Religion in the time of Plague (or Pandemic)

Books, Classic Books, existentialism, Philosophy/Ideas, religion

Some last thoughts on The Plague by Albert Camus. In that novel Camus  challenges the religious approach to suffering. Suffering is of course a fundamental problem for anyone who believes in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God. How can there be such a God if there is suffering?

In the novel a Catholic priest Father Paneloux tries to approach the problem. He did that in response to a horrendously painful death of a young child from the plague. He set himself a difficult task. He said that there was a fact that we should under all circumstances take into consideration. We should always bear in mind that “Appearances notwithstanding, all trials, however cruel, worked together for good to the Christian. And, indeed, what a Christian should always seek in his hour of trial was to discern that good, in what it consisted, and how best to turn it to account.” We should not try to explain the plague; we should try to learn what it can teach us.

Paneloux acknowledged that “nothing is more important on earth than a child’s suffering.” He also refused to take ‘the easy way’ out of the dilemma. In his second sermon to the people,

“He, Father Paneloux refused to have recourse to simple devices enabling him to scale that wall. Thus he might easily have assured them that the child’s sufferings would be compensated for by an eternity of bliss awaiting him. But how could he give that assurance when to tell the truth, he knew nothing about it? For who could dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment’s human suffering? He who asserted that, would not be a true Christian, a follower of the Master who knew all the pangs of suffering in his body and his soul. No, he, Father Paneloux would keep faith with that great symbol of all suffering, the tortured body on the Cross: he would stand fast, his back to the wall, and face honestly the terrible problem of a child’s agony. And he would say to those who listened to his words to-day: ‘My brothers, a time of testing has come for us all. We must believe everything or deny everything. And who, I ask amongst you would dare to deny everything?”

The priest considered this “the All or Nothing”, “the greatest of all virtues.” Father Paneloux did not want to dodge the question. He wanted to face it head on. He did not want to sleep-walk through this question. Again a real (though fictional child) in the novel faced that terrible suffering. Could he not do the same?

While on the one hand religious thinkers for millennia have seen suffering as a way towards spiritual enlightenment, others have seen suffering as the greatest spiritual challenge. Perhaps there is no inconsistency there. Perhaps that is the point. Father Paneloux is certainly not trying to get around the problem. He wants to go through it. Paneloux knew, “religion in a time of plague could not be the religion of every day.” Paneloux also concluded, “The suffering of children were our bread of affliction, but without this bread our souls would die of spiritual hunger.”

This meant that Father Paneloux had to have  “a total acceptance” of that child’s suffering. This entailed that “since it was God’s will, we too should will it.” As Collin Wilson in Problematic Rebel said, we have to say yes to it all. So Paneloux says “believe everything so, as not to be forced into denying everything.” What a terrible choice, but he took it. “The Christian should yield himself fully to the divine will, even though it passed his understanding.” Paneloux would not allow a half-measure from the Christian. It was not good enough to say, ‘This I understand but that I cannot accept.” That was just a sorry attempt to weasel out of the piercing dilemma.

Paneloux’s position is certainly a courageous one. He said “we should go forward, groping our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at whiles, and try to do what good lay in our power.” Once again like Tarrou and like Camus himself, we must be satisfied with the small good. We need not concern ourselves with the grand design. That is above our pay grade. Do what good we can. That’s all. We need not be or even try to be saints.

Yet this is a very tough position.

“There is no island of escape in time of plague. No, there was no middle course. We could accept the dilemma; and chose either to hate God or to love God. And who would dare to hate Him?…’the love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God’s will ours.”

But of course this was not Camus’s position, or at least Rieux, the narrator. Like Dostoevsky in that other classic, Brothers Karamazov, he could not accept a world that required a child to suffer, He was not prepared to “justify” the suffering of a child. He would even dare to hate God if necessary. How bold is that? Who could be that brave?

The Plague: My Mother-in-law and Wiley Coyote were Existentialists

Classic Books, existentialism, Philosophy/Ideas

 

I am not quite finished with Albert Camus’ The Plague. Existentialism is a philosophy that grew out of Europe before and after World War 11. No one has been able to define it. Many philosophers, like Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre have renounced their membership in that group, not always fairly in my view. Albert Camus in my opinion exemplifies what existentialism was all about.

