Pandemic Polemic
Photo by Ani Kolleshi on Unsplash.
On Tuesday the father of a close friend died of COVID-19. On Wednesday the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down regulations meant to protect Wisconsin residents from the virus.
The bang-bang sequence of these two events has pushed me as close to blind rage as this jokester can get. And it inspired this little polemic.
The first thing you should know about me for these purposes is that down deep I’m a Rockefeller Republican – a social liberal and military conservative. Pass the Great Society and bomb the Russkies; something like that.
The problem is that Rockefeller Republicans haven’t existed since, well, Rockefeller, and things change. Now I’m more of a Woody Guthrieist, with a pretty basic platform:
Take care of kids; and
Protect the environment.
The way I see it, only a generation of well-fed, well-nurtured, highly educated young people is going to be able to tackle the plethora of societal ills we face. And while they’re societically illin’, they’re going to need a clean, green, temperate place to ill in.
Creating those things will create jobs for the rest of us while we’re waiting for the next crop to come in, and then they can take good care of us when we get old.
Simple, right? In marketing, you learn to keep things simple.
The other thing you should know is that my parents lived through the Great Depression.
My mom came from the wrong side of the tracks in Wausau, Wis. Her dad, a streetcar motorman, skipped town in the early ‘30s, and her mom made a little money in tawdry ways and drank up most of it.
My mom and her sister were largely left to fend for themselves. Food was often syrup on bread – one piece of bread to last the day. She went to high school wearing shoes with newspaper in the soles. It covered the holes but still let in the snow and wet.
My dad’s story is a little different. He came from the well-to-do side of things, but his dad died in the middle of the Great Depression and the family businesses were sold off for pennies on the dollar.
He went to West Point for a year, and after he married my mom, they spent World War II in the Washington area, where my dad inspected war plants and my mom handled classified documents.
After that, they lived in Alaska and Hawaii, and lived as close to the lives of modern pioneers as you’ll find.
These things are important when you hear me say what I’m going to say.
Because I grew up hearing about the Great Depression and the home front during WWII, and because I’ve read more about it subsequently, I have a pretty good handle on the idea of shared sacrifice to reach a common goal.
Meat and other foodstuffs were rationed during World War II, along with gas, tires, durable goods, and shoes. Toys were made from scrap wood and paint. People saved bacon fat to be turned into explosives and tin cans to be made into shell casings.
Some of the restrictions and requirements placed on Americans were hard to swallow, but the people largely went along. Strong, committed governments helped keep them motivated.
Because city, state, and national governments were mostly on the same page, processes were perfected to do simple things like pass scrap from junk dealers to war manufacturers, and information campaigns were created and coordinated to spread a unified message, since misinformation could spell defeat.
It wasn’t easy or fun or smooth by any means. There were race riots and labor strikes and the unbearable indignity of internment camps. The war effort required deep sacrifices of all types, for years.
But you know, it worked. It led to the defeat of a common enemy.
Contrast that with today.
Cities and states battle for precious medical resources with the federal government, which allocates based on political favoritism rather than need.
National leaders foment dissent against state regulations.
President Trump and his allies dispense misinformation, disinformation, deceit, lies, and economic-recovery proposals of the “a rising tide lifts all yachts” variety.
Solid medical science is debunked. Medical workers who risk their lives to save others are degraded and insulted.
“We have been asked to approximate to the smallest degree the sacrifices made by the children of the Depression living out World War II on the home front. And we couldn’t do it for a month.”
Citizens, citing an ill-informed definition of freedom, demand the re-opening of bars and nail salons, placing these business’ contributions to the economy over the lives of innocents who may never patronize them.
As a country, we have been asked to approximate to the smallest degree the sacrifices made by the children of the Depression living out World War II on the home front. And we couldn’t do it for a month.
Instead, the 21st-century equivalents of the traitorous saps who thought Meatless Tuesdays were beyond the limits of human endurance took their bazookas and marched unmasked to Subway to exercise their unalienable right to eat meatball marinaras on nine-grain honey-oat.
Saps are saps. Their bellies are always yellow, no matter the color of their fatigues.
If you sympathize with them, citing economic hardship as your grounds, skip it. I lost one business to 9/11, and I may well lose this business to the pandemic. I know more than you ever will about sleepless nights and doubting your worth and staring down the precipice.
However, I also know that my sacrifices help ensure that my wife lives, and my kids, and my amazing mother-in-law, and scores of people I’ll never meet – and that more than justifies any economic hardship I’ll face.
I’m going to sign off now and don my mask, roll up my sleeves, flex my shrinking muscle, yell “I can do this!” to no one in particular, and do the hard thing. I’m going to stay the course. Because somewhere I know that my mom and dad see, and understand, and approve.
And to all of you who can’t think beyond a drink and a haircut, to all of you willingly poisoned by evil rhetoric, to the Wisconsin Supreme Court members who took the blindfold off Justice and covered their own eyes and ears, to Donald Trump the American Mussolini, I say: You’re not patriots. You dishonor the legacies of those who came before you. You disgrace the flag that you wear in inappropriate places. You have no concept of real sacrifice.
You should be ashamed.