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Eponyms

Don’t look it up: you know the word already! When the band Boston cut their record-selling first album, you certainly heard a radio DJ refer to it as their “eponymous” album, and somehow you figured out the album title was just their name. Eponyms, names which develop a permanent meaning on their own, have a long history. For the person, they are a source of immortality: statues can be torn down (oh. can they!), histories forgotten (or never learned), but words, they long outlast us.

Sometimes brands become eponyms: most people reach for a kleenex when they sneeze, and who doesn’t google something they don’t know? But for individuals, it’s a rare honor. Well, there was ancient Sissyphus, who gave us our favorite adjective for endlessly uncompleted work. Dr. Mesmer sold us a technique to hypnotize, and Elbridge Gerry donated a political tool for manipulating elections. Then there is Charles Cunningham, or at least that was the name he used during a visit to the States in 1881.

Charles was an English land agent and tenant-farm owner in 19th century Ireland. He was not particularly mean or greedy (for his type), but was still disliked by the Irish peasants who worked his lands. After a dispute over rents, the peasants decided to stop working for him, and encouraged (in the way only the Irish can, with a shillelagh) everyone else in the locality to join in. No bread from the bakery, no mail from the postboy, no goods from the grocery. Charles had to call on Orangemen from Ulster to salvage his crops, protected by soldiers, at his expense. There was no violence (sure and begorrah, a miracle), but the costs to Charles were ruinous, forcing him to leave Ireland for good. He left with his reputation intact, but not his good name. See, his full name was Charles Cunningham Boycott, and his name came to signify the kind of protest which brought him near to ruin.

The Irish peasants’ rebellion against Mr. Boycott was peaceful, proportionate, and purposeful, to borrow the three rules I suggested for protests. Peaceful, since while there were insinuations of potential violence by both sides (and a long history of real violence), none happened this time. Proportionate since they limited their actions: they didn’t shutdown the province or target his relations. Purposeful in that Mr. Boycott was the source of the protestors’ concern: they left the Orangemen, the Crown, and the Union Jack out of it. Oh, and they were successful!

Which is a long way of getting to the subject of boycotts. In today’s hyper-partisan world, where all things associated with the other side are not only wrong, they are evil, boycotts are much called for. There is always a danger in such actions: what if the target is not whom you thought? What if otherwise innocent people are harmed? How well do you know the actions, reasons, and intentions of the party for whom you’re supporting a boycott? Ah, nevermind!

As a helpful guide to all sides looking to avoid conducting business with evil, I’ve gathered the data (and sources, at the hyperlinks). I’ll use the general terms Republican and Democrat, as that is the way campaign contributions are counted in the States. The data actually shows how the employees of a given firm donate, as the companies themselves cannot do so under federal law.* And I’ll note where some the donations break equally, but what does that mean? Does it demonstrate evenhandedness, or a particularly amoral view that as long as they give roughly equivalent money to both sides, they’re safe from partisanship (but guilty of hypocrisy)?

As to the links, Business Insider covers the Fortune 500 top donating companies here. Progressives seem much taken with boycotts, so the Progressive Shopper has a site (and a Chrome extension) to guide you. They go beyond the basics of who-gives-how-much-to-whom and include such other issues as “Fox News Advertisers” and “pink-washing.” Finally, Goods Unite Us lets you have the data as an app.

Staying on the correct side of the lines is complicated. Democrats would want to fly only British Airways, Virgin Airways, or something called Evergreen International Airlines. Except that last one has longstanding ties to the CIA! Republicans are safe with United, American, and Southwest, but Delta splits down the middle. Anyway, Boeing and Lockheed Martin give almost equal money to both sides, so you’re going to need to check the make of your plane in addition to the airline, to remain unsullied.

Republicans will have to do without FaceBook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, ATT, Verizon, and Intel, so learn to program with Java, operate on Linux, and can you still get dial-up? Since they have so much time on their hands without the internet, Republicans can shop at Home Depot and Publix, use Revlon products, and eat at Chick-fil-A and Papa John’s, all off-limits to true believer Democrats.

No gassing up at Exxonmobil for Democrats, no caffeinating at Starbucks for Republicans. According to the money, Amazon is sort of ok for Democrats, but they “are a Fox News advertiser, enable the gun industry, fund anti-abortion politicians, ‘pinkwash’ LGBT+ rights, and dodge taxes” . . . but don’t even think of shopping at EBay or WalMart instead! Most major financial institutions split evenly, as does Johnson & Johnson, Best Buy, and Target. Best to check further first. Exhausting, no?

Yet that’s the easy part. How to discern the implications of the policies of a major multinational? Apple is famous for standing up to the US government to protect the privacy of its customers, but enables China’s government to spy on its own citizens. What about the difference between a corporation and its franchises? What about the individuals? Is the manager at your local REI a tree-hugger or a survivalist boogaloo boy? How would you know? If you really care (and that’s the point, isn’t it?), most states have laws requiring public records of campaign donations. So you can check these things out.

Federal records, check. State records, check.

Boycotts can be an effective, if sometimes slow-acting, tool: the treatment of South Africa under the apartheid regime is a case in point. They can be faster and more effective when done locally (per Mr. Boycott). Yet there is a difference between holding someone accountable for their direct actions and shunning them for some second or third-order relationship. Life seems so much easier when lived in a bubble of certainty: “don’t be evil” as Google proclaimed. But the truth is so much more difficult to face. So have at it, but remember: no excuse for not knowing, the data is out there, if you really care.

*Yes, it is possible for companies to create PACs and use other means to funnel money to candidates, parties, and campaigns, but that just muddies the water further.

