CORONAVIRUS PROPELS BATTLE OVER CIVIL LIBERTIES

For weeks on end, the bulk of our media coverage concentrated on our government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the courageous job performance of our first responders, the horrendous toll suffered by those catching the virus and family members attempting to cope with awful outcomes. At the same time we progressively complied with stay-at-home directives and social distancing mandates when interfacing with “essential” businesses. Six weeks into that new routine, the discussion appears to be changing. By mid-April analysts and critical observers, deviating from a horrifying monotone, began raising legitimate concerns about government overreach, restrictions on civil liberties and significant economic stress with no end in sight. Activists, mostly on the far-right, started to pounce on social isolation policies, general frustration with dictates limiting their freedom of movement and their inability to pursue activities needed to earn a living, demanding that America be re-opened. In the process they routinely injected ‘rights’ irrelevant to the topic at hand. The most prominent example of the latter phenomenon was amplified by highly visual reporting of a rowdy protest on the steps of the Michigan Capitol. It featured an angry mob, displaying American and Confederate flags, swastikas and nooses, armed with assault weapons. Although participation appeared relatively minimal, these demonstrations were emulated in a number of states. An often overheard battle cry of these self-styled crusaders was that they were young, healthy and not afraid. “Give me liberty or give me death.” This Patrick Henry quote, obviously out of context, but reactively appropriate, might be inferred from many of their public statements. Government response relied heavily on the scientific evidence produced by its experts. Controlling the virus necessitated social isolation, social distancing and wearing protective masks. Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer, at whom much of the anger was directed, explained why she continued to issue quarantine directives: “The fact of the matter is: It’s better to be six feet apart right now than six feet under and that is the whole point of this. We’ve got to save lives. Every life matters.” In mid-April, when many of the protests took off, our national death rate from Covid-19 was around 30,000. By early May this number had already ballooned to 68,000. A Pew research poll found that 66% of respondents was still more afraid of social isolation and distancing measures being lifted to soon. Only 12% felt that measures were going too far. In the mean time, some concerns about government overreach appeared legitimate. Rulers everywhere realized that this was the perfect time to solidify their power, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the world would barely notice. No fewer than 84 countries enacted emergency laws vesting extra powers in the executive. (“A Pandemic of Power Grabs,” The Economist, Apr. 25, 2020). In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban used the pandemic to abandon the last vestiges of democracy in his country – and to dare the EU to do anything about it. The Philippines threatened imprisonment for journalists who report what the government deems to be “false information.” Thailand authorized prison terms of up to five years for reporting what the government deems is “untrue and may cause public fear.” Iran, Jordan, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Republic banned the distribution of all print newspapers on the grounds that delivering them could spread the virus. And in our own country, the firing of Navy Captain Brett Crozier for the crime of raising alarm bells over the spreading viral risks to the sailors under his command on the USS Theodore Roosevelt is among the most vivid examples of a metastasizing trend of silencing and punishing speech, ostensibly to protect public health and order. By April 24, 840 sailors had tested positive for the virus. One died. The legal arguments dissecting domestic regulations are somewhat compelling. Dr. Joseph Ladapo, associate professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, poses a simple scenario discussing NY Governor Cuomo’s executive order that all New Yorkers wear masks in public. Cuomo’s argument, “you don’t have a right to infect me,” is an argument professor Ladapo beieves is not a weak argument. However, his counter position is also strong: Whose burden is it to show that a person is contagious in the first place? And if people aren’t contagious, on what grounds can the government force them to wear masks? Michael McDaniel, professor of constitutional law at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School is adamant these regulations are constitutional. When governments have declared state emergencies, they are acting within their rights. Their decisions are at their discretion. While these arguments preoccupy an increasing number of analysts, most of us continue to react to scientific expertise admonishing us from national platforms, surrounded by politicians. Some, however, continue to suggest that they understand that the virus is legit, that we have to be careful and smart, but that there is a limit. According to one: “I don’t trust the data and think you can put us back to work in a healthy way.” Some experts spanning law, public health and privacy policy seem to agree that there is no conflict between preserving civil liberties and containing a health crisis, that, in fact, this is a false choice. They suggest that there are technologies and tools available that will allow us to do both. Many protesters express sincere concerns, feeling frustrated and trapped in a situation with a difficult to envision light at the end of a tunnel. In March, the Disaster Distress Helpline registered a 338% increase in call volume compared with February. The American Medical Association projected concerns about the potential for significantly increased suicide rates due to factors related to the Covid-19 pandemic. If the protests, such as the one in Michigan, had not been coopted by white supremacists, Second Amendment vigilantes or opponents of mandatory vaccinations, support may have been more genuine and deemed more legitimate. As Governor Whitmer observed about these: “Some of the outrageousness of what happened at the Capitol depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country.” Angry white people with assault weapons are unlikely leaders of a national movement to reclaim our civil liberties. Theo Wierdsma

