In 1918 the Spanish flu ravaged the world, claiming 50,000,000 lives. Its toll was more than twice of the first world war. The war suppressed the flu, and the epidemic was distorted in the name of morale. The flu that year did not even originate in Spain, although there were a high number of cases reported on the Iberian Peninsula. It more likely earned the appellation as a beard, something to disseminate its true origin, to mask its gravity as America was on the heels of victory in WWI. The influenza swept the country infecting thousands, including Woodrow Wilson's family and staff, but an armistice remained the most critical matter for the working Wilson administration. In October 1918, at the height of the pandemic, Wilson wrote to MS Senator John S Williams “I would have answered your letter of October 14 sooner had not my secretary been sick with influenza.” Yet, a peaceful end to the war took precedence. The following month a ceasefire went into effect, and in January 1919 the US, France, UK, and Italy (“big four”) met in Paris. A number of the staff fell ill to the virus, including Wilson, while trying to procure an amicable end to WWI. During a voyage to France, aboard the U.S.S. Leviathan, Franklin Roosevelt—Assistant Secretary of the navy—contracted the disease. That transport yielded 2,000 deaths in all. Roosevelt was not among them. History would have indeed been altered had either Wilson or Roosevelt had succumbed to the disease. As I pointed out, globally the Spanish flu cost more than twice the lives WWI did. Over 675,000 of those, on a scale with the Civil War, were American lives. Presidents, Democrat and Republican, have for years put their own political ends or the perceived wants of the American people at the fore of their decision making process. From the outbreak in March 1918 at an army camp, there was a failure of solid leadership from Washington. Unlike today, the gaps were filled unevenly at state and local levels. if the current commander in chief is even familiar with the outbreak in 1918, there are lessons there for the taking. State governors in the states most infected with COVID-19, WA, CA, NY, have admirably risen to contain the virus as best they can. Realizing, or maybe even anticipating, that they would get no help from this administration, governors acted in an age when they should not have to be the first line of defense. It really puts a face on perhaps the ugliest American to ever stumble into the White House. It is a very disturbing perspective on America that's revealed when the governor of New York is practically begging for ventilators and PPE to avert imminent deaths. I see a monarchy forming fast, one where state governors are forced to cede their autonomy and be subject to ridicule and humiliation if they don't live in the king's world, a world where bottom-line facts and science from experts with years of experience in epidemiology are shunned for those of a failed street hustler from New York. It's not new, the smarmy, callous attitude that makes a mockery of the very word president. Just ask the mayor of San Juan who had to beg for federal aid after hurricane Maria. The image of El Presidente glibly tossing rolls of paper towels, ala Marie Antoinette, will never leave my mind as I'm sure it haunts hers. It stands as an omnipresent reminder of the candor with which this president reacts to peoples' suffering, even their impending death. It is replayed each time he lumbers to the presidential podium to dispence “happy talk” like pez that fails to be based in, to outright contradict, the facts that most often follow from a frustrated, exasperated, and exponentially muted Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Winds of War
Donald Trump is not the first commander in chief whose actions directly cause deaths that could have been mitigated, even prevented. In modern history he is the first sitting president to hold that dubious distinction, but hardly the first to put political gain before what could clearly (or unclearly) lead to life and death situations. In 1968 presidential candidate Richard Nixon played with the outcome of the Vietnam War, fixing it for his own political gain. In October his mediator Anna Chennalut told South Vietnamese ambassador to the US Bùi Diêm to “hold on,” assuring him Nixon could win and get them a better deal as president than the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey. This information cause him to leave the table at the Paris peace talks. The war, which was nearing an end following Johnson's bombing halt announced Halloween night, ground on for another five years, claiming over 21,000 American lives. COVID-19 stems from a naturally occurring virus, likely initially transmitted to humans from an animal, possibly a bat, in China. The story goes that its existence was suppressed in the Wuhan province by an authoritarian government. It was not contained in its infancy and eventually migrated with humans to reach continent after continent, brought to North America by cruise ships. As early as December 2019 news of the outbreak was ignored by the federal government. Trump knew and failed, or chose not to act. As with much else, if only out of spite, he had fired the pandemic response team in 2017 that Obama had put in place. His decision to not accept the test for COVID-19 offered by WHO made the US the only country not to have a method of testing in place in the critical months of January and February. And once again, as with the Paris Climate Accord, America looks pretty pathetic bragging of its place in the world. This inept president took a naturally ocurring disaster, one that likely could have been significantly mitigated before it reached this continent, and made it worse, and continues to do so.
Unconscionable Since the 19th century, Republicans have gotten worse as a party. The GOP carpetbags, instinctually, after or during most wars. They love to exploit the human condition for their own personal gain. Contrary to the bibles they tote, extoll in America, particularly in the South, they are ethically the furthest thing from true Christianity I know. And “pro-life,” what a load of red-tinted herring this is. It is a smoke-screen, as is much of the bible, for controlling women. Anyone in this administration claiming to be pro-life has lost the sentiment's ounce of credibility. They argue for the rights of the unborn. Right now Trump and the rest and casually causing the deaths of some young people who could parent a child. They consistently put money, and the inevitable disprarity of it, they put a strong economy before the lives, young, old, or unborn. Because, unlike them, COVIDs do not discriminate.