Michael Prescott's Blog

A journal of the plague year

I guess enough time has passed since the start of the great COVID-19 epidemic of 2020 that I can stop and assess what I may have learned and how I may have changed, for better or worse, as a result of this unprecedented disruption of our national life.

A lot of the changes, for me, have been surprisingly positive. I would not have expected this when the whole thing started. And I'm certainly not trying to downplay the inconvenience, frustration, and – at times – depressing nature of the lockdowns. Still, I seem to have come out a little bit better for it in some ways.

For one thing, I'm doing a lot more writing than I did before. With less to distract me and fewer excuses to procrastinate, and driven in part by simple boredom, I made it my business to work on a writing project for at least a half hour every day. A half hour doesn't sound like much, and it isn't, but once I got started, I usually would go much longer than 30 minutes. I found that getting just a little bit into the project was often enough to fire my interest. I was able to write a 20,000 word novella much faster than I normally would have, merely by making a point of working on it every single day. And I'm still doing this on my new project, with good results.

the novella I wrote – a historical fantasy

Another positive change is that I found myself going back to paranormal literature and either reading new books or rereading old ones. I really hadn't done much of this in the last few years, and I feel that it does help to "raise my vibrations" and put me in a more upbeat frame of mind. I can actually feel the daily headlines and Twitter posts dragging me down in energy, focus, and willpower, while concentrating on spiritual subjects has the opposite effect. I think politics in general attracts low-vibration people who are often motivated by the "will to power" and who are happy to lie, cheat, and intimidate in order to get it. Getting too deeply involved in that area of life can be soul-deadening. This is a lesson I had probably learned before, but not quite so vividly.

Finally, I think – probably like many other people – I now have a renewed appreciation for some of the simpler things in life. Just going to a restaurant, even if I have to dine outdoors (indoor dining is not yet permitted in my state), now seems like an exciting change of pace. I'm impressed by the resilience of shopkeepers who found a way to maintain their businesses by offering curbside pickup services or, in the case of restaurateurs, setting up tents to serve customers. In some cases, these improvised outdoor dining areas are nicer than the indoor dining they've replaced – although I doubt this will remain true when the weather turns cold.

In fairness, I have to balance these positive changes with some that are not so positive. I admit I've become more cynical and less trusting of my fellow human beings, especially my fellow Americans. People seem awfully quick to accept government mandates delivered by the unilateral edict of a mayor or governor. Worse, many law enforcement officers are awfully keen to enforce these mandates in an unthinking "I'm only following orders" way. I used to think Americans would instinctively resist tyranny. Now I'm not so sure.

And I can't help but feel that a lot of people are good at sabotaging their own lives. They were remarkably quick to cast aside one of the strongest economies we've had in the last 50 years for the sake of temporarily beefed-up unemployment checks. I have the strong impression that a lot of folks just don't think very far ahead, which may explain why they don't get very far in life. And I'll confess that, while in the past I've given pretty generously to charity, more than maxing out my federal tax deduction for charitable contributions several years in a row, this year I have not been inclined to give anything at all to charity, because I'm not sure it really helps. If people are dead set on short-term thinking and self-sabotage, I doubt there's anything that I or anyone else can do for them.

The "novel coronavirus" is not likely to be the last infectious disease to hit our shores, and I wonder if this kind of extreme overreaction will become the new normal. If it does, it will be exceedingly hard to maintain our standard of living and the civil liberties we've historically taken for granted. I also wonder if our friends in Isis and Al Qaeda have noticed our growing national germophobia and are planning to take advantage of it in their own way. 

So my final report is mixed. Some of what I learned from our not-yet-completed plague year has been positive and uplifting, while some other lessons have been less edifying.

How about you? Has the pandemic made you a different person? If so, on balance, has the change been for better – or worse?

Best meme ever

Coping with chaos

Right now I think many people have the sense that society is coming apart at the seams. It's like the famous WB Yeats poem, "The Second Coming": 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Yeats's Second Coming is not an event to be celebrated. It is not Christ, but the great Sphinx of Giza, who is lumbering toward civilization, with nothing good on its mind.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

In the past few months we've seen mass hysteria over a virus that, according to the CDC's "best estimate," has a lethality rate of 0.26%. (That's 0.4% of those with symptoms, adjusted for the CDC's estimate of 35% infected without symptoms.) Then we saw new hysteria over a suspect who died in police custody and whose death was captured on video. George Floyd's death should not have happened, but the officer responsible has already been charged and is being held in custody, so what exactly does "justice for George Floyd" represent? A lynching? Perhaps. In any event, the tragedy is being used to justify looting, arson, murder, and the destruction of inner-city neighborhoods that won't be rebuilt for a generation, if ever. In the meantime, so-called "medical authorities" are telling us that, while the virus makes it incredibly dangerous to gather together for a picnic or sports event, it is not only safe but morally necessary to assemble for protests.

 

It would be nice to think that things will soon return to normal, but I doubt it. With every presidential election, the national mood becomes more feverish and agitated. This is partly because presidents have acquired too much power – the imperial presidency is all too real – and partly because the country is so deeply divided that each side, left and right, is moving to an increasingly extremist position. In this context, we can reasonably expect a long, hot summer and an equally divisive autumn. I doubt things will get any better after the election, either. No matter which side wins, the other side will feel disenfranchised.