POLITICAL HISTORY SURVIVES HE PASSAGE OF TIME

 

 

One of the benefits of being quarantined is that we no longer have a choice between going to work, relax in a theater, or finding excuses for why we don’t clean our closets and other concealed spaces that begged to be organized for years. We can’t do the first two and we find ourselves stuck engaging in the latter. During that process, I came across a December 1890 edition of “The Cosmopolitan,” a periodical which, at the time, was still being published as a literary magazine. Being curious, I perused its content. Two articles stood out. Both offered a window into the political and social issues of the time. Both were written by accomplished American authors, Morat Halstead and Edward Everett Hale.

 

Halstead composed a “Review of Current Events.” 1890 was the second year of the administration of Republican Benjamin Harrison, our 23^rd president, who had won the 1888 election with an electoral majority, but losing the popular vote by more than 100,000 votes to the Democrat Grover Cleveland, our 22^nd president. While observing the similarity with our 2016 election outcome, and struggling to read his essay written in the style of prose of that time, I became aware of some other resemblances to our current political experience.

 

The article opens with an assault on what we would refer to today as “hate speech” and “fake news.” The “unrestraint criticism that is given vast circulation relating to public matters, the unsparing fault-finding and the incessant assaults to which our men of affairs are subjected and … the vigor of the aggressive writings … cause an impression of the extent of misgovernment that is misleading.” He went on to complain about press coverage, and concludes that: “We should have a care not to allow the character of the country to suffer in our understanding because it is subjected to such an extraordinary sweep of unfriendly commentary.”

 

A hallmark of Benjamin Harrison’s administration discussed and dissected in this essay as well was the passing of the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890. This legislation was framed by Representative William McKinley, who became president in 1897, and was known as the “Napoleon of Protection.” Reminiscent of President Trump’s approach to tariffs, the Act increased average duties to almost 50% and gave the president latitude to manipulate the tariff structure if other countries treated “U.S. exports in a reciprocally unequal and unreasonable fashion.”

 

Halstead suggested that even though it was far from decided if Harrison would b the party’s candidate for a second term, the president’s involvement in passing the tariff act should make him more acceptable as a strong character, and that the “ready and rude proclamations of personal dislike and disparagement of his individual consequence were unjustifiable.” He concluded that: “If the country prospers under the McKinley tariff … the president will get a large share of the credit for it.” None of this seems too far removed from our current experience and expectation.

 

The big moral issue of the time was prohibition. While Halstead touches on it, Hale makes it the entire focus of his contribution under the heading: “Social Problems.” He suggests that “everyone except a hard-shell politician would say it is the most important as it is the most difficult subject we have in hand.” He laments that, in contemporary temperance meetings,  the “physiological, ethical, social and religious discussion about personal purity, prevalent during the temperance movement of the 1830s an 1830s had been replaced by an “animated attack on the people who make and sell liquor.”

 

Both authors display a strong xenophobic disposition when contrasting American and European alcohol usage. Hale uses the example of “the poor Irishman who arrives here, in a land where, if whiskey is not cheap, money is, finds that he cannot keep up his old drinking habits. If he does, nobody will employ him.” Halstead contested that the perception that Europeans “having beer and wine to drink freely, and taught from childhood to do it without misgiving … were somehow temperate.” He asserted: It is not true. In all the great cities of Europe there is a frightful indulgence in liquors. The leading idea of the European drunkard is not individual ostentation but indulgence in the boozy luxury of utter stupidity. Intemperance is the wasting scourge of Europe …” Although temperance and prohibition don’t register in our current political climate, xenophobia certainly does. However, the language we use today is generally more temperate.

 

Just like 2020, 1890 was a census year. While we argued over language some of us wanted included in our current census, those administering the 1890 census were much less concerned. Many of the questions asked were very blunt: “Is the person able to read, write, speak English? Is the individual naturalized, or has he or she taken out naturalization papers? Is he a prisoner, convict, a homeless child, or a pauper?” And, notably: “Is the person defective of mind, sight, hearing, or speech” Is the person crippled, maimed or deformed? If yes, what was the name of his defect?” It is clear that the politically correct use of language was not terribly important to the folks in 1890.

 

During the presidential election of November, 1892, in a rematch of the closely contested 1888 election, Democrat Grover Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison, This was most like a result of the growing unpopularity of the high tariff and high federal spending, which had reached one billion dollars for the first time. Cleveland won both the popular and electoral vote that year. During his first year in office, he was confronted by the “panic of 1893,” a severe national depression that lasted until 1897, affecting all aspects of the economy.