La Lluvia

Pronounced “la YU-vi-a”, it is Spanish for the rain. Frequent readers will notice that I have tried to wax rhapsodic about the coming of the rainy season. I don’t think people who live with intermittent rains all year long can really understand what it’s like to go without rain for six months. There is a dryness in the air that, like the polvo (dust) from the road, gets into the very soul. The omnipresent sun, such a blessing, becomes a curse only shade can aleve. There is a reason, I believe, the word arid in English has negative connotations in climate and relationships. The old joke “yeah, but it’s a dry heat” is only a joke told in temperate climates.

Here in the waning days of June, any precipitation is a cause for expectation. Is this it: the end of the dry season, the beginning of the rain? Even the year after a year of record rainfall (when some locals were worried about the potential for flooding because the lake had not receded much and the rainy season was about to begin): yes, even then we welcomed the advent of the rains.

In the temperate world, rain requires context. A drenching rain in summer cools off the land, while the cold rains of Spring are a plague (ask me about my Camino!). Rain in the winter yields the careful calculation of the freezing point. In the workaday world, rain meant accidents and delays on crowded highways. Rain on a long run might be acceptable, but rain on a picnic: no.

Here it is different. Rain changes everything, and heralds the best time of the year. During the dry season, water your plants everyday or they die, unless you choose (like me) to plant succulents native to this high desert plateau. During the rainy season, water the garden mañana. The extra fine coating of dust which nightly overlays your terracotta tile floor, suggesting an ice rink, magically disappears. The strategic positioning of curtains–to block the relentless sun–and fans–to promote circulation–are suddenly unnecessary. Each evening, clouds do the blocking and winds whip up (whence tonight?) to clear the air.

Then the rain: cooling, thunderous, at times horizontal and changing cardinal directions at a moment’s notice. And of course the freshness that is everywhere after a good hard rain. When we first moved here, I would scurry to close the windows from the capricious rain. Then I realized that the water just collects on the tile, and you brush it out the door or let it dry and so what?

Reign on me!

It is saddening that the snowbirds who overwinter here in Mexico mostly miss the rainy season. The transition period, when our flora move from Phoenix to Honolulu, when the temperature briefly flirts with too hot before settling into wonderful, and the sun passes from scorching to friendly: that is what makes some call it paradise.

The Ides of June are well past, so we’ll have no early start to the rainy season. But start it will. It rained once last week, and then again two nights back. And now again last night. There is something different in the air, and it is as welcome as an old friend.

Interesting Times

No doubt you’ve heard of the ancient Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times.” It’s a legend, of course, and no such statement exists in Chinese; the closest aphorism is something about it being better for dogs in routine times than for humans in changing times. The saying remains popular despite its lack of provenance (it appears in 1930s England) because it rings true. All change is hard; great change is phenomenally difficult.

Seems like we do live in interesting times. Of late, we’ve had protest and riot coming on the heels of plague and economic collapse, following populism and climate change and financial disaster, which was preceded by accelerating technological advance and geopolitical change. Phew!

Some Christian sects constantly survey the news for signs of the impending End Times, and these days they have plenty of ammunition. Actually, they always have. There is a constant historical theme of how important and decisive today’s events are. What first-person histories we have contain comments by people great and small about how amazing it was to live through, well, any period of history. And from the standpoint of the individuals involved, it was all true: it was incredible (to them) to live through the era they did. Judgment Day remains scheduled for mañana.

This notion rises to its zenith in Presentism, a philosophical mistake that emphasizes things now at the expense of things past. It shows up when people treat current events as unprecedented, current fads as enduring or inevitable, and evaluate history using current standards. Presentism requires a unique combination of lack of historical knowledge and collective egotism. We’re witnessing an amazing peak of Presentism today.

I’ve seen claims we’re on the verge of a fascist takeover of the United States. Some cite secret conspiracies about vaccines, chips, or tracking apps. Several have quoted my favorite bomb-thrower, Thomas Paine, to the extent that “these are the times that try men’s souls” and call for action! Presidential abuse of power, crime, protest, anti-semitism, racial violence (especially by the police), and technological change are peaking. Except that they aren’t. Some are increasing, others stagnant or decreasing. Plus ça change . . .

Looks like a right reasonable chap, what?

Thomas Paine may be the ideal (if ironic) icon for our times. Paine was a failed English businessman who, at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, avoided debtor’s prison by emigrating to the colonies. His signature writing style was a clever mix of diatribe and well-turned phrases, making him easily the most followed writer during the American Revolution. His fellow revolutionaries (and historians since) credit his tracts, especially “Common Sense” with being the fuel that ignited the larger movement.

As it turns out, Thomas was a one-note wonder. His bombast was always stuck on “high” and he inevitably destroyed friendships with shrill accusations. He moved to Paris during the French Revolution, cheering it on as it went from Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité to guillotine, garrote, and grotesquery. He was saved from execution only by the happy coincidence of a jailor’s misplaced mark on his cell door, and the impending turn of the tide against Robespierre, the architect of his imprisonment. He remained an ardent fan of the cause.

Paine ended up safely back in the States, but turned his ire on the one icon above reproach: George Washington. Paine accused Washington of hypocrisy, treachery, and vainglory, doing no damage to Washington’s legacy but cementing Paine’s reputation as a bitter polemicist. He died separated from his former friends, practically unmourned. When an English admirer later disinterred his remains for more honorable reburial in England, the remains were lost.

Thomas Paine was a wicked good writer, and many of his ideas about freedom and equality were as stirring as they were ahead of his time. Yet he couldn’t brook disagreement, viewed compromise as surrender, and saw excess as pure zeal. If atheists named patron saints, he’d be the patron saint of Twitter, if not social media writ large. Somehow, he was right about the revolution, but wrong about so much more.