 

In these circumstances, preserving one's peace of mind becomes a paramount concern. It's been reported that suicide hotlines have seen a significant increase in calls. Domestic violence – both spousal abuse and child abuse – is said to be way up. Tempers are short, and people's psyches are frayed, or maybe fried. These are dangerous times, and they're not likely to get better anytime soon. How can one cope?

 

The ancient Romans, or some of them, found a solution to the instability and chaos of their own times in the philosophy of Stoicism, which originated in ancient Greece but migrated to Rome in a heavily modified form. Recently I've been reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, who probably came as close to Plato's ideal of a philosopher-king as the world will ever know. Marcus was not an original thinker, but he was serious in his study of philosophy, and the notes he left for us – notes jotted down during military campaigns for his own use, and never intended for publication, nor even given a title (the name Meditations was added later) – give us a glimpse into his inner mind as intimate as that afforded by Cicero's letters, and more philosophically profound.

 

Stoicism, as the Romans understood it, consists of the view that the universe is fundamentally rational and good. Therefore, anything that happens, aside from acts of human agency, should not be resisted but instead embraced. If your house is struck by lightning and burns down, you are free to regard it as a tragedy, but you need not. The objective facts do not force any particular emotive conclusion. You may – and according to Stoicism, you should – go with the flow of events, not resisting, not objecting, not finding fault. To say that nature or the world has done you wrong is irrational, because the world cannot be irrational. Only you can be irrational by making an incorrect inference, an emotional value-judgment.

 

Human action, the Stoics admit, can be irrational and evil. Even so, the only victims of these actions are the actors themselves. You cannot be hurt in any meaningful way by the behavior of other people. The integrity of your intellect, the purity of your soul, cannot be sullied by any outside force. If you fail to live up to your own standards, the fault lies with you, not with others.

 

This is a hard philosophy, one might say a pitiless philosophy, a philosophy that takes no account of ordinary human emotions and weaknesses. Perhaps the Romans liked it for that reason. They were not known to be sympathetic to what they saw as weakness. The image of a man who can be shaken by no external events, who is secure in himself and indifferent to accidents of nature (although the Stoics would say there were no accidents) and the misdeeds of his fellow man, was deeply appealing to many of them.

 

I think we can see why this philosophy became prevalent in later years of the Empire, when turmoil at home and unrest abroad created an atmosphere of chronic uncertainty. If you can't count on the stability of the world around you, then you retreat into a private world and convince yourself that you cannot be touched by anything that happens. If the Emperor orders you to commit suicide, or if your estates are ravaged by barbarian hordes, you merely acquiesce and say that it is rational and necessary. In this, there is a bit of Voltaire's Professor Pangloss (satirizing Leibniz): Everything that happens is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

 

The mindset of Stoicism might well let us cope with the escalating chaos of our society. But I have to say, I don't think I'm up to it. I don't believe that everything does happen for the best. My suspicion is that events unfold in a way that reflects both a higher-level plan and random accident/unpredictable free will. Or to put it another way, I think that each person's life is planned before birth, but that the person, once born, is at the mercy of his own egoistic will, which can make serious mistakes, and also at the mercy of events that were not foreseen and cannot be controlled. This is probably why more than one incarnation is necessary; if we could get it right the first time, we wouldn't need to come back. Having incarnated without conscious knowledge of the roadmap that our higher self intends for us to follow, we are all too likely to blunder into a dead end. And when enough people blunder into a dead end, the result is societal breakdown, such as we're seeing now.

 

What, then, is the solution? If we can't believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, where everything happens for a reason, can we at least believe that we personally have some reason for being stuck here?

 

I can't speak for anyone else. The answer to this question is necessarily personal, subjective, and individual. For myself, I've come up with an answer, one that has been germinating in me for some time. To explain it, I have to briefly recap my last few years.

 

Around 2016, I largely lost my sense of purpose in life. My family was all gone. My career as a writer was winding down. There didn't seem to be anything much to live for, and I was honestly perplexed as to why I was still here. It seemed pointless, just a waste of time. Since I do believe there's a higher self in charge of my incarnation, I was baffled as to what this higher self expected me to accomplish. In my own "meditations," so to speak, I asked this question and did not get a satisfactory answer. Frankly, this annoyed me. What the hell do your people want from me? I would ask. My mission is over. Where's my goddamn extraction? 

 

I was frustrated because I seemed to get no answer. But now I think I have one. 

 

Even as a child, and throughout my life, I've found myself emotionally and intellectually drawn to end-of-the-world scenarios. For instance, I've read a great deal about the last days of the Roman Republic, and a fair amount about the end of the Western Roman Empire a few centuries later. The idea of the world breaking down and civilization falling apart has always haunted me.

In addition, I've had a long-standing interest in social manias or mass hysteria, as discussed in the famous 19th century study Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. (I wrote a little about this book here and here.)

 

Now these two lifelong interests of mine have converged in real life, as we see Western civilization increasingly under stress as result of repeated episodes of mass psychosis. I expect this trend to continue.

 

And this leads me to my epiphany. I believe my purpose, at this stage of life, is to observe the breakdown of society under the weight of hysteria and divisiveness. As an infinitesimally tiny offshoot of the Cosmic Mind, I have a front row seat at one of the great events in history – the collapse of Western civilization in the 21st century. Assuming there is a future for humanity, historians will be writing and speculating about these events forever. But I get to see them firsthand.

 

I don't pretend that I can play any role in this unfolding catastrophe, much less delay or prevent it. I believe my role, as planned by my higher self before I was even born, and as prepared for me by my interest in relevant subject matters, is simply to observe and record what happens. Not to observe and record for others, but for myself. 

