Two and a half thousand people died Wednesday from Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, between the time I published yesterday’s edition of the Editorial Board and right now as I’m typing these words. The total number of dead, as of this writing, is over 74,500. The frequency of death is increasing, and there’s no end in sight. By next week, we will reach 100,000, and, thereafter, a 9/11 every single day.

The president meanwhile appears to believe he can pay attention to other things — anything, really, it doesn’t matter what, but a bogeyman is most likely — and with his attention will go the attention of the press corps and the rest of the country. Donald Trump appears to believe that once the country is “reopened,” the economy will “snap back” to where it was when spending was strong and markets bullish. He does not appear to understand the role of public trust — or the immense damage done to it — in restoring the people’s health and sparking any semblance of economic recovery.

Indeed, the president and the Republicans in the Congress seem ready to move on to shielding businesses and corporations against future lawsuits seeking damages related to death or injury by Covid-19. Trump and his party seem to have no awareness that passing such legislation would send an unambiguous message to an electorate already in shock — that it can’t trust business owners to have consumer interests in mind. After all, if businesses cannot trust themselves not to kill you, why should you?

During a press briefing yesterday, the president said the coronavirus pandemic is worse than the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center. His goal was hyping how bad it’s been to hype how good it’s been to have him as our leader. But the real outcome was an invitation to compare him to Franklin Roosevelt and George W. Bush, and the immediate outcome of that was: Can you imagine either president telling us to overlook mass death and suffering, and go back to business as usual?

It’s impossible. Regardless of what you think of either man, Roosevelt and Bush understood the dynamic relationship between public trust and courageous leadership. It takes courage to be any kind of leader; to face a country’s problem; to search for solutions and endure failure; and to ask for trust and risk accountability. Importantly, Roosevelt and Bush understood a nation trusts a leader demonstrating courage. More importantly, they understood a nation distrusts a leader demonstrating cowardice.

I think Amanda Marcotte was right when she said Trump is bored with the pandemic “and, now that things are getting really hard, he’s ready to abandon it and move on. That’s exactly what he did during his entire career in the real estate business — and in his marriages — abandoning one failed venture after another the second things turned rocky. Now he’s doing it to the entire country.” But liberals should take that further.

Why does a man abandon things “the second things turned rocky”? It could be he’s selfish. It could be he’s greedy. It could be he has the focus of a gnat. But at the root of these is fear — fear of being left out, fear of missing out, fear of not being recognized for being better than everyone else. We all have fears, of course, but most of us screw up our courage to face them. We must. That’s never been the case for Donald Trump.

Liberals usually do not make a big deal of fear, because liberals are empathetic. They do not, as conservatives are wont to do, ridicule someone for being afraid, especially men who are not supposed to feel fear and should “man up.” But empathy can go too far. One limit should be when presidents include children and seniors among the “warriors” prepared to die for glory and honor. We have reached a point where it’s not only appropriate to call out cowardice; it’s appropriate to express contempt for it.

Some time ago, Mike Wallace was asked a hypothetical. If he knew beforehand that the Vietcong were about to ambush US troops in Vietnam, would he alert them? The late “60 Minutes” correspondent answered with a definitive no. He’s a reporter, he said, and reporters remain neutral, even if that means his countrymen are slaughtered.

Wallace was sitting on an ethics panel with other esteemed figures, including George M. Connell, “a Marine colonel in full uniform.” According to James Fallows’ classic description, the panel’s moderator asked Connell to respond to Wallace. “Jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell said, ‘I feel utter contempt.’”

We are not living in a hypothetical. By all accounts, the president knew beforehand the coronavirus would ambush us. He did not act, blocked others from acting, and kept former administration officials from telling on him. He knew it was coming and failed to warn us not out of principle — however misguided Wallace’s might’ve been — but out of plain ordinary cowardice. Like Col. George Connell, Americans should show contempt.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 07 May 2020

Word Count: 842

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On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush gave a triumphant speech atop an aircraft carrier in which he celebrated “the end of major combat operations in Iraq” and the toppling of its dictator, Saddam Hussein. Though the president conceded there was much work to be done, in the background blazed a huge banner sending a quite contrary message:

“Mission accomplished.”