The novel emphasizes that it is the story of real (though fictional) living people. That is not a contradiction. That is what concerned Camus—real living people. It is the basis, in my view, of the philosophy that came to be known as existentialism.

The best explanation I have ever heard for what existentialism is all about was given at a public lecture by University of Winnipeg Professor Carl Ridd when I was a young student. I think it was 1975. I was a student of philosophy at the time at the University of Manitoba, so I was not inclined to think that Ridd (from the wrong university) could advance something very worthwhile. But he did.

Ridd told us that existentialism was demonstrated by what Wiley Coyote did when he chased the Roadrunner over a cliff. The Roadrunner could fly or duck, but Wiley chased him right over the cliff and kept running without sinking—until he looked down. The moment he looked down he was sunk—literally sunk, as he dropped to the ground. These chases always ended up with Wiley Coyote not being wily enough and suffering as a result. That moment of looking down is what Professor Ridd said existentialism was all about.

The Plague demonstrates that well. The people of Oran, suffering from plague, like other countries suffering from totalitarianism, had to avoid looking at the past or the future. In the midst of COVID-19 epidemic we are in the same position. They had to concentrate on the here and now—the eternal present. As Camus said in the book, “Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the about the problematic day of escape, but to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet.”

The narrator in the novel, whose identity is not revealed until the end, compares the people of Oran to people in prison:

“…there was always something missing in their lives. Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were like those whom men’s justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars. Thus the only way of escaping from that intolerable leisure was to set the trains running again in one’s imagination and in filling the silence with fancied tinkle of a door-bell, in practice obstinately mute.”

This view of concentrating on the here and now, was one of the central themes of his philosophical book, The Rebel. He used this idea to create separation between his position and Marxists who, he believed were willing to impose certain suffering today in order to achieve a highly dubious future nirvana. It was a powerful argument in that book, and is in this book as well, but from a different perspective. As his narrator said, in Camus’ beautiful prose: “Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.” Camus is one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century.

Later Dr. Rieux who everyday had to minister to the sick and dying, knows what is important: “I have no idea what’s awaiting for me, or what will happen when all this ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing. Later on perhaps they’ll think things over: and so shall I. But what’s wanted now is to make them well. I defend them as best I can, that’s all.” That sums up what I call his existentialism. Ideology is not important. People are sick and they need help. That is all that matters.”

I have recently been criticized for not doing what Dr. Rieux did. Put ideology aside. Analyze later. Just do it now. I must admit there is justification for this criticism of me personally. I stand chastened. It is difficult for an old man like me, confined to my room, to help. But I must be scrupulous—more scrupulous than I have been—to make sure I do not stand in the way of others who are helping. I am chastened.

Again echoing the words of the Rebel, the narrator enunciates Camus’ position:

“Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. Indeed the Here and Now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.”

In an essay “Reflections on the Guillotine” he told the true story of his father. I will quote in full the opening paragraph:

“Shortly before the war of 1914, an assassin whose crime was particularly repulsive (he had slaughtered a family of farmers, including the children) was condemned to death in Algiers. He was a farm worker who had killed in a sort of bloodthirsty frenzy but had aggravated his case by robbing his victims. The affair created a great stir. It was generally thought that decapitation was too mild a punishment for such a monster. This was the opinion, I have been told, of my father, who was especially aroused by the murder of the children. One of the few things known about him, in any case, is that he wanted to witness the execution, for the first time in his life. He got up in dark to go to the place of execution at the other end of town amid a great crowd of people. What he saw that morning he never told anyone. My mother relates merely that he came rushing home, his face distorted, refused to talk, lay down for a moment on the bed and suddenly began to vomit. He had just discovered the reality hidden under the noble phrases with which it was masked. Instead of thinking of the slaughtered children, he could think of nothing but that quivering body that had just been dropped onto a board to have its head cut off.”

That is what existentialism is all about the existence and death of real people beyond the abstractions of ideology. That is what is important. Beside the reality of the living person the ideology fades into insignificance.