 

Naturally, this newfound conviction of mine will not carry much weight with other people. As I said, it's subjective, and it can be dismissed as arbitrary and self-serving. But no one can dictate the meaning of another person's life. What's meaningful to you may not be meaningful to me, and vice versa. Some people find meaning in throwing Molotov cocktails at police cars. That is, I suppose, their destiny. As for me, my destiny is to watch everything spiral down the drain.

 

The present chaos will end, but it will be replaced by new outbreaks of mass panic and mass hysteria. Some archaeologists maintain that the great cities of the Mayan people were simply abandoned; the population moved out and never returned. I suspect that a contagion of panic and hysteria infected those populations. Something similar is happening now. Most of those who are actively involved in this epidemic of insanity have no real understanding; as Jesus said, they know not what they do. That, too, is fine.

 

I know what they do, and I am watching.

 

That's my job. It's the reason I'm still here.

Guest post: The mirror and the light

I really enjoyed this well-written and thoughtful comment that appeared in a thread on my Facebook page, and with the permission of the author, Emiliano Pardo Saguier, I'm posting it here.

Emiliano was responding to my downbeat remarks about the psychological toll that this extended period of national house arrest is taking on me.

(The title of the post is mine, and is a reference to Hillary Mantel's latest [and final] book in her trilogy on Thomas Cromwell.)

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These recommendations are not meant to make light of your intellectual acumen, nor are they made in jest. With the assumed proviso that you will take this with good cheer, I say:

Go outside. If you have a yard, or an open private space of any kind, sunbathe in the hours between 10-12 PM, or so. Expose as much unprotected skin as you can to maximize vitamin D production — to be frank, twenty-or-so minutes in the midday sun should prove more than sufficient if you're bone-white like me.

There are myriad unknown benefits to sun exposure. Many of the mechanisms of the benefits that are known are a mystery too, but it's been theorized that vitamin D (which is notably useless as a supplement) is not the cause of all the benefits from sun exposure, but rather one of its byproducts. It's indeed a marker that you're getting enough of it, but not the only net positive.

For one, you'll be in much better spirits, and have improved focus and concentration. Having increased vitamin D levels won't hurt either; there's pretty strong evidence to suggest that most in the Western industrialized world are lacking in it. Your immune level will improve by leaps and bounds, which you would want in any old year, but especially in 2020. There's solid epidemiological data that backs high vit D as one of the greatest barriers against COVID-19 complications.

These may seem like painfully obvious suggestions, and you may already be following them, but they've worked wonders for me. I've been soaking up more rays than I had ever gotten in my 36 years, and I've found sun exposure to be the silver bullet against an all-abiding state of dejection and depression. I've also been on more flights since this whole crisis started than I'd been in the past five years combined, and I haven't had more than a few sniffles, or a couple coughs back in March.

For human stupidity and irrationality, I have nothing. We're just a bunch of apes, too afraid to die, too afraid to live, it seems. The world is now stuck in this stupid, useless, deadly paralysis.

And while people blindly follow the official story, even revolutionaries and Bernie-bros, we continue to circle the drain, ever closer to the big gulp.

My only solace in this situation is the few contrarian, non-conspiratorial voices rising from the din and being reasonable. Maybe one day, voices like yours will be hailed as the actual heroes in all this mess.

Don't hold your breath, though. We know this is all the fault of Trump, global warming, the Left, the Right, the Pope, the Church, CO₂ emissions, climate skeptics, climate believers, SJWs, alt-righters, and that guy who sneezed on me at LAX.

Never of the stupid, gullible asshole in the mirror.

Cassandra shrugged

I'm weary of arguing about the dreaded coronavirus, so I'll sum up my position here and let it go. Feel free to be as disputatious as you like in the comments, while staying civil, as always.

When the virus became known outside of China, there were few data points, and the info from China was either incomplete or intentionally misleading. As a result, authorities had to rely on computer models and their projections. These models are only as accurate as the data that are fed into them, and without adequate data, the projections could only be speculative. But the models were all anyone had, and governments can't be blamed (too much) for acting on them. The models predicted mass death and the breakdown of hospital systems under an overload of ICU cases, even with severe countermeasures in place. 

As a result, drastic "mitigation efforts" were undertaken in most developed countries. The idea was to "flatten the curve" — not necessarily to reduce the overall death toll significantly (though some lives might be saved), but to  space out the cases and prevent hospitals from collapsing under the strain. The nightmare scenario was Italy, where demand for ICUs exceeded the supply and ventilators had to be rationed. Lost in all this was that Italy has a chronically underfunded healthcare system that is prone to shortages and rationing even in normal years, and that the Lombardy region of Italy was in many ways a worst-case scenario because of demographics, air pollution, and a large influx of Chinese workers. 

Now enough time has passed to see that the models were very inaccurate. The virus is significantly less lethal than originally believed. No one argues with this. The initial estimate of a 3.4% mortality rate has consistently dropped. Current estimates range from 0.1% to 1% — still a wide range, but even the upper limit is well below the initial assumption. The models have been revised downward accordingly. 

Despite fears that viral hot zones would be overwhelmed, no metro area in the US has seen its hospitals so swamped that they cannot provide care, even in the ICUs. New York City constructed a tent city to handle hospital overloads and also had a Navy hospital ship brought in; neither contingency was needed. The city also requested 30,000 ventilators and complained when fewer were delivered, but ended up not using all of the ones it had, and is now sending ventilators to other metro areas, which also don't seem to need them.