That was a lie. Even as television audiences were told American troops would be hailed as liberators, administration officials knew, or at least suspected, that there were months ahead, perhaps years, in which the US might be bogged down in a bloody sectarian civil war even as it spent trillions rebuilding a sovereign nation it destroyed.

Specifically, “mission accomplished” was one half of a bigger lie. The other half was telling Americans that the US must invade a country that did us no harm on Sept. 11, 2001, even if we could not prove definitively that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction.” Why wait for a smoking gun when a smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud? Thus was the beginning of the end of the United States as global champion of peace, prosperity, law and order. The beacon of hope in a dark world was blowing out.

The American public would not catch up to administration suspicions until well after the 2004 election, by which point Bush had established himself as a war president and by which point his campaign had slandered a war hero into electoral oblivion. This is perhaps the most insidious facet of the Bush administration’s dishonesty. It lied until it could not lie anymore. By that point, tens of thousands were dead, maimed and wounded, the world order was in deep rot, but at least a Republican was president.

Donald Trump is, as I’ve often said, a lying, thieving, philandering sadist. But even he must put some effort into eclipsing George W. Bush’s record. The current president is a golf ball-sized hail storm of lies, but his lies have not yet yielded a body count equal to the years-long US occupation of Iraq, which is estimated to be 185,000 to 208,000. The current president, however, is on track, and instead of Iraqis, they’re Americans.

Two thousand people died in this country yesterday from Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, bringing the tally of dead, as of this writing, to more than 72,000. Two thousand people are probably going to die today. Two thousand people are probably going to die tomorrow. More than 3,000 Americans died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

By June, death by Covid-19 may reach 3,000 every day. All things being equal, half a million Americans may be dead by Election Day. By then, the president will have smashed George W. Bush’s body-count record, and then some.

Trump is now pretending the worst of the pandemic is over. As a “war president,” he’s celebrating the defeat of the “invisible enemy.” The White House task force charged with coordinating a nationwide response will pivot to “reopening” the economy as well as finding a new coronavirus vaccine. From now until November, the president will likely spend his time hyping how much his administration has done for the American people. He will, in other words, follow a predecessor’s playbook — lie until he can’t lie anymore. But by that time, all the lies won’t matter, and neither will the legion of dead.

Bush and Trump are different in an important way. While Bush put a higher value on American life than he did Iraqi life (3,000 dead Americans in one day, it could be argued, are worth 185,000 dead Iraqis over years), Trump doesn’t value any lives.

The president knows the pandemic will kill more of us, and he knows it will kill more of us as a result of the White House rushing to “reopen” the economy for the sake of political expedience. In telling us he knows, the president is telling us life is cheap.

Trump told ABC News last night: “There’ll be more death, that the virus will pass, with or without a vaccine. And I think we’re doing very well on the vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it’s going to pass, and we’re going to be back to normal.”

“I always felt 60, 65, 70, (thousand) as horrible as that is,” the president told anchor David Muir. “I mean, you’re talking about filling up Yankee Stadium with death! So I thought it was horrible. But it’s probably going to be somewhat higher than that.”

We promised ourselves we’d never forget the 3,000 victims of 9/11. We erected huge memorials to honor their names. We altered world history avenging their deaths. What are we going to do when the pandemic is over. Conveniently forget — or remember?

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 May 2020

Word Count: 799

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The president was asked last week for his thoughts on recently released documents showing how the FBI prosecuted Michael Flynn, his former advisor. In 2017, Flynn pled guilty to lying to the Mueller investigation into Russia’s 2016 cyber-attack. Flynn now wants to change his plea. His sentencing is currently and indefinitely postponed.

Donald Trump’s answer signaled a willingness to pardon Flynn, but it suggested more than that. In just a few words, his answer captured his ideology as well as the way in which he has led a country now facing the likelihood, per an internal administration report, of 3,000 daily deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

“You don’t get to be where he is by being bad, I can tell you that,” Trump said.

