You need no greater indication of the depth of the coronavirus crisis than the fact that authorities began ordering the closure of pubs and bars just before St. Patrick’s Day.
Any worried official was stout indeed who was prepared to face the wrath of boisterous Irish-Americans deprived of their annual green-bedecked barroom gatherings to celebrate their saint while quaffing brews and brewing up historical resentment of the Sassenach (English people, to you).
Speaking of brewing, a coven of Democratic Party witches, after a busy day of doing abortions, probably couldn’t have stirred together a more powerful potion against their indomitable foe Donald Trump than the COVID-19 emergency.
Trump-hating left-wing globalist George Soros must be hitting himself in the head that he hadn’t managed to come up with an action plan like this.
Whatever “sure thing” against Trump that dominant media and Dems had tried to effect from 2016 through early 2020 had crashed and burned. What could be left except an unanticipated act of nature?
A very strong economy and Wall Street performance, very low unemployment, a business executive’s results-producing experience, an ability to draw very large, admiring crowds that disproved media claims of Trump’s unpopularity, an excited approval throughout most of the Republican Party, all this and more.
How could Trump be challenged altogether? How could dominant media that had repeatedly alleged he was a wicked dictator get away with denouncing him if he didn’t instantly exercise dictatorial, nation-saving powers now?
By the way, just recall how Dementia Joe Biden, the apparent Democrat presidential nominee, often easily drew tens of thousands of eager people to his own rallies, just like Trump? Neither do I. And if we can’t have crowds gather these days, the illusion-creating dominant media will try to build up a level of campaign popularity for Biden that he never achieved in reality.
Conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on March 17: “The media has spent years trying to take down Trump, and they consider this crisis their last, best chance. That is why so much coverage remains negative even in a time of grave national emergency. That is why they spend so much time and energy on the phony ‘Trump thinks it’s a hoax’ story when the story itself is the actual hoax.
“But the media is missing the boat because this is actually Trump’s greatest opportunity to show himself as a strong and capable leader to a portion of this country that has spent years being misled about him,” Querard added.
“As a result of this virus, they are actually paying attention to what he says and how he says it, without the filters of the media distorting it. That means that if he handles it well, the virus will boost Trump instead of harm him,” he said.
Well, any “news” medium that quibbled with allegedly bigoted Trump because he said “Chinese virus” at a March 18 news briefing to address the latest emergency measures (China being the country where the disease probably came from) was a medium capable of any inanity.
You think I exaggerate? Here’s the real-life Associated Press reporting on that briefing: “The president also employed more nativist, us-vs.-them rhetoric at the briefing, continuing his recent habit of referring to the coronavirus as the ‘Chinese virus,’ which has been sharply criticized as racist. ‘It’s not racist at all,’ Trump said. ‘It comes from China, that’s all’.”
With the media saying the nation is tottering, the AP nevertheless proceeded to add another paragraph about the briefing on whether Trump had managed to “signal disapproval of (an) offensive term” spoken by an aide “to an Asian-American reporter.”
Americans’ previous use of “swine flu” wasn’t a negative that meant they became prejudiced against eating bacon, nor did “coronavirus” have anything to do with alcoholism possibly induced by the Corona brand of Mexican beer.
It’s better to be safe than sorry. How best to deal with this unfamiliar new pandemic-maker?
Previous pandemics had killed hundreds of thousands of people or more. Every untimely death is regrettable — as the timely ones also may be — but should governments around the world lock down their entire nations simultaneously?
Better to be safe than sorry, indeed. But hopefully we’ll soon know whether this threat is seriously greater than U.S. highway deaths or familiar seasonal diseases factored into current ways of living. (More than 37,000 U.S. road-crash deaths per year, according to the Association for Safe International Road Travel.)
Stock market trends essentially take into account factors like optimism about the future, work force, and productivity. If industry after industry mainly is being closed down over COVID-19, even if short-term, no wonder Wall Street could dive.
But what near and mid-term returns could Wall Street hope for if its flighty fears help jerk the nation to its knees economically?
We may be able to buy unusually cheap gas for our cars now, but what if we can’t drive anywhere? What about the idea to put Christmas lights back up as a sign of hope — if the crisis brings unanticipated electricity shortages?
If Trump’s critics are looking for bold action, how about his closing down the stock market for a bit until it comes to its senses? Even the market itself allows brief “circuit breakers” against excessive declines.
(This article was written the night of March 18. Who knows what the near future holds?)
The U.S. market was closed briefly after the terror attack on 9/11, so the nation could survive a similar halt if the president could lecture nervous brokers to feel assured that they don’t have to sell upon any tremble.
But after a halt in trading, on the other hand, pent-up negative energy could crash the market straight down if brokers had remained fearful. Is it too much to expect brokers to sit on their hands patiently for a bit in what, after all, is the strongest nation on Earth?