In short, the data were incomplete, the models were wrong, and the anticipated overflows didn't happen. And this is true in countries that practiced severe mitigation efforts, moderate efforts, or minimal efforts. It's true pretty much everywhere except in Italy, Spain, and perhaps some less-developed countries like Iran and China, which are not providing reliable data. In fact, by all accounts the flu outbreak of 2017-2018 stressed the US hospital system much more severely than the novel coronavirus. 

 

Cassandra, by Mila Strugatsky

 

The intelligent thing to do at this point would be to gradually ease up on the lockdowns. Immediate lifting could well lead to a spurt in new cases, which in turn would trigger calls to reinstate the lockdowns — calls that politicians would find difficult to ignore. Moreover, the public is so panicky about the virus that even if all lockdowns were lifted overnight (not a good idea), many people would not return to work or want to eat out or attend crowded venues. 

The worry is that political paralysis will delay the phased-in reopening that's needed. This in turn will have ever more severe consequences for our economy, our national psychology, and possibly civil liberties and civil order. Already we've seen a spike in new unemployment claims that dwarfs any numbers on record and makes the so-called Great Recession following the 2008 financial crash look like a blip on the charts. Some analysts believe US unemployment will hit 20% by the end of this month, a stunning turnaround from the full employment we enjoyed at the start of the year. (3-4% unemployment is considered full employment, because some people will always be changing jobs at any given time.) Small businesses are facing bankruptcy, potentially in record numbers. No amount of stimulus, even assuming that Congress can agree to provide more, will be sufficient to save all these businesses, each of which represents the livelihood of its employees and the life's work of its owners. The ripple effects from these numbers could be catastrophic, as once-prosperous communities see a cascade of business closures and as unemployed or bankrupt people lose their homes. For the moment, foreclosures have been put on hold in many states, but at some point they will resume. 

A more immediate concern is the breakdown of the daily delivery of goods. Supply chains appear to be increasingly stressed. Shortages of staple food products are now common in many parts of the country, although these shortages seem to be intermittent for now. The longer the full lockdown continues, the more difficult it becomes to maintain supply lines. Shortages that are temporary could become permanent. Shortages that are localized could become more widespread. 

If food starts running out, the next stage in the process is civil unrest. Hungry, scared, angry people are unlikely to sit at home and starve. Authorities will then have to use ever more repressive measures to keep the populace in line. Already some local and state authorities have overstepped their bounds with nonsensical and Kafkaesque prohibitions, which have ignited protests. If the authorities feel compelled to go even further, they will probably trigger more protests, not necessarily peaceful ones.

In short, the situation is volatile. The future I've laid out may be a worst-case scenario. It's possible that supply lines will remain sufficiently intact to prevent more serious shortages, and that civil order will be maintained without unduly authoritarian measures. Americans are resourceful and resilient people, and we may figure out innovative ways to keep our economy running well enough to stave off chaos. The checks and balances of our system may keep any authoritarian tendencies from running too far out of control.

But even if we come through the lockdown period without the crises I've sketched out, there is no way to avoid the psychic toll. Children are locked up in households with abusive parents. Wives are trapped with abusive husbands. People who've lost their jobs may turn to liquor (alcohol sales are way up), opiates, violence, and suicide (some suicide hotlines report record call volume). Anxiety and depression are sure to skyrocket under these circumstances.

The longer-term outlook is not good. The IMF foresees the worst global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, though they hold out hope for a relatively quick turnaround. The UN says hundreds of thousands of children will die as a result of a sharp decline in living standards, especially in the developing world, where there is less margin for error. No one can foresee the full ramifications of the worldwide shutdown, but anyone who minimizes them is whistling past the graveyard. 

What to do? The lockdown strategy, I believe, was a mistake. It would have been wiser to follow the course set by Sweden, which pursued a more moderate policy of some social distancing (restaurants could not be at full capacity, for instance) while eschewing any general closure of businesses or any stay-at-home orders. Sweden's fatality rate from the virus is in line with rates reported by countries that implemented much more severe measures*, and their economy and society have not suffered to the same degree. But since we did not follow that course, we will have to reopen by degrees, trying to minimize a "second wave" of infections, while intelligently balancing the health risks against the equally real socioeconomic risks. I don't have great confidence in our ability to walk this tightrope. But it's what we can hope for. 

This thing has been a clusterfutz of epic proportions, a perfect storm of limited data, unreliable modeling, an impulsive and panicky political class, sensationalistic media, technocratic tunnel vision, and public germophobia. We have dug a deep hole for ourselves, and now we need to stop digging and try to climb out. It will be a long, slow process, complete with much finger-pointing as the dimensions of our economic apocalypse become clear. 

That's all I have on this subject. I've prophesied enough doom for a while; my voice is tired. Anyway, maybe I'm wrong, and future generations will look back on this whole episode as a shining example of public policy.

Yeah. Maybe. 

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*Deaths per million as of April 19:

Worldwide: 21

Germany: 54

Denmark: 61

Portugal: 70

USA: 120

Sweden: 152

UK: 237

France: 302

Italy: 391

Spain: 437

Source:Worldometers

Sweden's strategy is to accept more deaths at the onset of the outbreak in exchange for more rapidly achieving herd immunity. Some countries do have markedly lower death rates. Norway's rate is 30, which is seen as something of an anomaly; tentative explanations include more widespread testing and fewer problems with antibiotic-resistant bacteria (antibiotics are used to treat complications from COVID-19). 

