefs when we sneeze, to avoid “spraying” when we talk (however lubricated or impassioned one may be), to brush and gargle with appreciation (whatever it is, kill it at the windpipe! — and enjoy minty fresh breath as well). Still, the world will not spare itself the now dreaded COVID-19, which, unless the nasty thing evolves, will not kill handsome or pretty 19-year-olds in good health.
In fact, the odds favor even 85-year-olds (and older) in good health.
Let’s get the nation — hell, go all the way: The Nations! — out of this panic mode and address the challenges posed by the ageing and unwell portions of populations that needs must demand the greater expansion of active and palliative treatment facilities as well as resources and services for the care and dispatch of the dead.
We got to this pass unprepared and panicked by way of complacency, greed, penury, and fear of the unknown.
BackChannels 