In The Plague there is a similar story told by Tarrou to his friend Dr. Rieux about Tarrou’s father. His father was a Public Prosecutor, a very respected position, who took his son to watch him prosecute an offender. According to Tarrou there was no doubt that the criminal was guilty. Tarrou described the man as “a little man of about thirty, with sparse, sandy hair,” who “seemed eager to confess everything, so genuinely horrified at what he had done and was going to be done to him, that after a few minutes I had eyes for nothing and nobody else. He looked like a yellow owl scared blind by too much light. His tie was slightly awry, he kept biting his nails, those of one hand only his right…I needn’t go on, need I? You’ve understood—he was a living human being.”

Those little details, a balding head, disheveled tie, and biting his nails nervously make it clear that this was not someone to fear. His eyes were obviously bugging out. He was like an owl with yellow eyes blinded by the light. When Tarrou’s father saw the pathetic criminal he could no longer see him as that abstract “criminal.” He was “a living human being.”

Tarrou learned a valuable lesson that day. Behind the bland officially approved words of crime and punishment is a stark reality—the state murdering a poor hapless young man, who deserved punishment but not what he was getting. As Camus described it:

‘As for me, it came on me suddenly, in a flash of understanding; until then I’d thought of him only under his commonplace official designation, as “the defendant.” And though I can’t say I quite forgot about my father, something seemed to grip my vitals at that moment and riveted all my attention on the little man in the dock. I hardly heard what was being said, I only knew that they were set on killing that living man and an uprush of some elemental instinct, like a wave, had swept me to his side.’

As soon as Tarrou’s father saw the real man, he had fellow feeling for him, and the ideology he held, or thought he held, evaporated. He also asked Dr. Rieux if he had ever witnessed a man shot by firing squad? Tarrou explained the reality of the shooting:

“…the spectators are hand-picked, and it’s like a private party, you need an invitation. The result is that you’ve gleaned your ideas about it from books and pictures. A post, a blindfolded man, some soldiers in the offing. But the real thing isn’t a bit like that. Do you know that the firing-squad stands only a yard and half from the condemned man? Do you know that if the victim took two steps forward his chest would touch the rifles? Do you know that, at this short range, the soldiers concentrate their fire on the region of heart and their bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist? No you didn’t know all that; those are things that are never spoken of. For the plague-stricken their peace of mind is more important than a human life. Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o’nights mustn’t they?”

The existential philosophy wants to know the truth. It does not want to let us sleep soundly. Those who don’t want to know the truth are plague-stricken. They are the sleep-walkers. They don’t want to know the truth. An existentialist wants to wake them up. Like, Wiley Coyote must be made to look down after he has crossed the cliff edge and seems to be running on air. Once he knows, he is done. That is the existential moment. For Camus’s father it was when he saw a real decapitation. For Tarrou’s father it was when he heard his father clamoring for the death of the pathetic defendant. Once we see the real shivering human person in his actual existence our theories can fail us; our ideology can be shredded.

I now want to offer a much more mundane example from my own life. This was the case of own my mother-in-law. She was the sweetest, kindest, person I have ever known. I am not exaggerating. This is gospel truth. She was a staunch Catholic and had firm Catholic principles by which she lived without doubt or question. Her Catholic faith was her bedrock foundation for life. She was also French and proud of it. When she found out her daughter wanted to go out on a date with an English non-Catholic (me) who she had never met, she was appalled. How could this happen? This would not do. But when she met and found out what a great guy I was, she cast aside her ideology and we got along wonderfully. I loved her and she loved me. She wished I was a French Catholic boy, but I would do. When she was confronted with reality she was able to set aside her ideology.

My mother-in-law was exactly the same with her next son-in-law, Norm, even though he was not as nice as me. He did not marry another daughter, but he lived with her. In sin! To her that was what they were doing—living-in-sin. But she didn’t care. She loved him too. She saw through her own ideology and set it aside. She actually did that with many people who according to her ideology ought to have been rejected. That was not her style. She accepted people for whom they were, unless they were actually bad people. Like Wiley Coyote, my mother-in-law was an existentialist! Camus would have approved.

The Plague: A Little Hero

Classic Books, Moral Humility

 

 

The first book I have selected as a classic to be re-read is one I read a lifetime ago. Perhaps 45 years ago. I noticed the price tag on the back. I paid 85 cents for this book and have kept it for about 50 years. Not bad. It is high time to return to it.

The Plague, written by Albert Camus, is of course a highly appropriate choice as I and so many others are at this time basically in quarantine facing a plague of COVID-19 that is spreading around the world filling people with dread.

