Wednesday, April Fools’ Day
I have written several April 1 posts about literature’s greatest prankster. Jonathan Swift loved April Fools’ Day and wrote essays that appeared as close as possible to that date (see the links below). I write with more serious purpose today, however, since his most-well known essay—perhaps the most notorious essay ever written—is suddenly all too relevant.
I have in mind, of course, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. Its argument, as I’m sure you know, is that scruples about eating babies should not stand in the way of economic progress. I’m not the first to note that a number of public figures are making a version of the argument regarding COVID-19: that the economic benefits of keeping our society open outweigh the humane consideration of saving lives.
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick was one of the first to put forward such a case, arguing a week ago that grandparents should be willing to die in order to ensure their grandchildren’s economic future. As USA Today reports,
The lieutenant governor of Texas argued in an interview on Fox News Monday night that the United States should go back to work, saying grandparents like him don’t want to sacrifice the country’s economy during the coronavirus crisis.
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, 69, made the comments on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight after President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months.
Patrick also said the elderly population, who the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said are more at risk for COVID-19, can take care of themselves and suggested that grandparents wouldn’t want to sacrifice their grandchildren’s economic future.
“No one reached out to me and said, ‘as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’” Patrick said. “And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”
Patrick traffics in the misconception that only older people die of the disease, but put that aside for a moment. Because he’s 69, he seems to think he’s selfless, just as Swift’s Modest Proposer assures us that he himself will not benefit from his cannibalism scheme. “I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny,” he tells us, “the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.
And then there are those who turn people into mere statistics. Trump, who once assured us that we had the virus contained and who had to be talked down from “packed churches on Easter,” is now declaring that, if we can limit COVID-19 deaths to between 100,000 and 200,00, we will have done “a very good job.”
As Washington Post’s Dana Milbank asks incredulously, “How does a human being use the phrase “a very good job” in contemplation of the deaths of 100,000 to 200,000 souls?”
Well, the same person who boasts about the high ratings of his COVID-19 news conferences:
Because the “Ratings” of my News Conferences etc. are so high, “Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers” according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. “Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.” said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!
Death for Trump has the same kind of impersonal aspect that it does for the Modest Proposer. Check out the following:
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
The Modest Proposer claims not to be inhumane—after all, he’s trying to relieve Ireland’s extreme poverty—and we have heard the president making similar arguments. Think of all the misery that will come from closing down businesses, he pleads:
“You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression.” Trump said Tuesday in a Fox News town hall. “You’re going to lose people. You’re going to have suicides by the thousands.”
Trump diehard Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson recently made a similar claim in a USA Today editorial:
Each year, approximately 48,000 Americans commit suicide and an estimated 67,000 die of a drug overdose. That level of individual despair has occurred in a strong economy with near-record low levels of unemployment in virtually every demographic.
Imagine the potential psychological and human toll if this shutdown continues indefinitely, unemployment reaches 20% or higher, as some now predict, and we sink into a deep recession or depression.
And then, just to make feel better about the losses we can expect, he reminds us that “death is an unavoidable part of life.” Besides, he adds, we’re already losing tons of people already:
Every premature death is a tragedy, but death is an unavoidable part of life. More than 2.8 million die each year — nearly 7,700 a day. The 2017-18 flu season was exceptionally bad, with 61,000 deaths attributed to it. Can you imagine the panic if those mortality statistics were attributed to a new virus and reported nonstop?
Johnson groups prospective COVID-19 death with other dead people in the same way that the Modest Proposer lumps slaughterhouse babies in with sheep, cattle, and swine. In Johnson’s argument that he is the real humanitarian, I hear the Modest Proposer’s self-righteousness:
I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of intailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed for ever.
Of course, Swift really does care about the poor. He doesn’t actually expect his proposal to be taken seriously but uses its shock value to awaken our consciences.
Trump and Johnson, on the other hand, aren’t worried about how repealing Obamacare or cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP ) will impact the suicidally-inclined destitute. Johnson’s and Patrick’s so-called worry about passing a trillion dollar deficit to the next generation didn’t come up when the GOP was handing out tax cuts to the very wealthy. (We won’t even talk about their views on passing along a warmer climate.) No, the GOP’s sudden concern for the poor arises only when a tanking economy threatens the president’s reelection prospects.
Then again, maybe I’m coming down too hard on Donald Trump. Maybe he really does feel deeply for those contracting COVID-19.
April Fool!
Posts on Swift and April Fools’ Day
Swift’s Spectacular April Fools’ Joke
Meditation upon a Broomstick (April Fool!)
Jonathan Swift, Master of Fake News