Truth, Belief, Action (III)

In the first two posts, we considered truth versus narrative and the power of beliefs to propel either good or bad behavior. Now is the time for Action!

Peaceful protest is good, even when it’s wrong. What do I mean by wrong? Remember, there is objective truth, and sometimes people get worked up about something that isn’t right or true. Even in that case, protest is good. Peaceful protest is putting one’s belief into action, and that is the right thing to do. I respect people who go out, get together, and make their voices heard. Not with a #hastag, not with a social media frame, with their time, blood, sweat, and tears. If you really believe in something, put away your phone and join in. If you’re a bandwagon fan, re-tweet. #virtuesignalling. That is to say, joining an online campaign is a lukewarm action: it is ok for supporting mass-transit, unacceptably lame for fighting violence or racism. Serious issues demand serious responses. Twitter is lame.

How should we protest? I suggest all protests must be peaceful, proportionate, and purposeful. This is not an original idea: you’ll notice I have borrowed conceptually from from St. Augustine’s Just War theory here. Peaceful is non-negotiable: our right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution is protected ONLY when done “peaceably.” ((The exception often voiced about armed resistance is exactly that: an exception, in that it is no longer protest, it is revolt. This is why I often chide my friends about making broad generalizations today about totalitarianism or comparisons to Nazi Germany. If you make these, and really believe it, you are morally required to take up arms (unless, of course, you’re a pacifist). Failure to act in the face of enormity is morally suspect, so be careful with sweeping generalizations. Sorry for the long aside. Back to the principles of protest.))

Peaceful, yes, but also proportionate and purposeful. Proportionate relates to the size and type: one doesn’t set oneself on fire because of an unjust parking ticket. Thousands don’t paralyze a city over determining trash collection days. Purposeful refers to the target of the protest being the correct one: if your beef is with the police, it is improper to protest at the fire department. ((Two asides in one post? Mea culpa!! I believe that Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest fails in this regard. It is peaceful and proportionate, but the National Anthem is neither the root nor cause of local police violence, so his effort is misdirected. I understand that he feels his views garner more coverage by protesting a national symbol in a mass communications event, but what that also does is invite unnecessary controversy. More importantly, when you decide to re-target your protest to gain maximum publicity, you start down the proverbial slippery slope: why not peacefully jam 911 lines to make your point?))

Violent protest, like violence in general, is evil. It is not understandable, or justified, or necessary, all terms I have heard used to describe what is happening in the States recently. What we need is not violent protest, but protest against violence. I contend that America’s basic issue is not racism, but violence: we have a violence problem.

It’s not an original thought. Back in the 60’s, an activist then-named H. Rap Brown rejected Dr. King’s non-violent approach, and espoused black violence with the slogan “violence is as American as cherry pie.” I think he was right for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t racism when a veritable rainbow coalition of police officers murdered George Floyd. It wasn’t racism when a line of white riot cops knocked down and rendered unconscious an old white pacifist. It wasn’t racism when a slew of federal agencies cleared peaceful protestors out of a public park with pepper spray. It wasn’t racism when someone decided to try to execute two black cops in New York City. It wasn’t racism when people of color and pasty white suburban dudes looted stores together. It’s violence.

Think about it. Other cultures remark on America’s tendency to violence and it does stand out. We relish American football when it is at its most violent. When we play what the rest of the world calls football, they criticize us as unskilled and “too physical.” Our heroes are most often men of action who stand up and fight, often viciously. Take that tendency to violence and a constitutional right to bear arms and what do you get? More gun violence than anywhere else, including other nations that are heavily armed. More armed robberies and violent assaults. More road rage. People fighting over sales in stores. People screaming at diners in restaurants. Violence.

Solutions?

Let’s start with the problem du jour: not police racism, but police violence. Demilitarize the police. They have added ever-more elaborate weapons and riot control gear at the same time the crime rate has plummeted. Go back to community policing, which puts cops on the streets not looking to pad statistics but in a non-adversarial role. Camden, New Jersey, did this with solid results. In what moral order is a choke hold still a police policy option? Pass rules requiring officers to intervene immediately in the case of active violations by fellow officers. Require training for recruits coming from a military background on the differences between the two cultures. Don’t bust up police unions, but perhaps make them liable for on-duty crimes committed by their members, thus turning the blue wall of silence into a self-policing community. And for God’s sake, stop the “defund police” nonsense. People who were screaming about the President’s defunding of WHO during a pandemic are calling for defunding the police during riots? Can we be intellectually consistent for a few moments here?

Protestors? Peaceful, Proportionate, Purposeful. Immediately turn in anyone fomenting violence (which has sometimes happened recently, but nowhere near enough). And no more quick bail/dropped charges: violate the order and go into lock up and face full prosecution (remember, this would only apply to those inciting or committing violence). It would be nice if the slogans protestors used bore some relation to the truth, since the slogans tend to become part of a narrative, and I think I showed how dangerous false narratives can be.

Government? Spend more effort on stopping violence and less on the motives of the violent. I don’t care whether Officer Chauvin was a racist or not: he needs to be tried (and convicted) of murder. I don’t care whether the people throwing Molotov cocktails or looting stores are animal liberationists, boogaloo boys, or anarchists: charge and convict them for their actions. In general, government at all levels should seek de-escalation during protests. This isn’t even 1968, let alone Shay’s Rebellion. Leave the Insurrection Act for when it is needed. It is not needed today.

