Have We Overreacted?

Up to now people worldwide and here at home have largely cooperated with government shutdowns, but things are changing. The economic cost has been unprecedented. More people have lost their jobs than did in the Great Depression. Small businesses people spent their lifetimes building have been severely hurt and some have been destroyed. Trillions in stock values have gone “Poof.” Almost every American life has been disrupted in some way. Backlash has begun around the country with demonstrations at various statehouses where Democrat governors ordered the strictest, most-extended shutdowns.

As we’re learning more about this virus, some are beginning to question whether it was all necessary. Sweden, for example, has allowed businesses and most schools to remain open and left it up to individual citizens how to respond. They’ve come under criticism from across Europe including from neighboring Norway, a very similar country in nearly every way, which shut down much as America has. Sweden wagered that most citizens would eventually get the virus anyway and it would achieve herd immunity more quickly while other countries extended their vulnerability.

By some calculations, Sweden has had more deaths than Norway per capita, but Covid-19 mortality statistics are worked out differently across the globe. Here in America, for example, deaths of people who never tested positive for Covid-19 are nonetheless counted as victims of the virus. Those who did test positive but who may have died of more serious co-morbidities are still counted as victims of Covid-19. As I wrote in last week’s column, our shutdown was largely prompted by a virus model by Neil Ferguson out of Oxford University that has since proven way overblown.

Neil Ferguson caused panic

We don’t yet know if Sweden’s bet will pay off. While its death rate is twice Denmark’s, it’s only half of France’s according to Vanity Fair last Friday. An Israeli study published last week indicates that the virus goes through all human populations in eight weeks regardless of whether a country shuts down or not. President Trump’s Covid-19 Task Force pats itself on the back for saving thousands of lives with its shutdown policies, but are they correct? If the Israeli model proves true, what’s the likelihood that Trump would ever admit he was wrong? In an election year?

Even less likely to admit it would be mainstream media. All through March and April, they’ve done little but spread fear and criticize Trump for not shutting down early enough or strictly enough. Some Libertarians have suggested that neither federal nor state governments have legitimate authority to shut down the country and lawsuits have been filed to challenge them. We have so far used computer models and algorithms to predict the path Covid-19 would take, but now we’re seeing evidence that many models were flawed.

No major media figure nor political leader has dared question whether this has all been necessary. Did total shutdown increase the likelihood of a second viral wave in the fall? We don’t know. Will Sweden’s milder approach decrease that likelihood? We don’t know that either. Political leaders with their medical advisors have been forced to make decisions based on incomplete data. To what degree will they be held responsible if subsequent data prove them wrong? We don’t know, but it’s a safe bet that political partisans will point fingers if they believe it will help them electorally.

As testing for both the virus and antibodies to it are administered more widely, we’re learning unexpected things. So far — and we still have a long way to go — we’re learning that many more of us have been exposed to Covid-19 than expected. It looks like upwards of 30% of Americans may have antibodies but few if any symptoms. Would this be good news or bad news?

Usually I watch Fox’s Bret Baier deliver the news at 6:00 PM weeknights, but he’s often preempted of late by President Trump and his virus team. Trump hogs the podium and repeats things so much that I’ve been switching over to CBS, ABC, and NBC. What strikes me most about network anchors there is their melodrama, especially when reporting on the virus, and wonder if it’s genuine or affected. I suspect the latter.

Swedish leaders and their medical advisors have withstood withering criticism for their outlier policies both from within Sweden and from across the globe. Whatever the outcome, they won’t avoid repercussions. It might be continued condemnation, but it might ultimately be praise. We don’t know yet. How much criticism will this smalltime columnist receive for even suggesting that American politicians and media may have overreacted at enormous cost to our economy and our day-to-day lives? We don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll find out very soon.

Not Affected Much

Old Orchard Beach Pier at dawn

Virus isolation hasn’t changed my life much. Instead of staying home and guarding my toilet paper, I head out before dawn to Maine’s southern coast for first light. Seldom do I see people, especially in February and March, so social distance is easy. Until recently I had few photos of that area but I have a prospective customer interested to buy some. Even without a buyer, however, there are worse ways to spend time. All of Maine’s winding coastline is beautiful.

Kennebunkport

It’s been cold though and gloves make camera adjustments difficult. When the wind is blowing my eyes tear up but the natural beauty all around me more than compensates for those discomforts. In pleasant surroundings it’s easy to avoid thinking about the virus changing our entire way of life. Will it ever return to normal? I don’t yet know anyone infected but I probably will soon.