Allow me to translate.

Success in life isn’t a matter of talent, education, labor and pluck. It’s a matter of character. More specifically, genetics. If you’re successful, as Trump believes Flynn is, your genes put you beyond the strictures of accepted morality. Right and wrong are for ordinary people, who are ordinary because they were born with ordinary genes. No amount of preparation and effort is going to improve their lot. It’s comical to even try.

You, however, were born with good genes. You are, therefore, good. The evidence of your goodness is your success. This is true even if your conduct is bad, because bad conduct is good when a good person does it. Because bad conduct is good when good person does it, attempts to hold a good person accountable for bad conduct violate his rights and liberties — a grave injustice that’s deserving of a presidential pardon.

This worldview is why Trump didn’t think he was doing anything wrong when he betrayed the United States in seeking foreign sabotage of the next election. The president is a good person in his mind. (His history of praising his DNA, and others’, is long and well-documented.) Treason, which is what the impeachment trial was about, would have been bad for a bad person born with bad genes. For a good person born with good genes, however, treason is good. So efforts to hold Trump constitutionally accountable were, by turns, “a hoax,” “a witch hunt” or “presidential harassment.”

This worldview is in keeping with despots in world history who wrongly believed they were infallible by dint of being who they are. Truth and morality were not afforded deference, because affording them deference meant submitting to their authority, which would violate the tyrant’s rights and liberties. Trump’s worldview is in keeping with eugenics, social Darwinism, fascism, white supremacy, Christian nationalism — any political thought privileging the in-group for reasons made out of whole cloth, any rightwing movement rationalizing the out-group’s pain, suffering and even murder.

The pandemic has now killed nearly 70,000 people in this country. An internal Trump administration report, revealed by the New York Times Monday, anticipates as many as 3,000 deaths per day by early June. Some 30 million people are officially jobless. Half the states are easing restrictions, but even as they do so, a huge majority of Americans believe governors are “reopening” too quickly. That suggests a depth of doubt, or outright distrust, that no amount of Republican propaganda is going to improve.

The US economy is not going to “snap back,” as the White House has claimed. Some Republican governors are going to try forcing employees back to work in an effort to save their own skins, but that gambit can’t succeed nationally. Too many people have died. Too many people are going to die. Trust in the president now flows in a trickle.

All things being equal, the economy may not return for a long time. Medical experts warn against hoping for a miracle. We probably won’t see a viable vaccine for two years. You may as well write off 2020 and 2021. Society was not designed for “social distancing” and economic collapse is likely to arrive before it’s redesigned for it. (The LA Times reported this morning the coronavirus has already mutated for the worse.)

Everyone but GOP confederates knows the president did not do enough early enough when national executive action would have mattered most. Trump did not do enough early enough, because he did not want the pandemic to be a problem, and because Trump did not want the pandemic to be a problem, it wasn’t — until it was, undeniably.

Trump’s unshakable faith in his genetic superiority means never making a mistake, never apologizing and never being accountable for anything to anyone. The death toll will continue to mount. Unemployment will continue to rise. Meanwhile, Trump will continue to believe he’s good, and because he’s good, he did nothing wrong, and because he did nothing wrong, the majority is being so unfair when it blames him.

It’s enough to make a president pardon himself.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 May 2020

Word Count: 810

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I suppose we should give the president a round of applause. Donald Trump has done something no Democrat (and no liberal) could have done — demonstrate to a voting majority the anti-American animus of the “conservative” project of the last 40 years.

“Anti-American” might sound strange. This is, after all, the same president who vowed in 2016 to “Make America Great Again.” But if the incumbent has taught the majority nothing else, it is the “America” of his famed campaign slogan is not the United States.

That “America” is a nation within a nation. It is an imagined community in which “real Americans” understand they are chosen by God to rule a country given by God. This birthright does not recognize the legitimacy of liberty and justice for all, because it cannot recognize them. The chosen do not have equals. The more you insist on equality, the more confederates insist your salvation comes only from submitting to their rule.