In the novel Camus tells the story of Oran, a city in Algeria, and its people, as they suffer through an epidemic—a plague. Like us they were quarantined in their town amid fear and trembling. Now that many of us have been sequestered in various ways already, for many of us, for more than a month with no end in sight. So we know how the people of Oran felt. We feel like that now.

On one level the novel is a book about that plague and how the people of the town are afflicted by it, resist it, and help each other through it. That really is enough, but there is more to it than this. Much more. It is a novel of ideas. Many ideas. Too many to cover in a short review. I will confine myself to just a couple in this review.

Some critics have suggested that the plague of the novel is a symbol of Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War and the French resistance to it. I have no doubt it is that, but that is not all. It is a symbol of all totalitarian regimes and those who revolt against them around the world. In fact it is a symbol of all oppression and the people who fight it.

Camus was famous for saying he believed in limits. Oppression had to be resisted with limits. He was opposed to politics without limits such a totalitarian dreams which he firmly believed led to the gallows or the guillotine. As a result, he said the hero of the resistance was not the great revolutionary.

Camus basic belief is it was best to be modest and humble. He was deeply suspicious after the rise of totalitarianism in Europe after World War I. He thought it was grand designs that led to totalitarianism or murder. Like Bob Dylan said, “You don’t count the dead with God on your side.” If you are about to bring about heaven on earth, as Marxists believed, any actions, no matter how horrendous were justified in the name of that magisterial distant goal.

Camus rejected all that in favour of humility or modesty. He is satisfied if he can accomplish small good. That is good enough. He doesn’t expect to be a Saint. 

In the book Tarrou used to have grand schemes to be saint, but he gave those up.  He has no grand design any more.  He just wants to help without doing anything to assist someone else in being killed.

Tarrou earlier said he was working towards being a saint. That was his goal. He never achieved it. As a result this is what Tarrou said about the plague to his friend Dr. Rieux:

“That, too is why this epidemic has taught me nothing new, except that I must fight it at your side…each of us has the plague within him: no one, no one on earth, is free from it.”

Later Tarrou says,

“I’ve learnt modesty: All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it’s simple, but I know it’s true. You see, I’d heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clean-cut language…there are pestilences and there are victims; no more than that…That’s why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victim’s side…”

Rieux asked Tarrou if he knew the path to peace? Tarrou replied “the path of sympathy.” Again no grand designs, no plan to save the world, just follow the path of sympathy and use plain clear language to get there.”

The path of sympathy or fellow feeling seems simple. Camus tries to make it so. But he knows it is not always simple. For example, throughout the book Rambert, a newly wed, was trying to get back together with his wife who was stuck on the other side of the wall surrounding the town. He tries a few times and fails. Then near the end, it is arranged. He can escape. But Rambert changes his mind and stays back to help Rieux to help the victims. Did he do the right thing?

Rambert says no, “For nothing in the world is it worth turning back on what one loves yet that is what I’m doing—though why I don’t know.” To this Rieux responds, ‘a man can’t cure and know at the same. So let’s cure as quickly as we can. That’s the more urgent job.”

Dr. Rieux and Paneloux, the Catholic Priest have a discussion on similar lines:

Paneloux say to Rieux, “Perhaps we should love what we cannot understand.” It is the typical religious response but Rieux does not buy it. He replies, “No Father. I’ve a very different idea of love. And until my dying day, I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.” Paneloux then thinks Rieux wants grace. Rieux does not accept this either. He wants a simpler more clear answer. “We’re working side by side for something that unites us—beyond blasphemy and prayers. And it’s the only thing that matters.” Paneloux jumps on this and claims, “Yes, Yes, you too are working for man’s salvation.” Dr. Rieux won’t have that either. He says,

“Salvation’s much to big a word for me. I don’t aim so high. I’m concerned with man’s health and for me his health comes first.”

Later Rieux adds this: “I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is—being a man.”

Rieux did not want to be a saint. He believed,

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”

Camus always fears the logical murderer that he found in his book The Rebel. That is the person who comes up with a big plan and then kills to bring it about. That is what the totalitarians did  in Russia and Germany.  Rieux looked for no grand designs for they could lead to such colossal murders as in the camps of the totalitarians. He wanted more modest goals. He believed the hero was the man with humility.