Strange days

In a comments thread, I recommended a Twitter feed by a contrarian journalist named Alex Berenson, who's covering the coronavirus outbreak and its ramifications. Berenson can be a little snarky, but I guess snark goes with the territory on Twitter. He seems to have libertarian leanings and may overstate his case at times, but overall I find his point of view refreshing and the facts that he digs up and highlights quite revealing. (Rather than link to posts supporting each point made below, I'll just refer you to his Twitter feed, where you'll find all of them.)

Berenson's focus lately is on a) the threat to civil liberties and b) the damage to our economy, but his predicate is that the virus has not come close to matching the modelers' projections. He points out, among other things, that outside New York City, many hospitals are furloughing staff because admissions are way down; that the models have consistently been revised downward even though "full social distancing" was assumed from the start (contrary to some media apologetics); that children are at virtually no risk, and most people under 50 are at minimal risk: that in many states the number of people hospitalized is stable at around two or three hundred, yet increasingly draconian and even Kafkaesque measures are being taken; and that the epidemic seems to have plateaued throughout most of the world, including the US. He also links to preliminary studies suggesting that the virus is already widespread throughout the population, which would imply that many of us already have immunity.

Some people say that government lockdowns are no big deal because people would be taking precautions anyway. If this is true, why do we even need the lockdowns? Clearly, people would take precautions; equally clearly, they would not allow their lives to come to a complete halt. They would steer a middle course – something that governments at all levels are apparently incapable of doing.

Just this morning, I read a report that the supply of pork and other meat products is running low, and there may be shortages soon, because lockdown orders have closed meatpacking plants. Food shortages in the US in 2021 isn’t something I expected to see. I wonder how complacent people will be about "the new normal" when they realize the food is running out.

Even the New York Times is starting to worry about the rise of authoritarianism in respond to the virus. A little late, since they helped fuel the panic ...

Meanwhile the federal response is being orchestrated by the estimable Dr. Fauci, a man who believes we should never shake hands again, and who ponders the idea of people carrying immunity certificates to produce for the authorities. ("Show us your papers, citizen!") In other words, he is a fanatic on the subject of germs. This perhaps is to be expected in an epidemiologist, but it's the kind of tunnel vision that doesn't make for good public policy. Nevertheless, because Fauci is an "expert" who's climbed the greasy pole of the federal bureaucracy to its summit, he can put the entire country under indefinite house arrest. Isn't democracy wonderful?

Did you know there are drones in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that overfly public areas and, when they spot people outside, reel off a recorded order to disperse? The looming food shortages remind me of Soylent Green; the drones remind me of Robocop. Both movies are dystopian, and I don't want to live in either of them. I’m 59, which puts me at higher than average risk, but what scares me is not the coronavirus but the sheeplike compliance of the American public. A country that can be frightened this easily by a disease that mainly affects the elderly and will probably have a death toll comparable to, or lower than, a severe strain of seasonal flu can no longer call itself "the home of the brave." A country that allows itself to be quarantined in perpetuity on the basis of computer models that have already proven wrong is hardly "the home of the free."

Incidentally, for three years we’ve heard from the left and the media that Trump is itching to institute martial law, suspend the Constitution, and rule as a dictator, if only he can find a pretext. Well, he’ll never have a better chance than he has now. Why hasn’t he taken it? Could it be that he never wanted to be a dictator? Is it possible that the left and the media have been hyperventilating over nothing? Is there a chance they're doing exactly the same thing about the virus now?

I continue to think we're in the grip of a social mania precipitated by a hysterical press and panicky (or sometimes maliciously destructive) politicians. It's like other manias I’ve witnessed, although more far-reaching in its effects. Remember the hysteria over millions of children being kidnapped by strangers? (Nearly all of the so-called kidnappings were routine custody disputes.) Remember the widespread terror about satanic rituals and sexual abuse at preschools? (The impressionable tots were only repeating tall tales that police and prosecutors suggested to them.) Remember Y2K? Or bird flu, which the esteemed Neil Ferguson of Imperial College predicted would kill 200 million worldwide? (The actual number was less than a thousand. So he was a little off. Nevertheless, the media continue to describe him as "the gold standard" of computer modeling.)

We live in strange, and deeply stupid, times. But perhaps this has always been true.

The upside of the apocalypse

First things first. There's a huge downside to the current pandemic and the measures taken to contain it. Thousands have died, and more will die. The economic damage is potentially massive. The toll on people's psyches is impossible to calculate, but I've read that some suicide hotlines are flooded with calls. All this is obviously bad.

But few situations are entirely bad, and even here, I can see a bit of an upside. What follows is a list of some things to be happy about. Most are small things, but each is at least something. 

Less traffic, more parking. I know how trivial this sounds. Still, it's true. The streets have not been this empty in my part of New Jersey since I was a small boy visiting the shore in the off-season. And it really is much less stressful to get around when you're not fighting traffic and dodging other drivers. This country was a calmer place when it was less crowded. 

More people out and about. Cars may be scarce, but pedestrians and bicyclists are not. I see many more people than usual strolling, jogging, walking their dogs, riding their bikes, and practicing with skateboards, even in chilly weather. And I see family groups out together — families that may not have been spending so much time together before everything shut down.

Friendlier people. In New Jersey it is not de rigueur to say hello to strangers. But these days, people are doing it. They're smiling and waving from across the street or even from their cars. 