Cape Porpoise

After several hours I’m back home downloading dozens, sometimes hundreds of images for editing, and that can take the rest of the day until dinnertime. My wife occupies herself making quilts for the grandchildren and listening to various psychologists lecture on youtube. She’s a psychotherapist and she can multitask like that. I cannot, as my mind can focus on only one thing at a time. Soft piano music won’t distract me while I edit, but nearly anything else will.

Cape Arundel

I like to venture out before dusk and capture twilight as well. As public reaction to COVID-19 progresses, there’s almost as much solitude at dusk as at dawn. Some are out walking but careful to keep a safe distance. We nod to each other and there’s a shared, unspoken sense that we’re all in this together. My wife goes into Shaws or Hannaford at Mill Creek in South Portland early in the early morning during their designated times for older people like us to get what we need.

Old Orchard Beach at dawn

We seldom go out to restaurants anyway so those restrictions don’t affect us. We have all we need and my wife enjoys cooking. I do too, but not as much as she does so my job is cleanup. We watch Special Report the news until seven and then streaming video or just read. The thing we miss most is seeing our grandchildren. We don’t want to infect them and they don’t want to infect us.

OOB Pier at mid-day

We have some fear, however. Two of out daughters are nurses. Both are gearing up for that they see as an inevitable onslaught of seriously ill patients — too many for whom to provide adequate care. Minimizing that scenario is why government wants to “flatten the curve.” One daughter is an ER nurse who just arrived at her new assignment in Portland, Oregon. The other has been pressed to staff an emergency ICU here in Maine for 12-hour shifts alternating days and nights for the duration of this crisis. Though neither has said so, I think they both fear being forced to decide who gets care and who does not.

Cape Porpoise

Can people stay home indefinitely? Some jobs are essential like healthcare workers, police, fire and rescue, keeping the electricity grid running, delivering fuel, and others but small businesses can only be closed so long before collapsing. Most of us expect to get the virus eventually, but how long will flattening the curve take? We’re all going to die of something, someday, and we prefer the dying be limited to the old and sick as much as possible. It’s better to lose grandparents than grandchildren. Writing in National Review the other day, Congressman Chip Roy suggests that flattening the curve may put so much stress on our economy that it cannot recover. Where will we be then? 

Morning at Scarborough Marsh

This fear thing is real and must be addressed. President Trump was criticized for an exchange with NBC’s Peter Alexander. After snarky remarks accusing Trump of trying to “put a positive spin on things” and “giving the American people a false sense of hope,” Alexander asked: “What do you say to people who are scared?” By that time the president was so pissed at the snark that he called Alexander a terrible reporter. It was a missed opportunity for Trump to acknowledge people’s fears and speak to them. Hostile media outlets broadcast only Alexander’s last question and Trump’s angry response. As intended, it made for a terrible sound bite damaging to the president.

Philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” How many Americans have been forced to do that lately? It’s not a problem for introverts like me, but then the room in which I sit alone is in a house with other rooms, and I’m aware that my wife, also an introvert, is sitting in another. I know she’s aware of me as well.

Between Now and November

Democrats and their mainstream media allies hate Donald Trump, and that hate has been the central political dynamic of the past four years. By extension, they also hate Trump supporters which comprise more than 60 million Americans who they consider ignorant at best, or irredeemably racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic at worst. As someone who held my nose when voting for Trump in 2016 I shall likely do so again in November, only this time with relish.

Democrat voters interviewed by Mainstream Media during the New Hampshire primary last week were asked who they liked, but their answers were more about who they didn’t like — Donald Trump. They weren’t sure what Democrat to vote for and would make up their minds in the voting booth, at which time they would choose the candidate most likely to beat him. Bernie supporters were rabid for their guy but supporters of the other candidates were unenthusiastic. Democrat and media pundits are afraid Bernie will get the nomination and then be easily beaten by President Trump.

The pundits, however, still don’t understand the 60+ million Americans who voted for Trump in 2016 and likely will again in November. Neither did they understand the Tea Party movement a decade ago. Back then they went looking for Tea Party leaders to interview but couldn’t find any. They couldn’t comprehend that this was a real, spontaneous, grassroots movement against what an Obama Administration which was growing government. Obamacare was taking over the healthcare industry and the president was spending nearly a trillion dollars on supposed “shovel ready jobs” to stimulate the economy.

