“And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled, and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house.” Albert Camus, The Plague
I start every self-isolation day with a survey of the news about the pandemic, the number of cases in Santa Barbara Country (now over 300), the United States and world, and the reported death toll, always mindful that the actual number is probably higher. According to MSNBC, the US death count stands at 36,000.
My small family is, like thousands in our community, trying to do our part by taking social distancing seriously, by wearing masks when out in public spaces, and staying home as much as possible. It’s frustrating, at times boring, disorienting, and at others frightening; my wife’s hours at work were cut. She has applied for unemployment benefits but hasn’t received any money yet. We received our so-called “stimulus” money from the federal government. While we can use this money to offset my wife’s lost income, I’m still of two minds about it. In the first I know that $1,200 won’t be enough for most families, not by any stretch, and as this pandemic drags on, the feds will have to give people more money. That Congress tossed the people a one-time pittance is not only insulting, it shows how out of touch our rulers are. If Congress doesn’t come through with more money, it will make it even more difficult for the populace to maintain the discipline needed for social distancing to pay off. When you know you have enough money to keep a roof overhead, food in the refrigerator, medical care if needed, it’s much easier to exercise patience.
Like our economically unequal society, the effects of the pandemic are felt unequally. On a normal day, the poor in America are punished, demonized and blamed, but in a piece of delicious irony, it’s today the working poor, not the millionaire class, who are now doing our essential work. Congress can’t even bring itself to do business by remote means.
Trump is fracturing America. The fault line lies between the reasonable and necessary caution required to stop the spread of Covid-19, and those who, like Trump himself, practice a dangerous brand of impatience and magical thinking. Trump has failed Leadership 101. It’s too late now, but he should have taken note of what the Queen of England said when the UK implemented its lockdown. The Queen was somber, serious, and yet hopeful. She called on Britons to find the fortitude that Londoners showed during the Blitz. Only moral authority and honesty can hold a nation together under pandemic circumstances, and because Trump has no morality or honesty, he’s failing spectacularly. Rather than unite, Trump divides and inflames, as if he cannot help himself. Impulse control is a problem for Trump.
Protesters in Minnesota and Michigan demand freedom from enforced isolation, but not from Covid-19. The “cure” assaults their sense of individual liberty. My life, they proclaim, my risk, except it’s not, viruses that pass person-to-person don’t work that way. Covid-19 hasn’t read, and doesn’t care about, American exceptionalism or myths of rugged individualism.
The people need to know that their self-discipline and sacrifice will be rewarded. A true leader would lift the nation’s spirit, acknowledge the daily difficulties people face, but also provide assurance that the government is doing everything in its power, with no regard for the politics of red and blue states, to keep the crisis from causing even more suffering. On every level, Donald Trump has failed.
In the dungeons of the past, prisoners were starved of light; in our modern dungeons, prisoners are drowned in constant light.
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