 

In 1919 Congress ratified the 18^th Amendment to our Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors. In 1933 the 21^st Amendment was ratified, repealing prohibition.

 

Theo Wierdsma

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

PANDEMICS GENERATE CONSPIRACY THEORIES

 

 

 

A few weeks ago, I became aware that someone I have known for almost forty years drank the Kool-Aid  and unexpectedly entered an alternate reality, subscribing to conspiracy theories I had thus far relegated to the mindset of a lunatic fringe. This awakening prompted me to take a closer look at how these off the wall doctrines relate to how people are reacting to our government’s attempt to manage the current virus outbreak.

 

According to Michael Butter, a professor of American literary and cultural history, who teaches at the University of Tubingen, the outbreak of pandemics has always been accompanied by the dissemination of rumors and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories tend to claim that some covert but influential group – typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent – is responsible for unexplained events. This group is allegedly plotting to control and destroy an institution or the entire world. These theories have become increasingly common place in mass media, and emerged as a cultural phenomenon during the late 20^th and early 21^st century.

 

A fairly recent, important, entrant into the conspiracy world is QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by a so-called deep state against President Donald Trump and his supporters. QAnon came onto the scene in October of 2017, in an anonymous post published by someone using the name Q, claiming to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the U.S.. One of its prominent theories projects that the president operates at the center of a fight against a pedophile ring run by Democrats. They believe that world governments are being controlled by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles, who will eventually be brought to justice by Donald Trump.

 

Relative to Covid-19, its disciples posit the so-called “mole children” theory, which holds that the virus is a ploy to arrest members of the satanic ‘deep state’ – Tom Hanks, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton et. al. – and to release these hostages (sex-slave children) from underneath Central Park. (Joseph Uscinski and Adam Enders, “The Coronavirus Conspiracy Boom,” Th Atlantic, Apr 30, 2020.}

 

While QAnon followers may be some of the most vocal, eccentric and prominent at President Trump’s rallies, they only represent the tip of the iceberg among a plethora of coronavirus conspiracy theories. Professor Uscinski suggests that these theories come in two varieties: Those that doubt the virus’s severity and those that suggest it might be a bio-weapon.

 

Conservative-media personalities continue to cast doubt on the reality of the pandemic, even as the death toll keeps rising. Rush Limbaugh has suggested that our public health officials are deep state operatives and might not even be health experts. Some other commentators have pushed the theory that our hospitals aren’t actually treating any Covid-19 patients. And some, more closely aligned with QAnon, claim that the virus was intentionally disseminated by foreign powers like Russia or China, or by George Soros or Bill Gates, in a nefarious plot to control the world with vaccines.

 

Our current pandemic is by no means the only one generating conspiracy theories. The Black Death, which ravaged Eurasia and Northern Africa between 1345 to 1352 and killed 75-200 million, reducing the world’s population by 30%, was blamed on the Jews. European conspirators pushed the theory that Jews caused the outbreak by poisoning wells in a bid to kill all Christians and control the world. Jewish people were accused of being behind the plague and found themselves subjected to deadly progroms and forcefully displaced.

 

The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic, which ran roughly from March 1918 to April 1919 and killed 21 million people world-wide, including 600,000 Americans, germinated its own set of conspiracy theories. While this flu probably started in the U.S., not in Spain, among military troops that fanned out across Europe during World War I and spread the disease. Conspiracies tended to claim that Germany had produced “a terrible new weapon of war,” releasing the germs off a German ship in Boston Harbor and, alternatively, by German infiltrators carrying vials filled with germs brought to shore and released in theatres and other crowded places. (Ofer Aderet, Haaretz, March 26, 2020.} Another prominent theory was that the German pharmaceutical firm Bayer had inserted the germs into aspirins. The mantra became: “Take an aspirin for a headache and the germs will creep through your body. Then your fate is sealed.”

 

An interesting side-note to the spread of this pandemic is that Donald Trump’s grandfather, Frederick Trump (born Friedrich), became one of the first casualties of this virus. While out walking with Trump’s father, Fred, on May 29, 1918, Frederick suddenly fell ill. He died the next day at the age of 49.

 

Much of this is interesting for curiosity’s sake. However, when, as is estimated, that one in three Americans subscribe to some elements of current conspiracy theories, consequences are real. Blaming the coronavirus emergence on the wrong source, or doubting its seriousness, could be life threatening on a massive scale. If that many Americans believe that the effects of Covid-19 have been exaggerated and choose to forego crucial health practices, the disease could spread faster and farther then otherwise and could cost many thousands of lives. And if a significant percentage of the public questions the value and safety of vaccines and refuses to be inoculated whenever a Covid-19 vaccine is successfully produced, the health of all of us will continue to be at stake.

