There’s a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill – “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”
Unfortunately, in all of Churchill’s voluminous writings and speeches, no one can find the quote.
But, if Churchill didn’t say this, he should have. Because, in many ways, it perfectly describes our country.
Or, at least it describes the way that I want to think of America.
Right now, in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, I’m personally haunted by the question of whether or not America can be counted on to do the right thing. Certainly, no one can credibly argue that our response to the pandemic has been effective.
The actual measures of country’s responses to the pandemic can be hard to untangle. But, as of this writing, if you take the data (widely used) being compiled by Johns Hopkins, the United States has accounted for 24% of the COVID 19 deaths – and we only have 4% of the world’s population. Even if some of the reported deaths are understated, in the United States and other countries, the data suggest a vastly poorer response in America than other countries.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has historically been widely viewed as the most credible public health organization in any country in the world. Yet, when it came to developing tests for COVID 19, the CDC dropped the ball and failed to deliver at a crucial time when the pandemic was growing exponentially in the U.S. One could easily make the case that the country has never caught up in terms of testing volumes, despite our current President bragging about testing and ignoring the fact that every country he is comparing us to has way fewer people.
American scientists and public health officials helped the rest of the world respond to infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and SARS 1. Now, instead of leading the world, we’re on the list of countries banned from traveling to Europe. We just have too many infections growing at too fast of rate to be considered safe global citizens. And we thought we were the ones who were going to build a wall.
I co-host a podcast called The Big Life Questions Show. Each week, my co-host and I discuss what seems to be a topical, important, big question. Last week, the question was, “Are You Proud to be an American?”
I got more feedback than usual from listeners on this episode. I noticed an interesting dichotomy between younger and older people on how they responded to this question. Older folks, myself included, tend to start with, “I am proud to be an American but …” Younger folks are, first of all, happy that someone like me (older than them) is willing to put this question on the table. Then, they dive into what it would take for them to actually be proud. They see the American exceptionalism mantra as an effort to close a discussion that in actuality needs to be opened up.
I think the younger people are more right. If I’ve learned anything in 2020, it’s that America has a lot to work on. And that work starts, in its essence, with admitting that there is much to improve and work on.
Rather than bashing those who are critical of America, we need to see this admission for what it is – patriotism. When you are willing to work hard on something, it means that you care about it deeply.
I’m not the only one who is wondering about America’s ability to do the right thing when it counts.
According to a recent survey by Pew Research:
“With less than five months until the 2020 elections, Americans are deeply unhappy with the state of the nation. As the United States simultaneously struggles with a pandemic, an economic recession and protests about police violence and racial justice, the share of the public saying they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country has plummeted from 31% in April, during the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, to just 12% today.
Anger and fear are widespread. Majorities of Democrats and Republicans say they feel both sentiments when thinking about the country, though these feelings are more prevalent among Democrats. And just 17% of Americans – including 25% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 10% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – say they feel proud when thinking about the state of the country.
However, nearly half of adults (46%) say they feel hopeful about the state of the country, although a 53% majority says they are not hopeful.”
The headline here is that less than 20% of Americans feel proud about the current state of the country. And that’s down from 31% during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Clearly, the racial justice reckoning and the huge unemployment numbers have something to do with this decline in pride, but racial injustice and rising income inequality have plagued the United States for a long time now. So, I suspect the declining sense of pride and hope are more directly tied to the pandemic, and the vexing challenges that we now face resulting from it.
The logical question is Why has the United States, with all of its talents and resources, responded so poorly to the pandemic relative to other countries?
Without much sports on TV to distract myself, I’ve had plenty of time to contemplate this question. I’ve come up with four primary root causes of our notably terrible response to the pandemic:
- American Individualism- Americans don’t like to be told what to do. Rugged individualism is a hallmark of the American culture. This dynamic shows up both on the political left (protests against institutional power) and the political right (the fervor around the Second Amendment). We’ve reaped the benefits of our individualism, for sure, especially when it comes to an economic culture that values entrepreneurship and innovation and disdains too much regulation. But it’s occurred to me, when we are facing an infectious disease and the need to stop its spread, that individualism has its limits. It needs to be balanced with an ethos of community and caring for each other. In a pandemic, the very act of avoiding getting the virus benefits not just the individual but also the community.
Right now, we seem hell-bent on learning this lesson the hard way. You can see it in the ridiculous-and-almost-unique-to-America debate over the government should be able to tell us where and when to wear masks. A debate that does not seem to be occurring elsewhere, certainly not with the same intensity and resistance.