When this president calls himself a nationalist, he’s not talking about the United States. When he talks about borders, he’s not talking about US borders. He’s talking about himself as the leader of a “nation” defining itself less for what it is than for what it isn’t — less by its own values than by the values of its perceived domestic enemies.

In 1981, newly elected President Ronald Reagan said famously, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Most Americans gave him the benefit of the doubt. Most chose to believe he meant high taxes on the wealthy and high federal regulation of business and private enterprise. A government that does less of these things is a government that promotes greater liberty and broader prosperity.

The nation within a nation heard a different message. The “real Americans” heard a president saying the federal government would not push (especially southern) states into obeying Constitutional requirements to administer equal justice to their non-white residents. You could say Reagan’s inaugural speech became a mantra for four decades of anti-government politics. That’s not wrong, but that doesn’t arrive at its logical conclusion. It was the beginning of the Republican Party’s soft civil war.

To be sure, the modern GOP did not start that way. Reagan wasn’t an anti-American, as Trump and his confederates are. In the same speech, Reagan said: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.” (Thanks to David Lazarus for digging up that quote.)

To be sure, the remaining small-government conservatives in existence still believe that the federal government plays a legitimate role in regulating and coordinating responses to national crises, such as a pandemic that has killed, as of this writing, more than 68,500 people and put 30 million others on the jobless rolls. But a small-government conservative is not the same thing as an anti-American confederate.

During the financial panic and its aftermath, the Republicans discovered they could get the upper-hand on the newly elected Democratic president by ignoring Reagan’s conservatism. They stopped making government work at all. That caused massive suffering, even for GOP voters, but a chance to sabotage Barack Obama was worth it.

During the pandemic, the confederates took things a step further. They not only ignored Donald Trump’s gross negligence and dereliction of duty, but they also skimmed as much public money as possible for corporate friends and allies by passing huge coronavirus relief bills. At the same time, they saw a new opportunity to sabotage their domestic enemies even more by holding the rest of the country for ransom.

GOP leaders now say they want to shield businesses against corona-virus related lawsuits in exchange for bailing out cities and blue states fighting the worst of the pandemic. Democrats say that would incentivize GOP governors to “reopen” before it’s safe to, thus potentially sacrificing lives for the president’s political benefit. (“Reopening” as soon as possible will improve the economy, which is thought to be better for Trump.)

This isn’t what you do when you believe we’re one nation, indivisible. This isn’t what you do when you believe, as Reagan did, that “government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.” This is what you do, however, when one’s loyalty is to a nation within a nation — when treason is an option.

The question shouldn’t be whether government is big or small.

The question is whether government is for some or all Americans.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 04 May 2020

Word Count: 780

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It can’t be said often enough. The biggest political story of the year isn’t the 2020 election. It isn’t the pandemic. It isn’t its death toll (64,000 and counting). It isn’t the record-breaking number of unemployed (30 million). It isn’t Donald Trump making everything, and I mean everything, much worse than it needed to be. It sure as hell isn’t those “ersatz phallus swingers” intimidating Michigan legislators with long guns.

No, the biggest story is so big as to be invisible. It’s so obvious as to be silent. The biggest political story of the year is the tens of millions of Americans sheltering in place for the sake of their own well-being and safety, and for the sake of all Americans. (The second-biggest story is Americans who are not paid to risk their lives risking their lives by working in grocery stories, pharmacies, gas stations, and nursing homes.)

Staying home might not seem like a political act. After all, what’s political about being scared of catching the coronavirus, which is a death sentence to the elderly and causes even 40-something men and women to stroke out? But please. Make no mistake. It is.

It’s as political as “jackbooted thugs” storming state capitols (to borrow the NRA’s favorite form of slander). It’s as political as the president sidestepping any and all accountability for the United States having the highest tally of dead compared to all industrialized nations combined. It’s as political as the Republican Party giving away billions of dollars in goodies to friends. It’s as political as Trump rushing the country back to some semblance of normal, risking a second wave more deadly than the first.