Citizens? Be active. Protest if it really means something to you. I disagreed with the gun-toters protesting CoVid19 restrictions a few weeks past, but they were peaceful, proportionate, and purposeful: have at it! Police your fellow protestors. Just make sure you’ve done your homework (find the truth, not the narrative) and you always approach your effort from love. What about the “we’re really facing evil this time, it’s different” claim? Check your narrative bias. The civil rights movement faced an entrenched system of racism backed by dogs, guns, and fire hoses. It won by facing all this hate and violence with love, cementing support from Americans who couldn’t stand to be on the other side any longer. Think it’s worse today? Where’s that data? Is it worse today than in 1852? I’ll give the last word* to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who ended Uncle Tom’s Cabin thusly:

There is one thing that every individual can do,—they can see to it that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? Or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?

* This quote was brought to my attention by Dale M. Coulter in a recent First Things essay. Lincoln allegedly said to Stowe “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

PS. If you think I am overstating the danger of narrative, consider this: Uncle Tom, the protagonist of Ms. Stowe’s masterpiece, is a hero. He is a model of quiet dignity and refusal to respond with violence to violence. In the book, his example even elicits grudging admiration from his slave masters. In the world of the 19th century, his example won over countless people who previously were on the fence about slavery. During the civil rights movement, those espousing violence started a narrative that such a peaceful response to evil was a cop-out, and turned the character’s name into an epithet, which is what it is to this day.

Truth, Belief, Action (II)

In part I we focused on truth versus narrative. Now, let’s turn to belief.

Beliefs can be profound or casual. Let’s focus on deeply-held beliefs here. The casual ones will come up again in Part III, about Action. Suffice it to say you can always tell the difference. To borrow a sports analogy, if someone says they are a fan of a team, but they don’t watch the team, attend games, or know the players, they aren’t much of a fan: they have a casual belief in the team. They’re known as bandwagon fans; nobody likes bandwagon fans.

Our beliefs (in general) come from our experiences. You can be given a belief system (say from your parents), but if your experiences don’t confirm that system, you will reject it. Belief can become a powerful force, shaping how we view future experiences, and thus creating a vicious cycle: we see only what we want to see. A police officer who arrests criminals all day starts to see criminals everywhere, not fellow citizens. A young black man constantly told he will be mistreated by the police might act rashly when confronted by officers, providing the excuse for that mistreatment. You can find evidence of this daily. A President who sees any criticism as a personal attack becomes unable or unwilling to admit a mistake, however trivial.

Yet belief can also be the force for a virtuous cycle: ignoring the harmful, rejecting the hateful, and focusing always on the good, which then elicits a positive outcome . . . in the fullness of time. It was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s nonviolence which eventually won the day; it was he who said “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” This emphasis on non-violence and love works because it is in accord with the truth. Violence may make progress in the short run, and hatred or rage may feel good for a sort period of time, but in the end, they are futile.

Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong

Some people believe that the American system is inherently racist. Some people believe that American police forces are racist. These beliefs stem from a experiences that, while real, are not true. Data deny them. I have lived in three countries, studied and visited many more. Every one which with I am familiar has a problem with racism. I endured lectures from my European friends about the racism of Americans only until their sisters were dating black US GIs. Sweden was a progressive racial utopia until it admitted dissimilar refugees. The Soviet Union? Read about the experience of African communists there. Asia? Perhaps the most brutally racist area of all, although many times its racism hides behind a polite smile. Mexico? Check out the furor over last year’s indigenous star of the movie Roma.

I am not arguing American racism is an illusion; rather, it is inherent in the human condition. We have a natural experiment in history to help understand this. The Republic of South Africa was the one country in modern times to believe in and enact a policy of state-sanctioned racism: apartheid. From this, we know what an inherently racist system looks like. A black RSA President was impossible to fathom under apartheid. Black athletes, black cultural stars, black academics, black professionals, black leaders: unlikely. All things modern America has enjoyed. Understanding the role racism plays–as a universal problem–is key to the way forward.

Likewise, those who see any criticism, any protest, any resistance to the current administration or the American system as unjustified, un-American, or treasonous are also wrong. They clutch at unfair criticism–which there is plenty–and reject all criticism. The MAGA crowd, the press, and the President have something in common: they believe it is all about Trump. It’s not. And we can’t get to the root of the problem until we get past that misapprehension.

Like Dr. King, I am not arguing for passive acceptance, or standing by idly and waiting for change. I am arguing that in order to make change, you must first accept truth, remove the blinders of your narrative, and love one another, unconditionally. Any other approach will end with more fear, more hatred, and more recriminations and revenge. That sets the stage for Action, my final post in this series, tomorrow.

Truth, Belief, Action (I)

There is so much emotion out there right now: pain, hate, fear & loathing. As a friend recently reminded me, catharsis has its use. If there is a time for all things (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8), then there is a time for rage, too. But then, too, “let us stop talking falsely now, the hour’s getting late.” (Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower)

When the dust settles and the smoke clears, we must put down our signs, our bricks and bottles, our tear gas and shields, and reason once again. In the end, there are truth, belief, and action; the first of these is truth.

Truth matters. There is only one truth, not your truth or my truth. We each have experiences which can be (in fact, always are) different. But there is objective truth. The truth is that a man was apprehended, then needlessly and intentionally murdered. Another truth is that thousands of people of all races and nations are so upset by this fact that they are peacefully protesting. A third truth is that a not insignificant number of people joining the protests are then fomenting violence, ending in destruction of property, looting, and violence to both police and innocent bystanders.

The problems start when we stop worrying about truth and start considering the term in vogue today: narrative. We used to call this a meta-story, or spin, or even propaganda. Narrative places truth at the service of a larger idea. This idea then colors how we understand the truth, sometimes directly undermining it. Which is dangerous.