More appreciation for the under-appreciated. A situation like this makes us take notice of the people who work behind the scenes to keep things going: the truck drivers, railroad crews, stock boys, cashiers, sanitation workers, package delivery people, mail carriers, and cops on the beat. It also makes us appreciate the skill sets of plumbers, electricians, and repairmen. Right now I have no idea how I would fix (say) a serious plumbing problem, a fact that makes me realize how dependent I am on the technical skills of others.

More appreciation for small business owners. The fact that so many local stores and eateries are faced with possible bankruptcy drives home the importance of these places in our daily lives. And people are doing what they can to keep these businesses afloat — ordering takeout meals and using the Internet to shop locally. 

More appreciation for medical workers. This one is pretty obvious, but it deserves its own category — especially when we consider that healthcare professionals are at greater risk not only of contracting the virus but of being exposed to a high viral load, with potentially much more serious consequences. 

More appreciation in general. The old saying "less attitude, more gratitude" applies here. Many things we took for granted are now temporarily off limits, difficult to come by, or suddenly more necessary than ever. Need I mention toilet paper? But it goes beyond household goods. I've seen some people say that the shutdown shows how unimportant celebrities are, but I disagree. Without Hollywood to keep me occupied, I'd be having a heckuva more difficult time in solitary confinement. I'm appreciative of quality TV shows and other entertainments that make self-isolation more bearable. 

Less triviality. Many of our national arguments are frankly silly — heated debates about which pronoun to use, for instance. A lot of that stuff has gone straight out the window for now. 

A break from partisan politics. Although efforts are still made to score partisan points, most people aren't playing that game. This is good, because politics is often a dirty business that attracts some pretty lousy people; the more immersed we are in it, the more we lower our own vibrations. 

Getting off the treadmill. I used to multitask a lot more than I do now. I used to have long to-do lists. Now I'm content to do less. And I don't beat myself up for not doing "enough." 

A chance to take it slow. This is slightly different from the last point. With less to distract us, we may be more inclined to settle in for the long haul. A small example: Turner Classic Movies recently aired Seven Samurai. This is a three-and-a-half-hour movie, in black-and-white, with subtitles. Ordinarily I might have passed on the opportunity to sit through something like that. Now, without much else to do, I devoted three nights to watching it, roughly one hour at a time. Parts were kind of slow, but I just went with it. I find I'm not as restless and impatient as I was. 

A national reset. I've heard this term used, and in some ways it's a good one. Our lives probably had gotten too hectic, too crazed. Shutting everything down is a dramatic way of reminding us that too much of what we do is unnecessary, too much of what we stress over is unimportant, and too much of what we aim for isn't worth having. 

Memento mori, or love in the age of corona*

In recent weeks, I’ve learned not to post anything on Facebook, because people decide I’m a hater if I so much as suggest that there might be another metric worth considering besides the coronavirus mortality rate. So I won’t open that can of worms here, except to say that risk management entails looking at a variety of factors, not exclusively public health. The strength of the economy, the stability of society, the prevalence of psychological illness, and the death tolls of other diseases – all these are relevant factors to take into account. A purely epidemiological approach is necessarily narrow-minded. It doesn’t do us much good to save, say, one thousand lives from COVID-19 if we’ve condemned our nation to a decade or more of grinding poverty. Chronic unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure, the loss of businesses and the lifetime of effort they represent ... these are not trivial outcomes. And they do have public health consequences. Look at the epidemic of opioid addiction among the chronically unemployed in the Rust Belt.

This too shall pass, though it may leave a Great Depression in its wake. (And those who believe that economic numbers are “only statistics,” as I’ve been told very heatedly online, will soon learn how real these statistics can be.)

What interests me, in the context of this blog, is that vast numbers of people in the Western world seem absolutely flabbergasted to discover that they are, in fact, mortal. The reality of their own demise evidently had never been quite clear real to them before, and now fills them with existential dread.

This is where a study of the afterlife proves useful. Many people like to say:

What’s the use of worrying about life after death? I’ll find out when I’m dead.

But the problem with this attitude is that it leaves you ill-prepared to face your own more death (however remote a prospect it may be – and given the mortality figures on COVID-19, which are constantly being revised downward, it’s pretty clear that this is, in fact, a remote possibility at present).

We live remarkably comfortable and insular lives in the 21st century, at least in the developed world. We seem to assume we will live forever, or at least until we are pushing 100 – although why anyone would want to live that long, with the inevitable decline of one’s mental and physical faculties, is hard for me to fathom. I've spent enough time around senior citizens with dementia to think that this outcome is one to avoid at almost any cost.

Now this virus, however much it has been overhyped as the Black Plague and Ebola and the zombie apocalypse all rolled into one, is focusing our minds on our own all-too-human limitations. And many people, quite obviously, are unprepared for this revelation and are freaking out. The sheer level of panic over a virus with roughly a 0.6% mortality rate, concentrated in the elderly and infirm, is ridiculous. But it’s understandable if we realize that we are emotionally, psychologically, and socially unprepared to deal with our own mortality, because we have avoided this issue so assiduously for so long.

In the medieval world, people used to wear medallions inscribed memento mori, often with a skull appended to the design. The translation is: Remember your own mortality. One would not think that people in the Middle Ages, who faced chronic plagues and famines and had a life expectancy of less than forty years, would need such reminder. Maybe they didn’t. But surely we need it today.