- The Anti-Science Movement- I grew up in a world that valued science, without question. The Apollo moon landing in 1969 wasn’t just a massive scientific achievement for America, it was cool. Somehow, it’s become much less cool to believe in science, especially if at the moment science is trying to tell you what you don’t want to hear. Dr. Anthony Fauci is widely viewed, in public health circles, as the leading infectious disease specialist working in the US government. Yet, when politicians don’t like what he is saying, they don’t present factual counterarguments. Instead, they just engage in personal attacks.
The problem, of course, is that the virus is a force of nature. It has no political persuasion, in unconstrained by geographic borders and boundaries, and is indifferent to those of us who have grown bored with it. Containing the spread of the virus starts with facts – infections, hospitalizations, deaths – and science-based processes – social distancing, masks, contact tracing. And eradicating the virus as a daily constraint on our lives also depends on scientific breakthroughs – anti-viral drugs and vaccines.
At the risk of stating the obvious, just deciding that “we are done with the virus” isn’t going to work. A from the musician Bob Dylan quote applies here – “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, and then repent.”
- The Growing Victimization Culture- The first half of 2020 just might have been the most challenging six months in America, so far, during my lifetime. We have a pandemic that we cannot seem to get in front of. We have incredibly painful reminders of racial injustice playing in seemingly-infinite loops on our screens. We have millions of people unemployed, underemployed, and struggling to make ends meet. On a personal level, many of the daily rituals that we have grown to love, or at least take for granted, have been disrupted.
It’s easy to play the victim card. It’s human nature to lament what life has thrown at us. The virus didn’t start in America, it started in China. Senior members of our national government have speculated, without evidence, that China started the virus on purpose. Accepting such hogwash not only gives us a human enemy to focus on, it also lets the Trump administration off the hook for their flawed response.
Once you accept your victim certificate, you’ve disempowered yourself. And then you focus your energy on the enemy who victimized you, whomever the enemy of the day is, rather than taking responsibility. Responsibility for your safety, for the safety of others, and for your citizenship.
Victimization is a false trap door. A second Bob Dylan quote applies – “When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?”
- The Lack of National Leadership – Of course, all thinking individuals in America know who our Chief Victim is. It’s our President, Donald Trump. The virus “ruined the greatest economy in the world.” It’s the “Chinese virus”, or something even more racist. But, don’t worry, “someday it will just magically disappear.” Or, “just take this totally unproven drug and you will be fine.” Then again, “Obama must have screwed up.”
Trump’s response seems to be anything that lets him off the hook in the heat of the moment. As I said, once you become a victim, you’ve disempowered yourself.
Why not just let 50 governors, and an infinite number of mayors and county judges figure out what to do about this virus that knows no jurisdictional boundaries?
The truth is that the very nature of a viral pandemic cries out for national leadership and a national strategy for combating it. Perhaps that’s why Angela Merkel in Germany started out by telling her citizens that that 60 to 70 percent of them would eventually get infected, if a vaccine isn’t developed first. Progress starts with the facts, however inconvenient and brutal.
To me, the most visible aspect of this lack of a national response is our inability to develop a coherent, comprehensive, scaled-up testing strategy. But I could have just as easily picked the mess we’ve made of the personal protective equipment supply chain. Instead of rolling up our sleeves, our government sat around and talked about how impossible it was to scale-up testing to the needed capacity. As if doing so was harder than landing a man on the moon.
I suspect that the history of the Trump Administration’s response to COVID-19 has already been written. But that doesn’t have to be the entire history of the American response to this dreaded virus.
We’ve hit a moment of truth for all responsible Americans. What we do as individuals matters, greatly, in terms of how much damage the virus will continue to wrought on our health, our lives, and our economy.
I’ve watched a lot of TV lately, and I’ve yet to see anyone working in a hospital – or anyone with COVID-19, saying that it should be up to individuals to decide whether to wear a mask or not. It’s interesting how someone’s political persuasion becomes less important when their life is under threat.
For all of our fragmented and confused leadership, what to do as individuals seems pretty clear. Wash your hands, socially distance, wear a mask inside buildings, try to do useful things with your time. Be grateful if you don’t have a job that puts you at risk, and if you can spend more time with family. Avoid large crowds. It isn’t rocket science, as they say, but our very future may depend up on it – especially with much of the rest of the world having already bent the curve.
Bob Dylan also said, “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with freedom.”
Leave a Reply