How does it work?

If you’re a progressive, your narrative includes the ideas that the American system is fundamentally racist, that blind justice is not justice at all, that the system is rigged against minorities. The murder of George Floyd typifies an epidemic of police violence against African-Americans, the arrests at protests the willful authoritarianism of the American police state. Looting is the act of clandestine cells of Boogaloo boys or the understandable outrage boiling over after centuries of mistreatment and marginalization.

If you sport a MAGA hat, the suspect was a defrauder. You scan his autopsy for the tell-tale signs of alcohol or drugs and presume he resisted arrest. The protests are either the beginning of a race war or a carefully-staged provocation funded and organized by George Soros to undermine the President’s re-election. AntiFa is the cause of violence; looting is what bad people always do, given the opportunity.

Exaggerations? Hardly! I would provide links to these views, but then I don’t want to encourage their spread. But they are legion. You may have visited a site espousing them.

How do such narratives undermine the truth? Mr. Floyd was only a suspect–not a criminal–there is no evidence he ever resisted anything except to beg to be allowed to breathe. If you want to check the data on police violence, the Washington Post and The Guardian have the best data sets: but you won’t find evidence to support an epidemic against minorities. Believe it or not, the numbers haven’t increased for years. As to the protests, most were peaceful, and while no one doubts outside instigators were behind some of the violence, there is no evidence of a vast, coordinated conspiracy. As it happens, there was violence at protests long before the Boogaloo movement or AntiFa existed. It happens when masses of emotional people get together.

The Boston Massacre: without AntiFa or the Boogaloo boys, yet violence ensued!

What both sides get wrong is their reliance on narrative in place of truth. See how the man, George Floyd, gets lost in the narrative? He becomes a symbol, a prop, a cudgel used to bash a competing narrative.

What was the simple truth? A man was accused of committing a misdemeanor crime. He was murdered, without resistance, by the police after being apprehended. All four policemen involved were fired twenty-eight hours after his death. None of the officers involved cooperated in the investigation (i.e., they all pled the Fifth Amendment), thus prolonging it. The policeman directly responsible for his murder was charged within four days. The other officers were charged five days later, and the initial charges upgraded to murder in the second degree. According to the Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, the decision to charge and the timing of those charges were unrelated to the protests. Don’t believe him? Google him and try to stick him in your narrative.

When people replace truth with narrative, bad things happen. People start to believe in narrative the way that honest people believe in truth. And that can have terrible consequences. Which leads to Part II on Belief.

Re-opening, cautiously

As expats, we’re all strangers in a strange land, but never more so than now. Today all expats live in the same place: pandemia. Expats always face the fundamental challenge of how and where to access healthcare, and that challenge stares one in the face when sick or injured abroad. I’ve written before that–especially for older retiree expats–healthcare is the number one reason expats return to their homeland.

Any Coronavirus? Why are you so close to me? Where’s your mask? Did I hear a hawk?

A pandemic places those challenges in a particularly harsh light. You may have health insurance, but how does it consider an outlier event like a pandemic? Many folks with travel insurance learned that their insurers treated a pandemic as a force majeure, an act of God, outside coverage: surprise! Going to the doctor or hospital and dealing with medical terminology is difficult enough, but how about translating all that through a foreign language? Now add in crowded conditions and overwhelmed staffs. How does your host country view palliative care, determine treatment priorities (e.g., limiting ventilators to younger patients), or distribute new medicines? When the local government suggests you stay home via a police helicopter loudspeaker overhead, does that mean “please” or “or else!”?

I get a weekly reminder from the US Embassy in Mexico City that some flights are still available, as well as a note saying that if I wait too long I may not be able to return when I want. The Canadian government went a step further, I am told, and basically directed Canadian expats to return or face the loss of their health coverage, which instigated a mass take-off of Canadian snowbirds northward.

The Mexican government has taken a low-key approach to the pandemic. The state-run health system is chronically underfunded and understaffed, so the biggest problem has been lack of capacity. The federal government has not emphasized testing, as testing is mainly useful as a guide to treatment, and their logic is since no treatment is available, why test? Instead they have emphasized social distancing, masks, and closures/lockdowns, while tracking hospital admissions and trying to create additional capacity when and where it is needed. Of course transparency is also not a big thing in government here, so it is unclear how well the approach is working.

We have a daily press briefing with Presidente AMLO, and color-coded charts of cases, and phases of closure/reopening. The state of Jalisco has somewhat gone its own way, while not violating the federal government’s guidelines. We are currently in something called “fase cero” (phase zero) which is a preparatory phase for businesses to get certified to reopen starting June 1st. Except now we’re not.

Overnight, the federal government changed the criteria and reporting grades on the country, moving every state (save Zacatecas) to “maximum risk” without further explanation. While the government’s own data has shown the number of cases rising, there was no sudden spike in deaths/hospitalizations. According to the federal government, this new status freezes reopening for the foreseeable future. Some critics say the move appears to be an attempt to deflect blame if things get worse.

However, Governor Alfaro of Jalisco has other ideas. He has decided not to accept the federal description of our state’s data, and instead continue with Phase Zero activities for two more weeks. For locals, that’s great news! Here is the Governor’s address (all fifteen minutes of it) with subtitles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I50IoVCEXRs&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2JV_1lrOcg8s49f63D4jfNZ0yWqIgyZWzUp0t1QlfMNmvXJu7LA9QaR20

This announcement is full of entreaties to the citizens of Jalisco to keep doing the right thing (social distancing, mask wearing, etc.) so we can continue to advance out of the lockdown. It reminds me of the old maxim “if you want to be treated as responsible adults, act like responsible adults.”