 

 

To all the skeptics, materialists, cynics, and assorted assholes who say that a focus on life after death is morbid, neurotic, and unproductive, I would say this:

Some of us have made preparations for our inevitable demise and are at peace with it. Others are in constant denial. Which of us is better prepared to deal with the current panic? Which of us can keep it in perspective? Which of us is already comfortable with the fact of our mortality (yes, IT IS A FACT), and which of us is paralyzed by fear?

There is a real advantage to studying the evidence for life after death. It becomes apparent only when the rest of society, drowning in materialism, hedonism, and narcissism, suddenly discovers that death is not just for "other people," but for them, too. In these circumstances, those of us who are intellectually and spiritually prepared can follow Rudyard Kipling’s timeless advice:

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ...

Keep calm and carry on. You’ll probably survive COVID-19. If you don’t, you can look forward to a better world.

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*With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez. 

Civil war, part deux

A little while ago, I posted my opinion that, despite increasing speculation about a new civil war in the United States, it was very unlikely that such a thing could happen. In fact, I could see no plausible path to that outcome.

That's changed a little. Now I do see a possible path, though I still don't expect it to happen.

The pathway in question is essentially a worst-case scenario. Happily for us all, the worst case rarely comes to pass. This may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it's not the worst of all possible worlds, either.

Still, occasionally the perfect storm does happen. That's what it would take to bring about the cataclysmic outcome of a new civil war or, at the very least, massively increased civil strife.

As you know, the Democratic controlled House is moving forward with an attempt to impeach President Trump. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has put the hearings on an accelerated timetable with an eye toward holding a final vote on impeachment as early as Thanksgiving.If a majority of the House votes to impeach, the indictment moves to the Senate for adjudication.

Meanwhile, President Trump and his lawyers insist that the process is illegal, because Pelosi has not held a vote formally authorizing an impeachment inquiry. Therefore, they say, subpoenas issued by the house with regard to this matter will be ignored. The president's lawyer yesterday issued a combative eight-page letter laying out this position.

I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of this debate. I'm no legal scholar, and it's irrelevant to the main point of this post. The point is that we have a deadlock between two branches of government, with the legislative branch insisting it has the right to subpoena witnesses and the executive branch refusing to comply.

Now we come to our worst-case scenario. Suppose the House does vote to impeach, which is likely, because only a simple majority is needed. Then suppose that the Senate votes to convict Trump and remove him from office. Trump is already on record as saying that the whole process is illegal and unconstitutional and constitutes an attempted coup. He would be unlikely to agree to leave office in response to an impeachment and conviction that he regards as fundamentally corrupt and unlawful.

That's when all hell breaks loose. In effect, we would have two governments – the Trump White House and a parallel government set up by the Democrats, presumably with Pelosi in charge (since she is next in the line of succession after Vice President Pence). Each would accuse the other of being illegitimate. Partisans around the country would be sharply divided. It's a near certainty that violence would break out in the streets as radical groups like Antifa and Proud Boys battle it out. Mass demonstrations in support of each "government" might start out peacefully, but could easily degenerate into chaos.

The military might even be called on to oust Trump from the White House and place him under arrest. But what if some factions of the military side with Trump instead? Then you have a real civil war.

And even if it doesn't get that far, you'd have something very much like the situation in Kansas in the years prior to the first Civil War, when two rival governments were set up by pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, leading to raids into each other's turf, with lynchings and other violence. The territory-turned-state became known as Bleeding Kansas; it was a wound that would not heal. Imagine Bleeding Kansas on a national scale.

Now, as I said, this is a worst-case scenario. Our saving grace is that the Senate will probably perform the duty envisioned for it by the founding fathers, who saw the Senate as the saucer that cools the steaming hot cup of tea. The contentious, hotheaded House stands for the steaming tea in this analogy, while the Senate, with its arcane rules and gentlemanly traditions, is meant to slow things down and allow cooler heads to prevail.

Specifically with regard to impeachment, the Senate procedure requires an actual trial, which would have to conform with rules of evidence and other legal precedents. More important, conviction requires a two-thirds majority, meaning that 67 senators would have to vote to remove Trump from office. Given that Republicans have a majority of the Senate, it's almost impossible that the magic number of 67 can be reached. One or two Republicans, like Mitt Romney of Utah, might defect, but then again one or two Democrats from conservative states, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, might choose to stand with Trump. It seems unlikely in the extreme that anything close to 67 senators will agree to evict Trump from the Oval Office, especially with a presidential election less than a year away by then.

And we should be glad about this, no matter what our partisan leanings. It's far better for the country to have the impeachment effort fizzle out in the Senate than to have a Bleeding Kansas or civil war scenario play out from coast to coast.

Ultimately, I think the impeachment kerfuffle will come to little or nothing, but there's always the chance of a perfect storm. Already some Democrats, like Rashida Tlaib, are openly speculating about how they would hunt down and incarcerate Trump in the event of a conviction. Others have imagined first impeaching Pence, and then forcing Trump to resign so that Pelosi could become president. These speculations are, to put it mildly, unhelpful. Whether they know it or not, these people are pouring water on a grease fire and risking an explosion.

Both sides are caught up in a dangerous contest, escalating the stakes, essentially playing a game of chicken. Sometimes that game ends in a disastrous collision. Let's hope this time it doesn't.

Civil war, what is it good for?

I don't post much on politics anymore. The subject is divisive and depressing. Politics seems to be a "low-vibration" endeavor, attracting office seekers of generally poor character and bringing out the less desirable traits in observers. Our national obsession with politics is one reason for the dubious state of our collective mental health. In one of the wealthiest and freest countries in the world, too many people are obsessed with negativity, fixated on imaginary apocalypses, and stewing in their own juices while banging away at computer keyboards. 

