“This will be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment.” That was U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on April 5, touring the Sunday morning shows to warn of the worst week yet for pandemic death in the United States.
During these interviews, the Surgeon General also managed to show off his mask-making skills, an unwitting allusion to the fact that — contrary to the spectacular events of 1941 and 2001 (not to mention his own previous “guidance” against the efficacy of face masks) — we are far more likely on the brink of a 1918 moment. Not that the Surgeon General’s mission was to raise awareness of pandemics past. Instead, Adams’ appearances were wholly in keeping with the Trump regime’s pivot to an ominous war footing media strategy following the March 11 “National Emergency” declaration — after, of course, previously downplaying the COVID’s threat to the country’s health. Mixed messaging is trending pretty hard these days…
The comparison to the 1918 influenza catastrophe is both more topically relevant, given the kind of emergency, as well as more historically significant. According to consensus estimates, 675,000 Americans died during the 1918-19 pandemic. Despite a recent scaremongering model predicting as many as 1.2 to 2 million deaths from the current coronaviral outbreak, it appears that the sheer number of fatalities will be far less this time. It should also be noted that the U.S. population has tripled during the last hundred years. In other words, despite the botched initial response to this novel coronavirus, the United States is considerably ahead of the “Curve” in relation to the 1918 flu. Even the briefly touted worst case scenario for the current coronaviral flu falls far short of U.S. Army Surgeon General Victor Vaughn’s 1918 concern that “If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth.” This time around, not even the most morbid of forecasts have suggested anything like an extinction event. The Apocalypse will have to hold its horses — at least for now…
So, there’s some good news in this historical comparison of the two pandemics; we’re all still going to die, but more than likely not because of this novel pathogen, the COVID-19. Nevertheless, there’s another factor to consider in this virological context. One hundred years ago, the United States was manifestly on the rise, whereas today, America is evidently in decline. To use a boxing metaphor: the 1918 influenza “haymaker,” staggering though it was, did little to impede the relentless onslaught of the “American Century,” while a flurry of jabs — initially dismissed as mere feints — from the COVID-19 has the American Leviathan on the ropes, and the canvas is calling. How is this possible?
To rephrase and re-focus Surgeon General Adams’ unwittingly uncanny linkage a click: America never left “our 9/11 moment.”
Back in 2001, if not for the 9/11 event and its anthrax annex, the collapse of Enron would have been the Story of the Year. Enron had been the poster child of a financially driven “Boom!” economy. By the time the NYC Trade Towers and the Pentagon were struck, out of a clear blue sky, the almighty Stock Market had already been quietly slumping, and the sham of Enron was about to be unmasked for the fraud that it was (See: Alex Gibney’s “Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room,” 2005). Enron’s free fall showed that fakery and swindling were really the order of the day on Wall St — not to mention Pennsylvania Avenue, and the rest of Washington, DC. While the “New American Century” had gotten off to an obviously disastrous start, the dubiously elected Bush 2 regime, which was practically inert on the day of those fateful attacks, proceeded to make things much worse in the wake of 9/11.
Slapped into reaction, America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in quick succession. These pointless and unwinnable wars soon morphed into defense industry gravy trains costing trillions of dollars. Among other delusionalisms at the time, Americans were told that Iraqi oil would pay for that invasion; it never did. In fact, the price per gallon of gasoline actually doubled between 9/11 and the peak of Iraq-Attack-Two in 2006, amounting to an undeclared war-time gas tax on the average American. Many a clever economist has failed to note this radical, and ironic, price spike in a commodity so basic to the fossil fuel-driven United States. Was it, perchance, merely an unintended consequence of the war?
In other domestic news, 0% financing became the rage, encouraging a shook-up consumer-citizenry to splurge in a post-9/11 climate of “shock and awe.” For its part, Wall St was allowed to indulge in toxic financial instruments like “derivatives” and “credit default swaps” tied to an ever more precarious “subprime mortgage market.” All of this crazy credit and debt-based speculative activity finally melted down into the famous financial crash of 2008, the second coming of which we are experiencing now.