The man the narrator in the novel looked to as an example or ideal was called Grand. But he was not grand. He was modest. He was “a little hero.” And to Camus that was always the best kind. The Saint with grandiose goals often led to mass slaughter.

Grand was the true embodiment of the quiet courage that inspired the sanitary groups. He had said ‘Yes” without a moments hesitation and with the large-heartedness that was a second nature with him. All he asked was to be allotted light duties…When Rieux thanked him with some warmth for his contribution Grand seemed surprised. ‘Why, that’s not difficult. Plague is here, and we’ve got make a stand, that’s obvious. Ah, I only wish everything were as simple!’

In Camus’ world as in Rieux’s world, the humble man of virtue is the hero not the one who creates the grand designs to save the world. As the narrator said of Grand, “a hero…this insignificant and obscure hero who had to his credit only a little goodness of heart and a seemingly absurd ideal. This will render to the truth it’s due.” We don’t need heroes or saints when we have people like Grand.

Classic Books

Classic Books

For a long time I have wanted to re-read some of the classic books. After all why have I kept all these books for so many years? I hope I did not keep them just to show off. God no one is fooled.

Vladimir Nabokov once said ‘you have not read a book until you have re-read it.” I agree. I am not sure how exactly this will go, but it will go something like this. I intend to read at least one classic of literature or philosophy or maybe even a long poem. I promise myself I will read at least one each year.

This is hard, because I always seem to have a long stack of books to read. Then kind people offer to lend me one of their books too. Together it all seems impossible.

I am doing this not just because I’m going broke. Although that is a pretty good reason. Why buy a book if I have a classic well worth reading again right here at home? Always a good question but I am confident these great books will be worth it.

The key is that I am confident these books will offer something worth while again. That’s why they are classics!

So I will intersperse my “normal” reading with a classic from time to time. There will be no straight line between these books. I won’t start with the oldest or the best. But they will all be good. I will meander through those books.

I hope to post my first one soon.

I think this will be fun.

I agree with Donald Trump about the “Wuhan Flu.”

Epidemics/Pandemics, Human rights, Trump

I find some sympathy for Donald Trump on one issue (among others actually). When it comes to China he gets conflicting advice.  Some of his advisors want him to be tough on China and others urge him not rock the economic boat.  The hawks wanted Trump to take a public critical stance against China and to  start calling the virus the “Wuhan Virus.”

I must admit at first I thought this was nuts. Childish and nuts. I called it an attempt to deflect blame from himself to China. No doubt that was part of his rationale for starting to do that. But there is more to the issue than that. I changed my mind after listening to a very unlikely source for a contrary view—Bill Maher. Maher has a weekly rant on his TV show and for the first time ever, by my recollection, he ranted in favor of Trump. This is his rant in full with a couple of editorial interruptions by me.

I am not sure what the cause of the Coronavirus is, but if (and as far as I know that is a pretty big if), if it is established that the cause was in fact the wet markets of China I agree with this illiberal rant by Bill Maher in response to a poll that showed Americans are split on whether or it’s racist to call COVID-19 the Chinese virus. Here is Maher’s rant in full:

“You can’t yell at someone for breaking a rule you just made up. Scientists–yes scientists who are usually pretty liberal, have been naming diseases after the places they came from for a very long time. Zika virus is from the Zika forest. Ebola from the Ebola River. Hantavirus from the Hantan River. There’s the West Nile virus, And Guinea worm, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and of course the Spanish flu. (although that one did not originate there) MERS stands for Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome. It’s plastered all over airports and no one blogs about it. So why should China get a pass?

Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted: “The virus is not constrained by country or race. Be just as stupid to call it the Milan Virus.” No, that would be way stupider because it didn’t come from Milan. And if it did, I guarantee, we’d be calling it the Milan virus… Can’t we even have a pandemic without getting offended? When they named Lyme disease after a town in Connecticut the locals didn’t get all ticked off.

Seriously it scares me that there are people out there who would rather die form the virus than call it by the wrong name. This isn’t about vilifying a culture. This is about facts. It’s about life and death. We’re barely 4 months into this pandemic, and the wet markets in China, the one’s where exotic are sold and consumed, are already starting to re-open. The P.C police say it’s racist to attack any cultural practice that is different than our own.

