Day 35 Cry Me A River; or, How Could They?

Ten days ago or so, The Huffington Post ran a two-word headline.

THEY KNEW

No one asked who. We knew.

Recently, “Evidence of President Trump’s mishandling of the current Covid-19 emergency has been building steadily. Most recently, The Washington Post on April 4 (‘The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged’) and The Times on April 11 (‘He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus’) have put together a carefully constructed case against the administration.”

There are a squillion more articles. You’ve probably read some of them.

The Letters to the Editor on the subject of ‘total authority’ for the president were gems. Here’s one: “Why in the world would we trust a man who failed to act early to save lives to decide when it is safe to return to some sense of normalcy?”

I thought I’d found the straw that broke this camel’s back yesterday.

Eric Lipton writing in “The ‘Red Dawn’ Emails: 8 Key Exchanges on the Faltering Response to the Coronavirus” with this subtitle, “Experts inside and outside the government identified the threat early on and sought to raise alarms even as President Trump was moving slowly. Read some of what they had to say among themselves at critical moments.”

I read the article with increasing horror.

The email threads ran among “an elite group of infectious disease doctors and medical experts in the federal government and academic institutions around the nation.”

The email chains started in January. The article alleges that the email subjects refer to a film Red Dawn—a nod to the 1984 film with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen—was the nickname for the email chain they built.

“Different threads in the chain were named Red Dawn Breaking, Red Dawn Rising, Red Dawn Breaking Bad and, as the situation grew more dire, Red Dawn Raging.”

Their titles recall a far earlier source, that being the Gospel of Matthew. Wikipedia has this to say. “The common phrase ‘red sky at morning’ is a line from an ancient rhyme often repeated by mariners:

Red sky at night, shepherds' delight.
Red sky at morning, shepherds take warning.

“The concept is over two thousand years old and is referenced in the New Testament as established wisdom that prevailed among the Jews of the Second Temple Period by Jesus in Matthew 16:2-3.”

2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.
3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

The signs of the times. [as they say in academic circles italics mine]

The New York Times did some incredible deep journalistic investigating. Yesterday they posted an eighty-page pdf of all the emails in order of date. I haven’t had the courage to read it. Yet. But I will.

Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Nebraska who served in the White House under President George W. Bush and as an adviser to President Barack Obama, “compared the outbreak to major disasters in world history. ... From the beginning he predicted this would be a major public health event.”

The article highlights “ ...key exchanges from the emails, with context and analysis, that show the experts’ rising sense of frustration and then anger as their advice seemingly failed to break through to the administration, raising the odds that more people would likely die.”

“One of the most active participants in the group was Dr. Carter E. Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Veterans Affairs Department who helped write a key Bush-era pandemic plan. That document focused in particular on what to do if the government was unable to contain a contagious disease and there was no available vaccine, like with the coronavirus.”

There was a plan. An already-extant, only needed-to-be-tweaked, plan.

Our elected government officials never even considered it.

The government that is allegedly “of the people, by the people, and for the people” never even thought about what Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo presciently called, “Outcomes, not optics.”

This White House is ALL about the optics.

I’m over that already. So are most of us who think. Fine, optics. Whatever.

It turned out, though, that this particular camel’s back, namely mine, wasn’t completely broken. Severely sprained maybe, but today’s headlines broke me in two.

“Trump’s W.H.O. decision prompts a chorus of protest.”

President Trump decided yesterday to stop the United States funding for the World Health Organization.

“Mr. Trump’s attack on the W.H.O., which was founded after World War II as part of the United Nations ‘to promote and protect the health of all peoples,’ was the latest example of the president’s attempt to shift the blame for the handling of the crisis.”

‘“So much death has been caused by their mistakes,’ the president told reporters during a White House briefing. He said the W.H.O. ‘willingly took China’s assurances to face value’ and ‘pushed China’s misinformation.’”

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

In a conversation a few days ago, my husband made the observation that these essays not only chronicle what’s happening during The Trump Pandemic. They also follow one person’s reaction to it in the hope that writing to understand my own reactions will help you with yours. So here’s one that I do not like, but that I definitely feel.

I feel betrayed.

Not once. Not personally. But again and again, every time I read one more article about how our government has nothing to do with the people it purports to represent.

Personal betrayal requires response. If you betray me, and I know it, I’m going to work through my own feels, and then tell you about the betrayal. The purpose in that is for me to free myself of my own reactivity. If you, then, hear my pain, you have a choice. You, most likely, barring a psychopathology, will witness, apologize, and take action to change your behavior. You’ll probably also make restitution of some kind.

But what does governmental betrayal on this scale ask for?

How are we the people standing by and letting the government that represents us stop funding the World Health Organization?

I don’t know.

Furthermore, I don’t know what to do about it, and it’s that helplessness that makes me see red. Not only red dawn, or red sky in the morning, or even red sky at night. Nope, see red all the time. Because underneath this anger, this outrage, is a feeling of such profound sadness at their betrayal that I worry it will crush my spirit.

Thomas B. Edsall, writing about the political implications of the tepid Trump White response to the Trump Pandemic, said, “Trump is a master tactician when it comes to eliding the truth, shifting blame, hurling insults and flaunting his bullying ego.”

Congress can’t decide whether to meet remotely at the moment. If they don’t, the three-ring circus (with apologies to the circus) that is this White House will continue unabated. Uh, checks-and-balances, anyone?

In the meantime, I am dedicating my spiritual practice to transforming my own seeing red helplessness into practical action. Here’s a link to contribute to the W.H.O. Covid-19 response fund. https://covid19responsefund.org/

When our electorate doesn’t represent us, the documents that created this country give us the right to act according to our own consciences. If every American who could afford it right now gave $10 to W.H.O., our contributions would replace the one our government is refusing to make in our behalf.

As columnist Timothy Egan wrote recently, “More than anything, the pandemic has shown how quickly things can change if they must. Carpe diem.” Please donate what you can to the World Health Organization today—for all of us.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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