For our part, we’re (cautiously) enjoying the extra freedom.

Lunch @ Gosha’s? 300 pesos
Four glasses of wine? 200 more pesos
Out with the most wonderful woman in the world? priceless!

Everything you know is wrong VII: Coronavirus edition

Watching the medical system, governments, and the public come to terms with the coronavirus has been fascinating. It calls to mind the old joke about why they call it “the practice of medicine”: because they haven’t perfected it yet! While viruses are old hat, each behaves differently, so what worked last pandemic may not work this time. The treatment must match the disease, which only becomes clear over time. Meanwhile, it spreads, and sickens, and kills.

Governments face many dilemmas: respond quickly and risk being considered panicky, wait and be charged with neglect. Mandate behavior and you’re a totalitarian, suggest and you’re weak. Act early and the public will weary of your measures, bide your time and the media will roll out a list of casualties.

The public (and the media) bears some responsibility, too. We want clarity when clarity is not possible. Our demands for scientific certainty are answered by Professor Heisenberg, who determined there are areas with fundamental limits about what we can know for sure. Anybody who has faced a serious diagnosis from a doctor across the table knows the routine: they only suggest courses of treatment, not rules. The public writ large got to experience–all at the same time–what only an unlucky few do everyday.

In that spirit, what’s been wrong about coronavirus? Even though it’s still early, a few obvious “truths” have met their demise:

Masks, especially homemade or surgical ones, do no good against this virus. Early mask adoption is one of the few consistent characteristics of countries which have experienced a less severe outbreak. Some blame governments for spreading the “useless mask” error, but the CDC message was more nuanced: N95 masks work, but IF the virus spreads mostly via aerosol particles, it will pass through other masks. Researchers now believe that transmission is primarily via droplets (not aerosol), so governments began to recommend or mandate masks. However, aerosol transmission is a possibility, so the government can’t say “wear a mask and you’ll be ok” because that is not always the case. So the utility of masks was really a function of understanding the disease. Sadly, some still believe masks are not helpful at all.
Lockdowns are a solution, not just a measure to buy time and “flatten the curve.” A lockdown does work. If everybody on the planet locked themselves in their houses for fourteen days (the apparent incubation period), the virus would be at least temporarily arrested. But most people can’t do that. Governments sold lockdowns as a means to slow the spread of the disease, avoid overrun hospitals (i.e., flatten the curve ) and buy time for therapies and vaccines. But no country can extend a lockdown for months, let alone a year (when a vaccine might be ready). Which leads to a related falsehood:
Reopening the economy puts money ahead of lives. This is a particularly nasty charge, that if a nation reopens it does so heedless of the possible deaths which would ensue. More importantly, it is wrong. There is death on both sides of the ledger: Covid19 deaths versus heart attacks missed, cancer undiagnosed, deaths of despair accelerated and so on. Some suggest that the immediacy of coronavirus death trumps the counter argument, but that is also wrong. The World Food Program, the UN organization responsible for fighting world hunger, has noted that the breakdown in the global economy will place another 130 million people (total 265 million) worldwide in danger of starving by the end of this year.
Massive testing is a prerequisite for successful reopening of any national economy. The media especially likes this one. Here is a simple fact: no country has attempted to do massive testing, and the countries deemed by the media as “successful” haven’t even tried to do massive testing. I am not quibbling about the word “massive” here. Some suggest the US, which currently does over 350k tests a day (and is the world’s leader in that statistic), needs to do three million tests a day, indicating a massive shortfall. South Korea, the paragon for testing, has never done more than 14k tests a day. The key? Early, targeted testing. As each new case developed, Korea traced and tested everybody exposed (not everybody who wants a test), requiring fewer overall tests and giving better, immediate feedback. This is a model which can be implemented at any time in the pandemic timeline, but works best earlier. Oh (pun intended), and South Korea never did a lockdown.
Herd immunity is a long term solution. Herd immunity is the concept that once enough people have been exposed and are now immune, the virus will die out for lack of new people to infect. It is only a solution in the same way that waiting for the summer to dry things out was a solution to Hurricane Katrina for New Orleans. No country is trying to achieve herd immunity: some erroneously suggest that Sweden is doing so, but instead they are simply avoiding closing the economy while protecting the most vulnerable populations (voluntarily locking down the vulnerable, not everybody). The success of their approach won’t be known until the pandemic ends, we add up the death and economic tolls, and compare results.

Perhaps the most interesting “wrong” thing I uncovered about coronavirus is how it spreads. Because it spread so quickly, epidemiologists initially assumed it was primarily an aerosol particle transmission, like the flu or measles. Most highly contagious diseases are airborne. However, as more data came in, it was apparent that while some airborne spread was happening, cases of direct contact with droplets were more the norm, and that the average infected patient infected no one at all!

As the medical field gathers more data, they have found some patients produce and expel far more virus than others, and that the viral load any patient produces varies over time. Some asymptomatic patients produce almost none. There are now data from several natural experiments: the infection aboard closed cruise ships, the isolated Italian town of Vo’, several quarantined nursing homes in the States, the choir incident in the state of Washington. There is also the established story of the unusual spread of infection, high initially in China. Then to Europe and the US coasts, but in different ways, and at different rates.

The more that epidemiologists study it, they are identifying superspreader events as a key to transmission. What are superspreader events? Indoor meetings of closely-gathered people doing things like singing, talking loudly, and interacting. Introduce a high-viral load infected person to these events, and a mass spread occurs. For example, at the two-hour choir practice in Washington, fifty-three of sixty-one choir members got sick!