I say liberalism lost its way when it started thinking like that and pretending that forcing a woman to wear this (he showed an image of total body niqab ) was a just a different way, instead of an abhorrent human rights violation. (Again, I only agree with this to the extent that women are forced to dress like that. To the extent they freely chose to dress like that, I am OK with that). It’s not racist to point out that eating bats is bat-shit crazy. In 2007 researchers at the University of Hong Kong wrote: “The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.”

Dr. Fauci says, we should force a global closure of the wet markets because the current crisis “is a direct result of them.” On Monday the acting head of the UN’s biodiversity said the same thing.

So when someone says, “what if people hear  ‘Chinese virus’ and blames China, the answer is we should blame China. Not Chinese Americans, (or Canadian) but we can’t stop telling the truth just because racists get the wrong idea. There are always going to be idiots out there who want to indulge their prejudices, but this is an emergency. Don’t we have bigger tainted fish to fry? Jesus, if the sun was exploding, the Twitter would pile up against the first person who called it a ‘dwarf star.’

Sorry Americans we’re going to have to ask you to keep 2 ideas in your head at the same time. This has nothing to do with Asian-Americans, and it has everything to do with China. We can’t afford the luxury anymore of non-judginess towards a country with habits that kill millions of people everywhere, because this isn’t the first time. SARS came from China. And the bird flu. And the Hong Kong flu. The Asian flu. Viruses come from China like short stops come from the Dominican Republic.

If they were selling nuclear suitcases at these wet markets would we be so non-judgmental? And isn’t this pretty close to what they are selling? And the next one could be even worse. If the Chinese military had purposely infected this country with coronavirus  as a bio-weapon, we’d be at war with them. We are always griping about how China manipulates their currency. Well I’m not monetary expert but I think you would agree this one hurt our economy a little more than currency manipulation. And China can do this. China once built a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days. There’s been a pothole on my street for 19 years. They’re not like us. They can actually get shit done. This is a dictatorship that for decades enforced a one child per family under penalty of forced sterilization. But you can’t close down the farmer’s market from hell?

They need to use that iron fist and pound it down because it kind of does. And I hope that if Americans were told that eating hot pockets could cause a world- wide pandemic that we would have the good sense to stop doing it. Although I wouldn’t bet on it.”

That’s what Maher said and I think I agree with that. I hope you appreciate, this is hard for me to do. I have to publicly admit Donald Trump was right and I was wrong!

In Canada, we have had cases where Jehovah Witnesses who were parents of children, were refusing on their children’s behalf to take life-saving blood transfusions when the science was clear the transfusions were medically necessary to save their lives. The court held, and I agreed, that the state had the right to interfere to protect the children who were too young to decide for themselves. Parents are entitled to make such unwise decisions for themselves, but not for children too young to decide for themselves. This was a severe interference with their right of religious freedom, but I agreed with the court that it was a reasonable limit on freedom of religion, a Charter right, which is justified in a free and democratic society.

If religious or cultural beliefs are scientifically proven to a reasonable certainty to cause harm to others, we have a right to interfere to stop it. Even if that looks culturally insensitive.

In a much less serious, case, on classic liberal principles that it is permitted to call COVID-17 the Wuhan Flu, or shut down a wet market, if that will save the lives of others.

As well, in my opinion, we have the right to interfere with Muslims when they interfere with the rights of others or cause them harm without their consent even though that looks like we are trying to impose our cultural views on others. For example, if Muslim father tries to inflict an honour killing on his daughter for disgracing the family, that should not be permitted. I think that one is pretty clear.

The same holds for China. We have the right to try to stop them from harming us even if it might appear that we are culturally insensitive. Other we have allowed political correctness run amok.

The neo-liberal Problem

Epidemics/Pandemics, Social democracy

 

Neo-liberals or sometimes, neo-conservatives, or libertarians, are those people who believe the less government we have the better.

Trump had many problems during the Coronavirus pandemic. One of them was bias. Donald Trump’s had profound bias against what the believed was a “Deep State.” The Deep State is a common bogeyman on Fox and other right-wing media and is really part of the neo-liberal bias against the government.