At CPAC 2010 in the lobby

Attending CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington during 2010 and 2011, I sensed a discomfort in the Republican establishment running the conference with the upstart Tea Party thousands of whose members invaded CPAC. Republican leaders were not sure where this new, amorphous, small-government throng would fit in, if indeed it could fit in at all. There were no clear leaders with whom dealmakers could meet and talk about making sausage. Meanwhile, Democrats in President Obama’s IRS like Lois Lerner obstructed the Tea Party’s efforts to procure 501(c)4 status for their groups which would enable them to organize and raise funds.

Facing Republican condescension and Democrat obstruction, it soon became apparent to virgin activists in the Tea Party that neither side wanted them in their respective Washington cloisters. Thus spurned, these pockets of the Tea Party returned to their rural enclaves and either organized locally or returned to political dormancy — until Donald Trump started campaigning around their country. He woke them up.

Previewing what Hillary Clinton would later say about Trump supporters, Democrat spinmeisters  ten years ago said the Tea Party was racist and xenophobic. In a September, 2019 interview with the leftist publication Mother Jones, Harvard government professor Theda Skocpol reiterated those accusations against the emerging Tea Party of 2010 who were later to become Trump supporters. She said Trump’s promise to build the wall pleased them and: “The other thing they like about Trump very much is that he ‘kicks ass,’ that he makes people on the left angry and upset. They love that,” she said.

They certainly do. While many former Tea Party types were put off by Trump’s incessant braggadocio, they could overlook it because he so enflamed the left. When Democrats and their mainstream media allies called Trump racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and all the rest, they recalled the same baseless slurs being thrown at them years before. The “Never Trumpers” included Republican leaders as well as Democrats and were the same people who spurned the Tea Party. Trump had the same enemies they did, so the old aphorism: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” took hold and held fast.

As facts continue to emerge about Obama Administration efforts to prevent Trump’s election, and subsequent efforts by his surviving minions and Democrats in Congress to bring down his presidency, Trump’s support only hardens and increases. At this point in the primary process, it doesn’t appear that any of the Democrats running can possibly beat Trump. He continues to tweet and say stupid things but the economy is humming along. He’s making trade deals. He’s getting judicial appointments approved. With nine months until the election, he looks unbeatable.

But nine months is an eternity in politics. Anything can happen between now and November. Like what you may ask? The Corona virus, for one thing. Chinese efforts to contain it have been futile. So have their efforts to censor information about how serious it is. Their economy is slowing considerably and likely to tank. Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer Laurie Garrett has covered first-hand over thirty epidemics worldwide and she offers a very sobering account of what we may expect from the virus now being called COVID-19. “The economic and political repercussions are going to be enormous,” she says.

Our Ever-Widening Gulf

Have we become a mutual scorn society? As the gulf between left and right in America steadily widens, it’s gotten to the point where primary divisions in our country are not racial anymore; they’re political. According to an article by Yoni Applebaum in the latest Atlantic:

In 1960, less than 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they’d be unhappy if their children married someone from the other party; today, 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats would be, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute/Atlantic poll—far higher than the percentages that object to marriages crossing the boundaries of race and religion. As hostility rises, Americans’ trust in political institutions, and in one another, is declining.

The right sees mainstream media (MSM) as in bed with the left while the left disdains alternative media like Fox News and AM radio as reactionary. According to a recent Gallup poll, 69% of Democrats trust MSM but only 15% of Republicans and only 36% of independents do. This should concern us because it’s a major shift. Gallup first measured Americans’ trust in MSM back in 1972 when 68% said they trusted it. In 1976 it was 74%.

It should be noted that that high trust level of 74% followed impeachment hearings against Republican President Nixon who had resigned two years earlier. As impeachment hearings on Republican President Trump proceed here in late 2019, MSM trust is down to 41% of all Americans. The widening trust gap isn’t just between Republicans and Democrats either. Only one in three independents trust mainstream media now.

When Democrats initiated impeachment hearings against Nixon, many Republicans in Congress supported them. Republican Senate leaders visited Nixon in the White House and advised him to resign. Impeachment hearings against Trump are completely one-sided and Mainstream Media coverage of Trump since his inauguration has been more than 90% negative.

When pollster Scott Rasmussen was interviewed recently by Sharyl Attkisson on her program Full Measure, he said:

78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. [Voters] think [reporters] use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened... If a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that. So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information.

Ciaramella and Obama's pajama boy

On October 30th, Paul Sperry of Realclearinvestigations named the original Trump “whistleblower” as Eric Ciaramella, who worked in the Obama Administration at several levels including CIA and NSC, then continued under President Trump. Both MSM and Fox News still refuse to identify him. When Congressman Adam Schiff began his secret impeachment hearings, he refused to allow Republican committee members to ask questions about Ciaramella. Schiff still denies reports that his staff had contact with Ciaramella before he “blew the whistle,” and coached him about how to file his original report to the NSC Inspector General.

