On the Beach

A few days ago I was on a three-way call with my brother and sister. Naturally the COVID-19 crisis was a prominent topic of conversation. The virus was already at work in our home states as well as the nation, but we had the sense that we were still awaiting its arrival. It was the same feeling we recalled from our childhood years in North Carolina, when a hurricane was blowing toward our shores and we braced for its landfall.

After we said our goodbyes I reflected on the analogy and realized that for me another one came closer to the mark. It was a scene near the conclusion of “Deep Impact” (1998), when the main character, long estranged from her father, joins him on the beach at their summer house. They know that soon an asteroid will strike off shore to set off a tidal wave that will drive dozens of miles inland, sweeping all before it. Yet they stand close beside each other, facing the ocean, at peace and unafraid.

No analogy is perfect, and neither is this one. For them the wave will be the end; it will sweep them away as if they had never existed. The pandemic is not like that. I expect it to be pervasive; indeed, I expect that ahead of me lies a moment when I will test positive for the virus. But I do not think it presages my extinction. The disease feels pre-ordained; death does not. And anyway I’m not much concerned for myself. I worry more about my little girl. I’m grateful that by and large the virus seems to spare children, or at least not kill them.

All the same, I feel as if I am facing the ocean, and out at sea a green wall is coming into view.

A Day in the Life

Yesterday I was pre-occupied with reading or watching to news or reading the status update feed on Facebook, the overwhelming majority of which deal with the coronavirus emergency. Most are serious, but a few are humorous memes. (I’ve posted several of the latter myself.) Over the course of the day I posted links to at least 25 news stories: nowadays a lot of people get their news on Facebook. Many have limited access to the better news sources, such as the New York Times or Washington Post, and so I usually copy/paste a paragraph or two that gives the essence of each news report.

Yesterday was Chloe’s first day of home schooling. She and Katherine created a home school schedule largely identical to her usual school day. I’ll adhere to the same schedule. At 5 p.m. I picked up Chloe from Katherine’s. I will have her tonight and tomorrow until 5 p.m., as well as Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and until 5 p.m. on Monday.

Other than pick up Chloe, I did not leave the house. Aside from spending time in the yard or taking walks, I plan to go out as little as possible.

A great deal of consequence occurred yesterday. Here are the main developments at the international, national, state, and personal levels:

Coronavirus Timeline

I’ve become curious about my personal experience with the coronavirus emergency. I have followed the outbreak since the Chinese government first reported it on December 31, but for a long time it was in the background, with other developments taking priority; for example, the impeachment trial and the Democratic presidential primary race.

I decided to put together a timeline for coronavirus developments, and ended up creating a 13-page timeline of some 5,000 words. The timeline blends important global events; developments in the United States and Italy (Italy is widely seen as an example of what can happen in the United States); statements by Donald Trump; US testing deficiencies; developments in Ohio; and developments affecting me personally.

The entire timeline is far too long to post here, so I’ll do so in increments.

Here’s the timeline of events that have affected me personally:

Feb. 28 – I post my first Facebook update relating to the coronavirus. It is a link to a Babylonbee satire: Mike Pence Orders All Women to Wear New Coronavirus-Resistant Uniforms.” The accompanying photo shows women in red outfits from “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In coming days I post links to other humorous stories about the coronavirus.

March 8 – On Facebook I post my first serious update on the coronavirus emergency: a link to a Columbus Dispatch story, “Ohio checking 5 for coronavirus; more testing labs open.”

March 9 – First 3 cases of corona virus confirmed in Ohio.

March 9 – I meet a friend for lunch near campus. Students are much more sparse than usual. While having lunch I see a Fox News report that the New York stock exchange has had a third massive sell-off. The Dow Jones industrial age has fallen some 2,000 points.

March 9 – The Ohio State University suspends face-to-face classes until at least March 30; instructors asked to convert face-to-face courses to online courses. Semester is scheduled to resume on March 16. Students are encouraged not to return to campus at the conclusion of Spring Break (March 9-13). In coming days many other universities will announce suspension of face-to-face courses.

March 9 – I go to Kroger’s and buy a 2-week emergency supply of food (frozen, canned, and dry goods); also 1 8-roll package of toilet paper and 4-roll package of paper towels. (Both categories have already been picked over—about 1/3 of shelf space still has these items.) No hand sanitizer available.

March 10: Like hundreds of other OSU instructors, I begin conversion of my two face-to-face courses to an online configuration.