Lobbyist Grover Norquist, a famous neo-liberal is credited with saying, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” The mortal enemy of such a point of view is those who see that government can accomplish good things, besides the military. There is perhaps no better example than fighting a pandemic. The richest person in the world then needs the government to keep the poor people away.

The real problem is that in the case of pandemic the state is vitally important. No one else can coordinate the massive effort that is needed by all the parties involved. Who else could do that? What would happen if it were not done?  At least at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis Trump’s bias against the state interfered with his judgment. That is what biases do!

Here is how the New York Times team of reporters described the situation in the Trump administration:

“Unfolding as it did in the wake of his impeachment by the House and in the midst of his Senate trial, Mr. Trump’s response was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives.

Decision-making was also complicated by a long-running dispute inside the administration over how to deal with China. The virus at first took a back seat to a desire not to upset Beijing during trade talks, but later the impulse to score points against Beijing left the world’s two leading powers further divided as they confronted one of the first truly global threats of the 21st century.

The shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation.”

Another famous statement about government that neo-liberals cherish is from Saint Ronald Reagan. He said, the most dangerous words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” But this is a cheap shot. We all take shots at the government, but the fact is we need government. None of us want to live in the state of nature where there is war of all against all. We want government. Government is good. This really is the neo-liberal problem. Government is important. And nowhere is this more evident, we now know, is during a pandemic.

 

Basing public health decisions on hunches can be a dangerous business

Epidemics/Pandemics, Trump

 

Today, I  read some startling statistics in our local Winnipeg Free Press.  Trump has admitted that the United States will likely suffer between 100,000 and 2000, deaths. Assuming the lower of those two amounts, Gwynne Dyer said the following:

“One hundred American deaths is a toll 30 times higher than the 3,331 reported Chinese deaths, but that still leaves one important number out. The population of China is four times larger than that of the United States. So in proportion to its population COVID-19 will kill Americans at  120 times the rate its is reported to have killed Chines people.”

There are a number of countries that have about the same proportion of deaths. And they seem surprising—Italy, Spain, U.K. and of course the U.S. What is happening? It is usually the rich countries that avoid pandemics while the poor countries suffer.

But there is a common denominator. As Dyer said,

“All theses countries moved very late to act against the virus, so late their only remaining option was lockdown. Whereas all the East Asian countries reacted at once.

China, where the coronavirus originated, was blind-sided by the wave of deaths in Wuhan, but as soon as the virus had been identified, Beijing locked the city down, and soon after the whole country. A week or two were lost to the Chinese regimes denial and its reluctance to damage the economy. But the reaction was still fast enough. The lockdown worked, and most Chinese citizens are now back to work.”

In the U.S. when CVOD-19 arrived, Trump did not act right away because he was getting “expert” advice from the television pundits on Fox News who were scorning the disease as a hoax or a second attempt at impeachment. As a result Trump  delayed taking it seriously and the U.S. lost valuable time.

As Dyer said,

“Western countries did no use the ample time they had to put a similar system in place. They didn’t even stock up on masks, ventilators and protective clothing. They let the infection spread so widely that only a long, full lockdown could contain it. Why? Arrogance, wishful thinking, and a determination not to harm economic growth.”

Now that is also just one man’s opinion but is sure makes more sense than the wild conspiracy theories going around.

Of course, that will likely lead to a more prolonged affect on the economy. Exactly what some western leaders wanted to avoid. Of course, much more important than the effect on the economy is the effect on the health of people in those countries. Making public health decisions on the basis of hunches, rather than science can be a dangerous business.

 

Unbelievable

Television Shows

Chris and I watched an interesting television series on Netflix. Not bad; not great. In odd way I liked the low production values. It made the story real.  Or should I say believable? It was called Unbelievable. It is the story of a number of women–some young, some old–all raped in their own bed by a brutal intruder. It tells the story of the investigations by 2 outstanding police officers and 2 less than outstanding. It concentrates in particular on one of the victims a very young girl Marie who is not believed and raises the very interesting question of why it is that sexual assault victims are often not believed, unlike most other victims of crime. Why is that? As well, why does the victim have to relive the experience over and over again? Do other victims of other crimes face the same problems? As a result is it surprising that most victims of sexual assault choose not to report the crimes? What does this tell us about our society? Interesting questions. Worth seeing.