The story of how the virus spreads is not so much “wrong” but simply how we learn what the truth about the virus is. And what it means. Perhaps outdoor baseball with fans in the bright sun is ok, but indoor basketball is a no-go. An evening with friends at a quiet bar, maybe; a mosh pit at the concert and afterparty karaoke, hmmmm, no. Yes to church services with communion in hand, social distancing, music but no singing; nope to loud choirs, sing alongs, common cup, hand-holding & hugs. Dining al fresco at spaced tables under the stars: si! Eating at a crowded, loud food court in the Mall: no.

And this may all change, too, as we learn more. It’s not a conspiracy, nor is it evidence of lying or incompetence. It’s called science, which proceeds by trial-and-error. Don’t forget the error part. It’s especially important.

A Reminder out of Time

Wrapped up as we all are in the travails of life in a time of plague, the seasons roll on. Nature cares not for the whims of man.

The daylight lengthens whether we are there to use it or not. The sun warms and the night cools, e’en as we remain cocooned in our conditioned cells.

In little more than a month, deer began loitering on the highways, sheep decided to make town visits, and boar seemed to be asking “what’s up?” Nature abhors a vacuum, and the top of the food chain was apparently vacant.

Spring and its discontents, like its flowers, are in full bloom. The next snow in New England will be the last one (sure!), our local “rain birds” drone out the telly, the early reconnaissance mosquitoes are back. But who will they bite?

Yup, rains a ‘comin

Man is the only creature to markedly alter his environment, we are told. We fashion ourselves masters of this little bit of the universe, able to build up and tear down: dam the greatest rivers, scrape the highest skies, control the very carbon in the atmosphere. As usual, Shakespeare skeptically said it best:

What a piece of work is man, 
How noble in reason, 
how infinite in faculty, 
In form and moving how express and admirable, 
In action how like an Angel, 
In apprehension how like a god,
(Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2)

Our thirst for knowledge is tireless, as is our demand for mastery. We discovered fire and yoked water & wind. We probed light to find it is both wave and particle. We pulled apart matter and unleashed its immense energy. We dug still deeper and found . . . strings!?! We aim our telescopes ever closer to the very instant of the Big Bang. We tug at the corners of consciousness and convince ourselves there is nothing that science cannot eventually explain. Except perhaps, “why?”

Modern man may be a Colossus astride the globe, but he was staring at his iPhone, about to trip over the smallest of stumbling blocks: tiny, non-living chemical bomblets called viruses.

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” — Shelley

We have come to worship progress; I use that term “worship” advisedly, but I think accurately. When you worship something, you place all your trust, your faith, in it. Despite a great deal of history, especially the twinned history of mankind and disease, we look to medical science to solve such problems. Yet that long history has been marked by failures to do so. I mean no disrespect to those brave men and women who daily put their lives on the line in medical garb: watching their dedication as they seek treatments or vaccines or even palliative care fills one with reassurance in mankind’s basic heroism and compassion. But no faith in progress: it is now–in 2020– as it ever was, in 1919, in 1665, in 1346, and . . .

Pandemics come with regularity: that we have forgotten this is testament to our advances in medicine and retreats in studying history. They do so because that is what bacteria and viruses do. Nature is not angry with us; it would pay man little attention, if it could. Unless, of course, you worship the Earth Goddess Gaia, in which case you should be out doing some serious sacrificing.

I am not one to describe any event, let alone a pandemic, as God’s wrath. A husband is wise to admit the mystery of his wife’s mind, so “who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?” (Romans 11:34). Likewise I defer judging as those who say “God does not . . .” There are very few endings to that phrase that can hold true other than “. . . think as man does.” I do know whatever the origins of this novel pandemic, God will make of it what He will. All things end up in conformity with His plans, as obscure as they may be to we mere mortals.

I pray that it be His Will that we take a little less pride in our progress, our science, our medicine. That we stop treating politics as the alpha and omega of our thought. That people stop striving so much to be on “the right side of history” as to be just good. To act first justly in our daily lives, with compassion to our neighbors, before looking for the intervention of higher powers (of the earthly or divine type). To be more in the moment rather than in the act of becoming.

If things change at all after this plague, I think the epitaph for the society which passed would be “They were proud, they were accomplished, they were distracted, and it was their undoing.”

Part Two: The WABAC machine

If you never watched the original cartoon Rocky & Bullwinkle, you missed something good, so go find it on YouTube or Cartoon Network. If you did watch (like me), you’ll remember the original Sherman and the talking dog, Mr. Peabody, who had various historical adventures using the WABAC (Way-back, get it?) time machine.

As I was writing the last blog post on media bias, I had a WABAC moment: what was the media coverage like during the last pandemic: the 2009 H1N1 or Swine flu outbreak. To remind, this virus was a new strain of the infamous Spanish Flu bug which terrorized the world in 1919-1921. This time, it lasted about twenty months. Note this: confirmed cases worldwide were 1.6 million, deaths 18,000; estimated cases were 700 million to 1.4 billion with 284,000 deaths. Yes, ten years later, we still can’t narrow down the data within an order of magnitude. That might give some pause, even today, when making instant judgments about the coronavirus. But I digress.

H1N1 hit within the first hundred days of the Obama Administration, right next door in Mexico, oh, and simultaneously with that pesky little Great Recession. So I began searching the paper of record, the New York Times, to see how it covered the administration’s response and unfolding crisis.

Was I in for a surprise!

You will want to read the hyperlinks on this one. What I found was telling, in the “I can’t believe I’m reading this” way. My comments below are italicized.