Against this grim backdrop, the previously obscure Barack Obama was voted into office. Obama had promised “Change,” but only managed to deliver more “paper,” as the Federal Reserve turned to the money printing presses to bail out the big failing banks. Wall St was saved! — but with no “change” for the little guys and gals. Ever the smooth functionary in his caretaker role, Obama signaled to Wall St that their “free for few” could continue, unfettered…
Today, the bailout business is booming again, but this time with a small twist: Main St is being thrown back a few crumbs by the fake, financialized economy, even as the big stakeholders take most of the cake, just like in 2008. Presumably, this helicoptering of crumbs will forestall some form of a citizens revolt, which may be inevitable, given that 22 million Americans — a truly staggering number — have lost their jobs in the first 4 weeks since Trump’s national emergency declaration, with millions more to soon follow. Under the cover of this novel coronavirus, the Debt-cult of post-9/11 America, led by the Fed, is reaping the whirlwind it has sown, with most Americans left holding an increasingly empty bag.
Wither the way out of this dire Scylla and Charybdis strait, caught between a pandemic and possible national bankruptcy? If history, and especially recent history, is any guide, things can get a whole lot worse…
In a way to begin again: Historically, War and Pestilence go hand-in-hand, or, horse-to-horse, to pursue an equestrian to apocalyptical metaphor. “Chariot! Taxi! Uber!” So it’s right there, at the beginning of the western literary tradition, in Homer’s Iliad, the opening lines, declaring the Wrath of Achilleus. Well, the well-benched Achaeans investing the citadel of “oriental” Troy (a.k.a. Ilium), had been there 9 circling years, with no positive return (Nostos?) on their investment to show for it; and, furthermore, were confounded by a plague wasting their idle ranks, which were hostilely ringed around Troy. Who knew “Whatever for?” this mad adventurous war was still for?
Today, the masked-mad-Max-man of the World, the Lone Ranger United States, is somewhat in the role of Achilleus, and sidelined by the COVID-19, however much this disease-aster was brought upon itself by its own self or selves, truths be told! Not that Donald J Trump’s anyone’s Agamemnon — except that Agamemnon’s far from the strongest leader in the western literary tradition; indeed, he’s a distinctly bipolar, moody figure, a fact which lightly re-invites the Trump analogy…
So, who is the “Achilleus” figure in the COVID-19 registrar? Probably the Death Star, also known as the Pentagon. Remember: the American Leviathan’s been thrust upon the ropes of ever thinning Finance, and Betsy Ross has been laid off, which means that the Flag’s a no masking position, so to speak, based on Betsy’s whereabouts, which are currently unknown, even to the Gates-Bezos-Jimmy Buffet-to-Zuckerberg crowd, even though their surrogates will social-media about it all day, including the likely hideouts of Betsy Ross during this global-national health crisis, and everything else besides…
In 1918, a plague of disproportionate lethality followed quickly upon a war that was never expected to yield the same — and yet it did, beyond everyone’s expectations, which were only considered to be “realistic” until the realistic actually happened. Historians rarely connect the influenza to the Great War that epigraphed it. Whatever else the current crop of Historians think, pandemic flu is a “Thing”; not necessarily John Carpenter’s, which is another “Thing,” whatever anyone thinks about that movie, or cinematic photo-play, as pre-COVID films may now in the future be known by. The “Thing” has changed, and it’s a Trickster virus. No one’s safe, but everyone’s OK. That’s the deal. People die every day, but no one really knows why. Every death is a question mark: or, is it just a death? Did the United States of America just invade Saudi Arabia, or is that simply another fake news story? After all, there was an “imminent threat,” some sources from Iran reported…
War is the Disease! This is the headline that we all must understand, sooner rather than later…
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