Obama's staff warmly welcomes Trump on his first day in office.
Eric Ciaramella circled

Sperry also reports that Ciaramella worked with Obama CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Vice President Joe Biden, and DNC opposition researcher Alexandra Chalupa who was investigating the Trump Campaign in 2016. If all that is true, it’s easy to understand why Adam Schiff won’t allow questions about him. Schiff, however, insists he is protecting the “anonymous” whistleblower from potential physical harm, ostensibly from Trump.

According to the Daily Wire: “Mark Zaid, the attorney for the Ukrainian whistleblower, stated just days after President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017 that the ‘coup has started’ and that ‘impeachment will follow.’” It’s hard to dispute that Trump-hating Democrats and Republicans have had their knives out for Trump from day one of his presidency — even before as the Justice Department Inspector General Daniel Horowitz is expected to report December 11th. Trouble is, it’s not just the pundit class that’s deeply divided on impeachment. It’s the entire American populace.

When extended families get together next week for Thanksgiving, the more prudent will avoid discussing politics because divisions run deep at that level too. In most families, however, there’s always someone who will bring it up. Then there will be someone else who cannot let a remark slide and will feel compelled to respond. At that point, whoever is hosting should respectfully request that discussion of politics be off-limits for the day.

Thanksgiving 2019 may be the last at which imposition of such limits will be possible. Next year’s Thanksgiving will come only three weeks after election day. No matter which way the voting goes, tensions are bound to get even higher.

No Hurry. I Can Wait

Americans got excited about two things last week: the arrival of spring on Wednesday and the release of the Mueller Report on Friday. However, not much change is noticeable in either case.

It’s been a long winter in western Maine. We’ve been buried in snow since last November and there’s still more than a foot of it on the ground — more than two feet in places. Sunday I had to walk through drifts up to my thighs to check a meter on a property for which I’m responsible. As I write this on Monday, my thermometer hasn’t risen above the thirties. The same is predicted for Tuesday. We still can’t see over the snow banks at several intersections and must nose out a few inches at a time before safely accelerating.

The Mueller Report was released Friday to Attorney General Robert Barr. Democrats demanded it be made public immediately and AG Robert Barr issued a four-page summary Sunday afternoon. House and Senate Democrats doubt Barr’s honesty because Trump appointed him and demand to see the whole thing. Years of saturation coverage by Mainstream Media have convinced half of all Americans that Trump colluded with Russia but Barr quoted from the Mueller Report as follows: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” In spite of that, House Democrats insist their myriad investigations will continue. Expect little change for the foreseeable future.

In spite of our long, cold winter, Democrats claim global warming will destroy the world in twelve years. They want a “Green New Deal” which would eliminate fossil fuels and nuclear energy to rely solely on wind and solar power. It would eliminate 99% of cars within ten years. Any Democrats who disagree stay pretty quiet, especially the ones running for president. Neither polar ice caps nor Himalayan glaciers have melted as predicted. Polar bears are thriving too, but none of that has quieted global warming alarmists.

On election day, I go to the Lovell Town Hall and vote, but I don’t stay up late that night to see who wins or loses. On New Year’s Eve, I don’t stay up late to see the ball drop in Times Square either. I discover sometime after waking up in January that the ball dropped without me and things go on as they always have.

I’m in no rush to know things unless it’s either a medical emergency or someone is trying to break into my house. Break-ins are rare in rural Maine because most of us have guns and criminals know that. Medical emergencies, however, can happen to anybody, anywhere, and we have to wait longer for help out here. It’s a tradeoff if you prefer life in the slow lane, which I do.

I grew up way back in the twentieth century when mail came in envelopes. Telephones were attached to wires and there was only one line per household. When it rang, people answered it. They didn’t let it go to voicemail because there wasn’t any such thing. In my family of origin, I had four sisters and three brothers, so there was often a race to see who could get to the ringing phone first. Whoever the call was for couldn’t tie up the line long because there was always a sibling or parent either expecting a call or waiting to make one.

By the 1970s life in Massachusetts was getting fast and busy so I moved my family to rural Maine where only party lines were available. Our children were little and enjoyed playing with each other, so they didn’t need to talk on the phone to friends who lived miles away. That came a decade later — but by then we had a private line. With three teenage girls, I had to impose a ten-minute limit on each call. If someone was trying to reach me and the line was busy, they had to try every five minutes or so by actually dialing several numbers each time, then waiting for either another busy signal or a ring. Nobody “dials” anymore; we press buttons, but the word stays with us sans function.