Collision, Collusion, and Collateral Damage

My life has directly collided with the world of right wing talk radio, a world I’ve been exploring on this Page for the past several months.

Here in Ohio two days ago we had the first three confirmed cases of Coronavirus. A fourth case was confirmed today.

Also today the state governor informed the NCAA that he would not allow crowds to attend any of the March Madness games scheduled to be played in Ohio starting next week.

And today, as with thousands of my colleagues at *The* Ohio State University (Go Bucks!), I worked from sunrise to sundown, almost literally, to convert the two face-to-face courses I am teaching this semester into hastily-improvised online courses.

That’s because the university—quite rightly, in my opinion—suspended all face-to-face classes as soon as word arrived of those three confirmed cases.

But also today, Rush Limbaugh continued his unabashed campaign of pooh poohing all this concern about the Coronavirus, particularly the cancellation of events and the shutdown of campuses.

He sees all this as a plot, driven by the Deep State, the Democratic Party, and the mainstream media, to attack Donald Trump and deny him a second term. This attack extends to an attempt to shut down the mass rallies on which the President thrives and which were the hallmark of his 2016 White House run. The rallies are, after all, crowd events.

In effect, he makes clear, these villains are colluding with a glorified cold virus to bring down Trump.

Buckley: The Godfather of Modern Conservative Media –Pt 2

Born in 1925 to an affluent family, William F. Buckley, Jr. reached maturity about twenty years after the onset of the Great Depression, which had toppled the Republican Party from power, discredited its economic ideology, and called into question its conservative values. Buckley made it his business in life not to so much rescue these values as to forge a new type of conservatism, but his ability to do the latter depended upon the demise of the former. The pre-Depression values therefore deserve a look, as do the liberal values that replaced them. The following paragraphs necessarily paint in broad strokes, but reflect the consensus of most historians.

Economically the GOP is said during the 1920s to have had a commitment to laissez-faire. This is incorrect. “Laissez-faire” implies that government should not interfere with the free market. But although the GOP used the rhetoric of “laissez-faire,” its policies actively intervened to tilt the market in favor of businessmen over other Americans. Most Americans, however, did not mind. They enjoyed the benefits of the economic boom during the Roaring Twenties, and many embraced the dictum, erroneously attributed to President Calvin Coolidge, that the business of America was business. The boom did indeed generate prosperity: the GDP grew by about 4.2 percent each year, which seemed to confirm another dictum: that a rising tide lifts all boats. (Not quite all boats, to be sure: African Americans did not share in the benefits and farmers suffered from chronic crop over-production, which drove down prices, as well as a disastrous Mississippi River flood in 1927.)

But as usual, Americans lost track of the fact that historically the free market generates cycles of boom and bust; thus, if boom was at hand then bust must inevitably follow. And sure enough, underlying economic forces that gathered during the 1920’s set the conditions for just such a bust. The Stock Market Crash of October 1929 heralded its arrival.

The ensuing Great Depression occurred on the Republican watch. Herbert Hoover was in the White House and Republicans held a comfortable majority in both houses of Congress. The Hoover administration’s economic instinct was to rescue Big Business and impose austerity measures on everyone else. But these policies not failed to effectively counter the Depression, they actually made it worse. In 1932 voters responded in fear and fury by ejecting Hoover from the White House and handing the Democrats control over both houses of Congress, with a 62.5 percent majority in the Senate and an astounding 72.4 percent majority in the House.

FDR took office in March 1933. In the famous “Hundred Days” that followed, Congress gave him every tool he wanted to stem the Depression. And over the next seven years or so, Democrats enacted a slew of laws that may usefully be divided into three types: rescue, recovery, and reform. The latter, collectively known as the New Deal, changed the United States in fundamental ways. They created what historian Carl Degler has called the “guarantor state,” under which the federal government assumed responsibility for providing Americans with a safety net, most notably in the form of Social Security, and for regulating the business and financial sectors in such a way as to prevent a repetition of the Depression. The federal government thus acquired an influence over the American economy not seen since the emergency measures of the Civil War—an influence intended this time to be permanent instead of temporary.

Contrary to popular belief, the New Deal did not end the Depression. World War II did that. In terms of war materials the United States government out-produced Germany, Italy, and Japan combined, by infusing even more government money into the economy than had the massive deficit spending of the 1930s. The night and day manufacture of aircraft, warships, transportation and landing craft, tanks, artillery, ammunition, and thousands of other war materials created full employment, much of it well-paying. Rationing and other wartime economic controls largely prevented Americans from spending this new-found income.