But more than that, it’s a better politics, and it’s a better politics, because it’s moral.

You are staying home not only for your benefit, but for everyone’s benefit. Yes, it’s driving you crazy. Yes, it’s driving your kids crazy, which drives you more crazy. But millions seem to believe such sacrifice is necessary and right, which is not only small-d democratic, it’s small-r republican. Staying home means staying healthy (or at least not getting sick), which means we are actualizing, willingly or not, the Good Life.

This is important for a number of reasons. One is that the biggest political story of the year doesn’t get the degree of attention it deserves. (It’s understandable why white men wielding semiautomatic rifles cause alarm, but these people should not be confused for a majority perspective. They represent a vanishingly small minority of chuds.) Importantly, the president won the last election vowing to make America great again. While Trump is failing, most Americans are following a far more prudent course.

Even more important, however, is what the pandemic is revealing about the American character, traits and qualities demanded of a nation committed to democracy. I yield to no one is my animosity toward fascism and a major party laboring to establish 21st-century apartheid. But I concede to the need to step back and marvel at the courage, patience and stamina of the millions of us doing what’s right. The challenge is only beginning. But no challenge can be overcome without the right kind of liberal spirit.

I confess to being skeptical. Trump’s election seemed to suggest an electorate that had forgotten the old democratic faith, a republic grown tired and no longer feeling the thrill of saying the words, at the end of the allegiance, with liberty and justice for all. Trump’s victory signaled the rise of a “nation” within a nation, one already at war with the other but that did not desire disunion as much as domination without complaint.

Since then, however, the people seem to have awakened, or at least cracked open a sleepy eye, not only to what an authoritarian has done but also to what the people themselves allowed to be done. I hope now that voters realize a president willing to extort governors into being “nice” to him in the thick of a pandemic is of a piece with a president willing to extort a foreign leader into sabotaging an election. I hope now that voters realize the same president vowing to make America great again is the most anti-American president of their lifetimes. I hope now that a majority of the people realize beating fascism requires unity and the overwhelming demonstration of power.

Presidents, leaders, institutions, and laws don’t make a nation. (Borders sure as hell don’t). What makes a nation is its people, and what makes a people is its character. Yes, some of us want to destroy us. But most of us don’t. Indeed, most of us want to do what’s right for everyone. The biggest political story of the year is tens of millions of Americans staying home for their sakes and for the benefit of the common good.

That’s a good reason to hope.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 May 2020

Word Count: 809

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Tuesday saw a milestone. More people have died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, than all the military men who died fighting in the Vietnam War. I would call it a double milestone, however. While American involvement in southeast Asia lasted about 19 years, the current pandemic has lasted just a month and a half.

The death toll, as of this writing, is 61,700. Without a vaccine, there’s no end in sight. If we’re lucky, the virus will disappear on its own. Those are terrible odds, though. It’s best not to trust anyone telling you things will go back to normal. Because they won’t.

Yes, the numbers are peaking in places like New York City, but that’s the result of stay-at-home orders and other “social distancing” measures put in place to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed. Once those restrictions are lifted, as a result of their working in the first place, there’s almost certainly going to be a second wave that could be worse. (There’s almost certainly going to be a first wave in rural areas of the country.) All this could drive us all back to where we are now. At home. This is a fact.

There’s no getting around it. Yes, the US economy is suffering badly. The official number of unemployed has now topped 30 million. (That’s most likely an undercount.) However, you are doing your part for yourself and your fellow citizens. Staying home, after all, is what is slowing the disease’s spread.

It’s up to the federal government to “provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Another fact: It is not.

The White House would like you to believe society will normalize in a jiffy. The Gross Domestic Product shrank by nearly 5 percent last quarter. This quarter is expected to be much worse. But Larry Kudlow, the president’s economics advisor, said the GDP “should snap back.” This is the same guy who said, of the outbreak in February, that, “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight.”

The New Haven Register reported Saturday the results of a new medical study out of Yale. Researchers found most patients suffering from Covid-19 did not have a fever. Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at the Yale School of Medicine, said public health officials “may have to redefine” how they approach the disease. “If most people don’t develop a fever, then screening for fever is not a good public health practice.” You can say that again.

