Thursday
It now appears that the Trump administration has finally come up with a coherent response to the coronavirus attack. Alfred Lord Tennyson captures it in “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
In other words, their approach is to reopen everything and send the American public charging into the teeth of the virus. Meanwhile, cannons to the left of us, cannons to the right of us volley and thunder.
We’re even hearing military analogies. Here’s the president on Tuesday:
I’m viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They’re warriors. We can’t keep our country closed. We have to open our country.
Sounding like General Buck “I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed” Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove, he continued,
I’m not saying anything is perfect. And yes, will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open.
In his turn, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) has invoked World War II, saying Monday that
the U.S. should push ahead with reopening its economy during the coronavirus pandemic because “there are going to be deaths no matter what.” He compared it to the loss of lives during the two World Wars, saying it’s a “sacrifice” Americans must make for their way of life.
“The American people have gone through significant death before,” Christie, a Republican, said on The Daily DC podcast with CNN’s Dana Bash. “We’ve gone through it in World War I, we’ve gone through it in World War II. We have gone through it and we’ve survived it. We sacrificed those lives.”
A Politico article foresaw that the GOP would get to this place, reporting in March,
Forget “15 days to slow the spread.” A growing chorus of conservatives have started arguing that older adults should voluntarily return to work to save the country from financial ruin.
Call it “economic patriotism.”
Into the valley of death are riding America’s elderly (along with doctors and nurses, meat packers, store clerks, prisoners and guards, and eventually all of us). But at least these patriots will save the economy. And (so these conservatives hope) the reelection of Donald J. Trump.
The early conservative chorus included Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who said in March, “Getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population.” (For the record, 3.4 percent of 330 million is 11.2 million).
And then there was Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s “Let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it. And those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves, but don’t sacrifice the country.” (“Taking care of ourselves” is a euphemism for dying, which residents of nursing homes have been doing in the thousands.)
In Tennyson’s poem, the soldiers are aware that a mistake has been made:
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
In our case, the blundering has been going on for months. It began by dismantling the institutions and procedures set up to fight against just such a pandemic; then ignoring the intelligence services as they warned us to take this seriously; then firing or sidelining those officials who reported the truth; then failing to use the WHO’s tests and botching our own; then failing to mobilize all our resources to provide sufficient PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and testing; then undercutting the governors trying to institute the Coronavirus Task Force’s own guidelines; and now reopening the country—or pressuring governors to do so–even as infection numbers continue rising.
Meanwhile, hospitals and nursing homes are still not getting all the PPE they need while the country continues to lag in testing and contact tracing.
Trump’s response? Close down the Coronavirus Task Force and take a suicidal gamble.
When your bungling leads to abject failure, a bold Light Brigade charge is all you have left. Maybe the Administration hopes we’ll become as inured to Covid deaths as we’ve become inured to gun deaths.
Maybe that’s what acquiescent Republicans are counting on, figuring
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
If they take an electoral beating in November, however, at least they won’t literally die. No, that privilege will be accorded to the workers ordered back to work, with loss of jobs and health benefits if they refuse. They are the ones who are being ordered to do a version of
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
But set aside stirring accounts of heroes thrown into doomed battles, whether they be calvary soldiers or nurses, doctors, and other front-line workers. For the last word on leaders who tell us that it is “sweet and fitting to die for one’s country,” turn to Wilfred Owen.
In “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen describes a different lung death, this one brought about by poison gas. He still has in mind, however, those Trumps and Christies who call on people to senselessly sacrifice themselves:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Never forget that what is happening did not need to happen. A timely and competent response would have saved tens of thousands of lives.
Nor is it too late. There are still things we can do, including donning masks, washing our hands, practicing social distancing, and calling upon our elected leaders to be responsible. If you passively accept the order to charge, you’re part of the problem.
Further thought: I’ve written about my mixed feelings about Tennyson’s poem. On the one hand, I want our heroes to be honored, as he does in the final stanza:
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
Our own version is New York applauding its front-line workers every night.
But I also think of Galileo saying, in Brecht’s play, “Unhappy the land that needs heroes.” If we had addressed the pandemic early, we wouldn’t need these heroic sacrifices.