Early on (in April) The Times published an opinion piece by a doctor entitled “Sound the alarm? The Swine Flu bind” noting “History teaches that the influenza virus mutates to cause worldwide spread about twice a century, on average. But scientists have yet to figure out what causes the mutations, when they will occur and what makes certain viruses more lethal than others.” and that public officials faced a damned-if-they-do and damned-if-they-don’t decision. Oh for that sane, balanced perspective today!

On May 1st, the Times noted how seriously the Obama administration was taking the threat. The Times reported the President was deliberate in trying not to cause a panic:”It was no coincidence, his aides said, that he played golf the day his administration declared a national emergency.” Oddly enough, no reporter asked about the recently eliminated NSC staff position covering infectious disease. Yes, believe it or not, it happened first way back then, but no one seemed to care. Golf as a crafty signal: yes, that’s it!

White House spokesman Robert Gibb was asked about the fact that there was no Health and Human Services Secretary and only five Presidential nominees (out of twenty positions, none confirmed) in the department, he said “‘Our response is in no way hindered or hampered.’ When pressed to say whether White House officials would prefer to have a full team in place, he said, ‘We’d rather not have a swine flu.'” There was no follow-up on how the Department could possibly be effective without any appointees, nor any opinion from the Times.

Asked about Mexico’s more drastic actions responding to the outbreak, CDC acting director Richard Besser said “You don’t know if this is a virus that will fizzle in a couple of weeks or one that will become more or less virulent or severe in the diseases it causes.” Perhaps President Trump should have suggested the coronavirus may “fizzle.” That appears to be the scientifically appropriate term, or at least no one in the media objected when the CDC head used it.

Another Times story the day after the US declared a public health emergency noted that “only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case” and that Besser “praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.” Only two labs, but no follow up about why, or when would more come on line? And no questions about the lack of a national policy? Enquiring minds apparently didn’t want to know!

In October, HHS Secretary Sebelius was asked to account for the fact that only 23 million of the 120 million promised doses of vaccine were available, she responded, “If we could wave a magic wand or have the tools in our government shop to fix this, I think there would be a different expectation.” Noticeably absent from the questions was any mention of the Defense Production Act of 1950, which was ready and available for use. Maybe it grew into a magic wand later?

Regarding that shortage, the Times created a helpful video explaining that it was due to “old technology” and “an inefficient process.” The video says the federal government “responsibly” contracted with all five vaccine producers, but “in a weird confluence” all five had problems. “Some people will die” due to the vaccine shortage, the video intones, and the federal government has confirmed that. That’s it. Nobody at fault? People will die. Move along now.

When the President’s daughters got the coveted, in short-supply vaccine shots, the Times did cover it by saying, “The vaccinations could raise questions about whether the Obama girls were given special treatment” but quickly noting “The White House may be trying to set a good example amid concerns about the vaccine’s safety. Sharing the news that the president has allowed his daughters to receive the shots could ease the fears of ordinary Americans who are wondering whether to get vaccinated.” This was simply embarrassing. President Obama’s daughters were in a high-risk group and deserved the vaccine; couldn’t the Times have left the defense to the White House Spokesman?

Finally, an otherwise irrelevant opinion piece by Gail Collins, which has this jewel: “The swine flu scare has made it clear why Barack Obama picked Joe Biden for vice president. As the White House’s unfiltered talking head, Biden is the perfect warning bell to show the White House when things are veering out of control. A kind of mental canary in the governmental mine shaft.” It also provides the following Biden story: “‘If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing,’ Biden babbled happily on the Today show. He also assured Matt Lauer that he had warned his family away from subways and that he ‘wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,’ but unfortunately Lauer did not inquire whether the Oval Office counts as free range.” This has nothing to do with my point, but I bet you a stiff drink that this quote will show up in an ad during the campaign, whenever the former Vice President attacks the President about coronavirus.

I could go on, but you get the point. Look at any of these articles (less the last one) from the paper of record and compare how the coverage was different. Assertions left unquestioned. Off-hand comments unexamined. Difficulties and challenges highlighted; failures explained away. Note I am NOT comparing how the Obama and Trump administrations performed; just how the media covered them in remarkable similar circumstances. The Obama administration response is on the books: probably a “B+” for messaging (smooth, reassuring, consistent), a “C+” for actual work (slow to enact national guidance, failure in vaccine mass production). Most importantly, the swine flu that year didn’t turn out to be the big one; extending the analogy, swine flu was a quiz, not the final.

The short version? Covid19 is much more contagious, perhaps more than five times as deadly.

in comparing that coverage to today’s, one could assert today’s media was only responding to the incompetence of the Trump administration, but that assertion fails because Obama’s team was new and unproven, understaffed, and made similar mistakes (e.g., reorganizing out the NSC staff position, failing to respond quickly with respect to vaccine production, making bold/rosy projections).

You might say the media treats the Trump administration differently because it acts differently. There is no doubt the President sees the media as an antagonist, if not an enemy. But this is not a personal relationship, it’s an institutional relationship. I don’t claim the media is a neutral observer; they do. If you’re going to make that claim, you forfeit the right to say “we have to be confrontational because he was first.”

Read those articles again. Read any article today. Tell me this is the rightful, impartial role for the media.

We all know how important it is (from the Times coverage) that the US has the most deaths from coronavirus. Bonus quiz, before you look at this graphic: who had the most deaths (worldwide) from the H1N1 pandemic, despite having only the fifth highest number of cases?

Other countries with more cases but less deaths? Germany & Italy

Of course, the Times went back and did an in-depth review of the Obama administration’s performance based on the discrepancy between how the US did and other nations. Well, I am sure they will eventually.