Well, at least the strongest on a material level. Morally, of course, the U.S. has been dragged down to a soul-crushing pit of national sin by left-wing judicial and political activists and media. If God punished other nations for their sins, isn’t the U.S. overdue?
On the other hand, that 1950s style of America that dominant media so despise wasn’t screaming for permissive abortion, easy divorce, and secularism. Those were imposed from above. But maybe after a while God expected the Everyday Joes and Janes to reject the sinful systems imposed by the elite.
Yet, on still another hand (if we can get three hands into this speculation), it’s true that when moral traditionalists manage to bring their cases before the courts or the political elite, they’re usually kicked out the back door.
Could COVID-19 be the kind of devastating chastisement from God that was frightening in the Bible? All we can do is pray, work (even if self-isolating at home), and hope not.
Although I wouldn’t want to be nearby, it’d be a sight to see when some Planned Parenthood lawyer tried to wave his court order mandating immorality in the face of an Angel of Justice with a flaming sword who arrived not on a flying saucer but straight on order from God.
By the way, Wall Street, at one end of Manhattan, looks out at skyscrapers that truly deserve the name, not merely 25-story buildings that about any city can have. And above the media and financial giants of Manhattan fly fleets of impressive jetliners. Merely two of which, carefully aimed in 2001, helped to shock and knock the nation to its knees.
Okay, a few jetliners in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania paused our progress beginning on September 11, 2001. But we’re the most powerful, most technically developed nation in the world (not counting the homeless in alleys), with all kinds of missile defenses, strategic systems, bomber and fighter planes, aircraft carriers, you name it.
Except that initially a few pinheads’-worth of germs, too small to weigh on any grocery store scale, now have got the entire United States, to say nothing of the rest of the world, in a pandemic panic.
You can build border walls, but what about resisting little killers riding on the back of a hand?
Trump had been right about excluding groups of people trying to enter the U.S. from certain areas whose hands may have had those little voyagers aboard — not that his foes, including judges issuing injunctions, would admit it.
But now that the virus had arrived? Experienced multibillionaire businessman Trump and his team, regularly standing before rows of reporters, seem to be as best-informed and action-oriented as they can be.
It’s hard to envision Dementia Democrat Biden, who has spent most of his adult life on a comfy government payroll, grasping and grappling better with this task than Trump and his aides.
But we know there are seething foes of Trump who’d do almost anything to get rid of him, no matter the result.
Under the March 13 USA Today headline “This coronavirus outbreak must unite everyone who wants to defeat Trump,” a desperate-sounding opinion writer said: “Deadly incompetence or bloodthirsty fascism. These are the choices Donald Trump is offering this country when he should be working on restoring the pandemic response infrastructure he inherited and blew, like most things he’s inherited.
“This crisis must burn into our souls the moral obligation we have to defeat this man,” the writer added vehemently — strangely invoking “moral obligation” from the side of politics that rejects “imposing your morality” — unless, apparently, that means imposing theirs on us.
Might the nation have less to fear from COVID-19 than from political rage actually fancying that Trump equates to “bloodthirsty fascism” that must be stopped?
Also, while freedom of expression is widely appreciated in the U.S., could a person imagine a major national newspaper like USA Today running a column claiming that President Obama had represented, say, “bloodthirsty Communism”?
Conservatives probably feel safer with someone like Trump than, say, Obama wielding national power at this time of trouble. And if the USA Today writer actually cares to consider the evidence, he might be surprised to learn that Trump hasn’t ordered fascist gangs to murder Democrats.
Meanwhile, plans were afoot to send individual Americans big government checks to help promote economic activity in these troubled times. But if Trump really had dictatorial powers, how about his simply cutting the tax rate in, say, half? How much good does it really do to give a citizen $2,000 if the feds just took that much from him in taxes? Leave the cash where it was to start with.
A New World
The Wanderer asked two sources about their Western states now.
Northern California commentator Barbara Simpson: “Californians are in a new world. Not only are they told of ways to kill or avoid the coronavirus . . . but new restrictions carry the weight of law. They’re now required to stay home, venturing out only to buy food or medicine and have no social meetings with friends, even in their own homes. And, no driving for enjoyment. Breaking those rules is a misdemeanor.
“It’ll be interesting to see which policeman will be the first to enforce this, but, nevertheless, the rules will have a devastating effect on the state economy as bars and clubs must close, as well as other entertainment venues, including theaters and restaurants. Only take-out is allowed,” Simpson said.
“Californians love their freedom. It remains to be seen how they live with these new restrictions as thousands of workers lose their jobs and sources of income,” she said.
Victor Joecks, an opinion writer at the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Las Vegas is going to be hit hard by the coronavirus and resulting limitations on travel. It’s unclear how deep the damage will be, but it’s going to be significant, especially with how many people depend on tourism to support their families.”
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