Even so, I did post something political on Facebook yesterday that I thought was worth reprinting here, with a few edits and some photo illustrations. 

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With all the Sturm und Drang about our deteriorating political discourse, some people have taken to speculating about a second American civil war. I think this is extremely unlikely to happen, though a lot of people seem to enjoy thinking about it.

For one thing, there are no clear-cut geographical divisions in the country, as there were in 1860. The Electoral College map makes it look as if nearly the entire heartland is solid red, but many of those red states have significant blue enclaves, while even the bluest of blue states, like California, have red enclaves. Who are we going to go to war with – our next-door neighbors?

 

Electoral college map of the 2016 presidential contest

 

Map of the 2016 presidential election results in California (a "deep blue" state) as divided by county

 

Map of the 2016 presidential election results in Texas (a "deep red" state) as divided by county

 

In 1860, many Americans felt more loyalty to their home state than to the national government, making it easier for Southern states to secede. Today, most Americans feel little attachment to their home state and move as required from one part of the country to another. We identify as Americans primarily, not as Californians or New Jerseyans.

Life was a lot tougher in 1860. Lifespans were shorter, and creature comforts were hard to find. Many people grew up with a gun in their hand, hunting their dinner. Such people don't find it too hard to organize themselves into militias. Most of us moderns have never served in the military and have little experience with roughing it. We may be keyboard warriors, but we wouldn't last two days in the field. We would miss all our favorite TV shows!

 

Cider Making, by William Sidney Mount, depicts life in Setauket, Long Island in the 1840s

 

Contemporary home in Setauket, Long Island

 

Finally, it's easy to exaggerate the novelty and significance of today's overheated political rhetoric and the acts of violence we see from groups like Antifa or from deranged individuals on a rampage. The truth is, America has always been a violent country, and much of that violence has been politically inspired — notably the bombings, riots, and assassinations carried out by the anarchist movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of us are old enough to remember the same kind of violence in the 1960s. There's always been a chaotic element to America's freewheeling democratic culture.

And this chaos has been reflected in political rhetoric from the very beginning. Brad Hart notes that the presidential election of 1800 between incumbent John Adams and challenger Thomas Jefferson grew so heated that many Americans believed Jefferson was a monster. One contemporary source predicted what a Jefferson victory would mean:

Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest [being] openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood and the nation black with crimes.

Another went further, foreseeing: 

Female chastity violated [with] children writing on a pike.

Martha Washington declared Jefferson to be "one of the most detestable of mankind and a threat to our way of life." Others labeled Jefferson "an enemy to his country and his God. 

 

Anti-Jefferson ad from the election of 1800

Jefferson responded with heated rhetoric of his own. His operative James Callender, hired as a hatchet man, described Adams as "a hideous hermaphroditical character with neither the force and firmness of a man or the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." 

Closer to our time, in the 1944 election, supporters of Franklin Roosevelt characterized his opponent, Thomas Dewey, as essentially a tool of the Axis powers, whom our troops were still fighting overseas.

 

Socialist pamphlet attacking Dewey in 1944

Michael A. Davis, in a 2005 dissertation on the wartime campaign, reports: 

Indiana Senator (and Permanent Chairman of the convention) Samuel Jackson described 1944 as a "fateful" election, and warned that ... a Democratic defeat would mean battleships for Hirohito and legions for Hitler. "Frankly," Jackson continued, "could Goebbels do better himself to bolster Axis morale than the word that the American people had upset this administration...? We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler's secret weapon!" Jackson's speech was but one example of an aspect of the 1944 campaign often overlooked — Nazi-baiting by Democrats and other Roosevelt supporters. Throughout the fall, there were numerous references to Dewey's "Hitler mustache" in speeches and campaign literature....

Supporters of Dewey, including John Foster Dulles and Senator Gerald Nye, were also charged with being pro-Hitler. "U.S. Fascists Want. .. [Dewey] in the White House," declared a publication of the New York County American Labor Party.

They Like Dewey — and Our Enemies Too

December 6, 1941 ... Pro-Axis

November 7, 1944... Pro-Dewey

They Have Not Changed!

Talk about invoking Hitler ...

America is not a subtle or nuanced country. We tend to get carried away, and the Internet and social media make it even easier to do so. There may be skirmishes, and there will be nastiness galore, and the upcoming year is going to be pretty rough, with a lot of bruised feelings and strained friendships. But a civil war?

I don't think so.

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Update: For a contrary point of view, see Angelo Codevilla's article "Igniting Civil War," which I came across after posting this piece earlier today. Codevilla, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, argues that "since the ruling class’s condemnations of conservatives as racists, environmental criminals, and would-be terrorists are becoming well-nigh universal, the probability of deadly attacks on conservatives ... rises to certainty....

"What happens when these [far-left] organizations organize mobs to harass their least favorite people? What happens when some of them wind up dead?

"At a certain point, the other side shoots back. Here as elsewhere, the several police forces may be expected to split and take opposite sides. Then the army’s special forces become the arbiters, and the war rages."

Something like this could happen in isolated areas, but I don't see it spreading to the nation at large. Most Americans are just not that politically engaged or motivated. And if "the army’s special forces" ever do get involved, I expect they will quickly bring an end to anarchy in the streets. I can't imagine either (left-wing) Antifa or (right-wing) Proud Boys posing much of a challenge to Army Rangers and Green Berets.