The photo (above) is of the paper goods isle of Walmart, Sandpoint, Id., on Sunday, 3/15/2020. A young mother with a couple of kids in tow had 2 30-roll bricks of toilet paper in her cart, the only tp that I saw in the entire store. Is this what modern-America panic looks like?
On that same day, we rolled into a gas-‘n-stop for fuel and corn nuts. A fellow customer waiting in line mentioned a wild rumor on social media that Trump is considering the closing of the interstates. Panic, once again, in the age of Trump?
Our eyes and ears are saturated with “pandemic” and doctors on tv with warnings galore. Social interaction has become a dirty word. It’s “coronavirus this” and “coronavirus that” everywhere we look. Is America starting to resemble in thought and deed the America of the 1938 radio broadcast “War of the Worlds” by Orson Welles?
Are we, modern sophisticates, really so “above that”? I doubt it in the age of Trump. Trumpophobes see all external stimuli with real or imagined evil intent as emanating from Trump. “Trump’s Katrina” is bandied about in the same manner as “abortion” and “control of her body” comes off the lips of Madonna.
Maybe what’s at work is something I call “vortex thinking”. Most everything of consequence today goes down two vortices: Trump and climate change. The Polar Vortex of a few years back, with its bone-chilling temps, was blamed on … global warming. A tornado that passes through your backyard is pinned on … global warming. Etc., etc. Regarding Trump, anything that’s bad in your life is due to … Trump. Everything that’s bad to anyone at any given time is placed at the feet of Trump.
George Will – no fan of Trump by any means – calls the phenomena “Caesaropapism”. Our presidents are now accorded demigod status. They are expected to control the tides in the manner of Persian king Xerxes flogging the Hellespont for destroying his pontoon bridge in the advance of his invasion of Greece in 480 BC.
Depending on the group of boosters, a president is saintly or evil incarnate. He or she is expected to be a master marionette controlling the actions of 330 million individuals. Does “sophistication” now mean thinking like a 5-year-old? Apparently so.
Right now, we are experiencing the first natural disaster to be pinned on the next-Republican-president-in-line. Bush 41 was pasted with the rather mild recession of 1991-1992. Bush 43 had his hurricane. Trump’s is COVID-19.
What separates a hurricane and a virus from an economic downturn is the fact that recessions are, indeed, man-caused. They may occur due to a constellation of actions that were taken earlier in a president’s term, or, more likely, they erupt from the gestation of factors unleashed long before he took the oath. Ditto for the good economic times. For instance, back in 2008-9, the bills came due after many years of easy money and political pressures to extend mortgages to financially insecure people. Obama rode it to the presidency. Ironically, his wing of the Dem Party had a big role in setting up the dominoes.
Now we have the coronavirus. Yeah, it’s unique … like all the previous strains were unique. Sure, take all the practical mitigations available but remember, this thing, like the earlier ones, will have to run its course. We have one thing going for us: we aren’t the Athens of 480 BC, or Constantinople of 541-542, or Europe of the mid-14th century.
Please, get some perspective … and stop hoarding the toilet paper!
RogerG