The war’s end in 1945 released this dammed-up wealth, augmented by new government spending to implement the G.I. Bill, a program of generous financial and educational benefits for returning veterans. The economic transition from war to peace was not smooth, but it effectively lifted millions of Americans into the middle class, with enough money to purchase automobiles, new-fangled appliances, and above all, houses.

Democrats viewed the New Deal as a way to rescue American capitalism. Most Republicans initially did not see it that way. In their eyes the New Deal did not rescue capitalism; it introduced socialism. But there was nothing they could do about it. Democrats held both houses of Congress until 1946, when control of Congress abruptly shifted to the Republicans, 53.1 percent in the Senate and 56.7 percent in the House. Even then, Democrat Harry S Truman remained in the White House and went on to gain another term in 1948.

It was thus impossible to erase the guarantor state created by the New Deal, and by 1950 many Republicans questioned whether it was even advisable to try. The GOP divided into two groups: a minority that believed in reversing the most troubling New Deal policies, though not all of them; and a majority that made its peace with the guarantor state, claiming in essence that Republicans could administer the guarantor state better than Democrats. Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected president in 1952, held this belief, and a new political stance emerged that is normally called “modern Republicanism.”

I use “stance” instead of “ideology” because, in their mutual embrace of the New Deal, Republicans and Democrats seemingly shared the basic political ideology undergirding it. Centrism was the political norm, sometimes veering to the left or right but centrist nonetheless. Unabashed conservatism had seemingly been all but driven from American life—permanently, in the eyes of some. In this environment, the outright rejection of the guarantor state and the values that accompanied it seemed at best out of touch and at worst simply crackpot.

But a few political activists dissented from the new order. They sought to promote a distinctively alternate political ideology. No one did more to bring this ideology about than William F. Buckley, Jr.

Bill Buckley: The Godfather of Modern Conservative Media - Pt 1

Over the past three weeks I have posted links to articles and a few paragraphs of commentary on current events (mainly the dramatic re-shaping of the Democratic presidential race into a straightforward duel between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders). But since February 12 I have not posted anything related to “Struggle for Peace”—mainly because of competing professional demands, but also because of my having paused to read two biographies and a number of essays about William F. Buckley, Jr., arguably the single most important figure in the rise of modern conservatism (aka “movement conservatism” or the “New Right”) and assuredly the most important figure in the rise of modern conservative media.

Buckley’s main significance lies in his founding of National Review in 1955 and the editorial genius with which he quickly shaped it into the premier journal of conservative opinion. I’ll have a lot more to say about that later. But for now I will limit myself to a discussion of Buckley’s 1968 televised duel with Gore Vidal—a terrific historical novelist, sometime social critic, and world class bitch. It’s the subject of a brilliant 2015 documentary entitled “Best of Enemies: Buckley vs Vidal.”

In 1968 the ABC television network was close to being a joke, especially with regard to its news division, which scarcely anyone watched. It ranked third among the major networks (the others being CBS and NBC) only because there wasn’t a fourth network. So when it came to coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions that year the ABC news division decided that to attract a viewership it needed a gimmick. The producers hit upon the idea of inviting Buckley and Vidal to comment on the conventions in a series of ten debates. The stunt served its primary purpose, that of boosting ratings, but in substantive terms the two pundits—who cordially despised each other—largely ignored their mandate and spent most of their air time engaging in what amounted to mutual character assassination, with Buckley at one point threatening--on live TV--to punch Vidal "in the goddam face."

Watching the extensive excerpts from the debates was eye-opening. Hitherto I had supposed that Buckley was erudite, quick-witted, and thoughtful. He was really only the first two. The debates amply illustrated what I have since discovered from other sources: Buckley was nothing remotely like a public intellectual. In fact, despite his addiction to five dollar words, he was basically anti-intellectual—far more emotional than cerebral. He offered little in the way of a coherent political philosophy; engaged in sweeping, caricatured, frequently absurd generalizations about the liberal world view; and excelled in acid put downs of anyone with whom he disagreed.

In that sense it is really no wonder that when Rush Limbaugh first hit the big time, Buckley swiftly took him under his wing: They were not an odd couple but rather kindred spirits. The main difference between them was that Buckley could exude a weird charm even while eviscerating a guest on “Firing Line,” his long-running program on PBS. Charm is not a word one associates with El Rushbo.