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

PANDEMICS GENERATE CONSPIRACY THEORIES

A few weeks ago, I became aware that someone I have known for almost forty years drank the Kool-Aid and unexpectedly entered an alternate reality, subscribing to conspiracy theories I had thus far relegated to the mindset of a lunatic fringe. This awakening prompted me to take a closer look at how these off the wall doctrines relate to how people are reacting to our government’s attempt to manage the current virus outbreak. According to Michael Butter, a professor of American literary and cultural history, who teaches at the University of Tubingen, the outbreak of pandemics has always been accompanied by the dissemination of rumors and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories tend to claim that some covert but influential group – typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent – is responsible for unexplained events. This group is allegedly plotting to control and destroy an institution or the entire world. These theories have become increasingly common place in mass media, and emerged as a cultural phenomenon during the late 20th and early 21st century. A fairly recent, important, entrant into the conspiracy world is QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by a so-called deep state against President Donald Trump and his supporters. QAnon came onto the scene in October of 2017, in an anonymous post published by someone using the name Q, claiming to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the U.S.. One of its prominent theories projects that the president operates at the center of a fight against a pedophile ring run by Democrats. They believe that world governments are being controlled by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles, who will eventually be brought to justice by Donald Trump. Relative to Covid-19, its disciples posit the so-called “mole children” theory, which holds that the virus is a ploy to arrest members of the satanic ‘deep state’ – Tom Hanks, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton et. al. – and to release these hostages (sex-slave children) from underneath Central Park. (Joseph Uscinski and Adam Enders, “The Coronavirus Conspiracy Boom,” Th Atlantic, Apr 30, 2020.} While QAnon followers may be some of the most vocal, eccentric and prominent at President Trump’s rallies, they only represent the tip of the iceberg among a plethora of coronavirus conspiracy theories. Professor Uscinski suggests that these theories come in two varieties: Those that doubt the virus’s severity and those that suggest it might be a bio-weapon. Conservative-media personalities continue to cast doubt on the reality of the pandemic, even as the death toll keeps rising. Rush Limbaugh has suggested that our public health officials are deep state operatives and might not even be health experts. Some other commentators have pushed the theory that our hospitals aren’t actually treating any Covid-19 patients. And some, more closely aligned with QAnon, claim that the virus was intentionally disseminated by foreign powers like Russia or China, or by George Soros or Bill Gates, in a nefarious plot to control the world with vaccines. Our current pandemic is by no means the only one generating conspiracy theories. The Black Death, which ravaged Eurasia and Northern Africa between 1345 to 1352 and killed 75-200 million, reducing the world’s population by 30%, was blamed on the Jews. European conspirators pushed the theory that Jews caused the outbreak by poisoning wells in a bid to kill all Christians and control the world. Jewish people were accused of being behind the plague and found themselves subjected to deadly progroms and forcefully displaced. The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic, which ran roughly from March 1918 to April 1919 and killed 21 million people world-wide, including 600,000 Americans, germinated its own set of conspiracy theories. While this flu probably started in the U.S., not in Spain, among military troops that fanned out across Europe during World War I and spread the disease. Conspiracies tended to claim that Germany had produced “a terrible new weapon of war,” releasing the germs off a German ship in Boston Harbor and, alternatively, by German infiltrators carrying vials filled with germs brought to shore and released in theatres and other crowded places. (Ofer Aderet, Haaretz, March 26, 2020.} Another prominent theory was that the German pharmaceutical firm Bayer had inserted the germs into aspirins. The mantra became: “Take an aspirin for a headache and the germs will creep through your body. Then your fate is sealed.” An interesting side-note to the spread of this pandemic is that Donald Trump’s grandfather, Frederick Trump (born Friedrich), became one of the first casualties of this virus. While out walking with Trump’s father, Fred, on May 29, 2018, Frederick suddenly fell ill. He died the next day at the age of 49. Much of this is interesting for curiosity’s sake. However, when, as is estimated, that one in three Americans subscribe to some elements of current conspiracy theories, consequences are real. Blaming the coronavirus emergence on the wrong source, or doubting its seriousness, could be life threatening on a massive scale. If that many Americans believe that the effects of Covid-19 have been exaggerated and choose to forego crucial health practices, the disease could spread faster and farther then otherwise and could cost many thousands of lives. And if a significant percentage of the public questions the value and safety of vaccines and refuses to be inoculated whenever a Covid-19 vaccine is successfully produced, the health of all of us will continue to be at stake. Theo Wierdsma