Politics have always interested me. They still do, but I’m increasingly put off by breathless, sensational reporting on radio as well as affected eyebrow-raising and forehead-knitting by pretentious television news anchors and reporters. To avoid all that, I’m getting most of my news from reading text online.

By the time this appears in newspapers, it will have warmed up a bit and spring will have become less of a tease. Nearly all this snow will be gone in a month, but we can expect partisan rancor against our president to continue regardless of Meuller Report revelations. It may even escalate.

"Disappearing" Tommy Robinson

The UK government made a big mistake arresting Tommy Robinson over the weekend, then made it far worse by immediately ordering a media blackout. Within hours of his arrest, Robinson was sentenced to thirteen months in jail. That could well be a death sentence because Muslim inmates have threatened to kill him. They beat him within an inch of his life when he was serving an earlier sentence. Other Muslims have threatened to kill his family as well.

Robinson was arrested outside a British court for reporting on the trial of Muslim men for molesting hundreds of young girls. It’s a story mainstream media refused to cover for more than a decade until two women: Professor Alexis Jay and Dame Louise Casey investigated and reported on what the Yorkshire Post described as:

“[a] sexual exploitation scandal in which an estimated 1,400 victims were abused over a 16-year period in the town — largely by men of a Pakistani-heritage background… and the blatant failures by senior figures at Rotherham Council over the town’s child abuse scandal — and alleged attempts to cover up what was happening.”

Evidently social workers, police, and the highest officials in local Rotherham government chose not only to avert their eyes, but hide it all. Media cooperated by ignoring the story. Rotherham is only one example of what is happening across the UK and much of Europe as millions of Arab and African Muslims flood into EU countries. Rapes have skyrocketed, but EU governments continue to do what Rotherham officials have done: pretend it’s not happening, and when it is reported, cover up who the rapists are.

 

How could such a thing go on in Rotherham for so long? When asked why they refused to act, officials there said that, because of who the molesters were, they were afraid of being called “racist” if they brought attention to it. But people who live in working-class neighborhoods, however, knew what was going on. They also knew government and media were denying the problem and still are. How do they feel about it? To borrow a chant from an old movie, many are shouting: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

One of them is Tommy Robinson who grew up in working-class Luton, an industrial town of 167,000 people with a large Muslim population. He’s been arrested and imprisoned numerous times for protesting radical Islam in the UK. Robinson isn’t afraid of being called “racist.” He knows the charge is ludicrous and has developed an immunity. So have other working class Europeans across the continent. Only elite, multicultural Euroweenies fear the word now. Radical Muslim sex traffickers hide behind it.

New Hampshire’s Mark Steyn, who published two books on the Islamization of Europe which were best sellers across the English-speaking world, describes the situation: 

“On Friday, Robinson was live-streaming (from his telephone) outside Leeds Crown Court where last week's Grooming Gang of the Week were on trial for ‘grooming' — the useless euphemism for industrial-scale child gang rape and sex slavery by large numbers of Muslim men with the active connivance of every organ of the state: social workers, police, politicians. Oh, and also the media.”

Steyn calls the proceedings in Leeds a “Grooming Gang of the Week” trial because there were several such sex slavery rings operating with impunity around the UK until Professor Alexis Jay and Dame Louise Casey exposed the coverup in Rotherham. Now the British government is trying to silence Robinson for covering trials using streaming video on his iPhone, but it’s already backfiring. On Tuesday, the Drudge Report published a link to a zerohedge.com story: “Britons Rage Over Robinson Arrest As Mass Protests Break Out Worldwide.”

European government and media elites are learning that they cannot brush off ordinary citizens as the equivalent of Hillary’s “Deplorables” or Obama’s “Bitter Clingers.” They’ll continue to do so at their peril because muzzling free speech, jailing dissidents for “hate speech” and “breach of the peace” aren’t working. Such practices only shine a brighter light on results of failed, multicultural, European immigration policies.

Our founding fathers understood that one of the functions of our First Amendment right to freedom of speech is that of a safety valve. As people express dissatisfaction with government, debate ensues. There’s discussion. Policy changes can be proposed. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. Closing off public anger entirely the way multicultural elites have in the UK is dangerous.

Robinson never claimed all Muslim men are rapists. Neither did Donald Trump claim that all Mexican illegals were rapists, but media continue to claim they did. Trump would not be silenced and gained the White House. Neither will Robinson, but now he’s in danger of being killed by Muslim gangs in prison. If that happens, expect hell to break loose across Europe.