Colleges and universities are assuming the worst will be over by the time classes begin in the fall. That’s an enormous assumption. First, because dorms are where you catch things you don’t catch anywhere else. If you can catch chlamydia in college, you can catch the new coronavirus. Second, because nothing about college life is built for “social distancing.” Classrooms, dorms, labs, libraries, theaters, stadiums — nothing. And if students can be infected without being feverish, what’s the point of screening?

Before you think young people aren’t vulnerable, recall a report by the Washington Post showing young people, who aren’t supposed to suffer strokes, stroking out. “Doctors are sounding the alarm about patients in their 30s and 40s left debilitated or dead after major strokes. Some didn’t even know they were infected with the disease caused by the coronavirus.” Have I mentioned that professors, who teach young people, are often elderly? Are they going to trust administrators to have their best interests in mind? Maybe.

Fact is, institutions large and small — whether colleges and universities, local churches and entertainment venues, or Major League Baseball — they all of them feel tremendous financial pressure to jumpstart normal life, and they are going to look on the bright side despite the bright side being frequently cast in a shadow of doubt.

They have status-quo bias. They are going to presume the best even when there are 61,700 and counting reasons to presume the worst in the absence of a vaccine. They will weigh the cost of standing idle versus the cost of your well-being; and your well-doing, though important, might not be as important to them as the hard bottom line.

Most have good intentions. Most will be careful. Some will be reckless, though. Indeed, some will just come out and say the cash-value of your life is less than the cash-value of your labor, and as a consequence, we are going to use state power to force you back to work even if doing so exposes you and everyone else to a deadly disease. In Iowa, for instance, the governor’s office warned employees that refusing to go back to work out of concern for one’s well-being will be considered a “voluntary quit,” which would disqualify workers from access to unemployment insurance.

Life will return to normal — eventually. But in the absence of a vaccine (or good luck), be careful about who you put your trust in. Do they have your best interests in mind?

Maybe.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 30 April 2020

Word Count: 843

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I just checked. Turns out I’ve never focused on Mike Pence. That might be due to his being a non-entity. Like most people, I don’t care enough about the vice president to bother forming an opinion about him. Circumstances, however, have forced me to.

Pence visited Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic Tuesday. He wasn’t wearing a mask.

Wearing a mask is, um, the smart thing to do in the thick of a pandemic that has, as of Tuesday, killed more Americans over a month and a half than all who died fighting in Vietnam over 19 years. It’s the smart thing to do in a health clinic whose patients are recovering from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. It’s the smart thing to do for the official second in line to the most powerful office in the land.

Pence is no dummy. What gives?

Some have speculated he doesn’t believe he needs one. As a twice-born conservative Christian, he likely believes faith in Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior literally immunizes him against the coronavirus. Given that Pence never lets you forget his devotion to the unerring Word of God, this would seem a good theory.

Such speculation is given greater credence by the theory of “muscular Christianity” that has developed over two decades. After the Cold War ended, evangelicals were open to “soft patriarchy,” according to Kristin Kobes Du Mez. But after Sept. 11, 2001, “a more militant Christian masculinity returned with a vengeance.” Du Mez: “From hundreds of books that collectively sold millions of copies, evangelicals were told that men were called to be warriors and that masculine aggression was God’s gift to humanity.”

By the time of the 2016 election, Du Mez wrote, white evangelical Christians had been reveling in the idea of an ass-kicking Christ for years. The Rev. Robert Jeffress said he wanted for president “the meanest, toughest, son-of-a-you-know-what I can find in that role.” In Donald Trump, they found what they were looking for. So Mike Pence didn’t wear a mask Tuesday for three reasons. One, he’s a Christian. Two, he’s a man. Three, he’s a Christian man. And real Christian men don’t need no stinking masks.

I mean, these are interesting theories. But I think they give too much credit to the vice president and white evangelical Christians leaders unwavering support of a lying, thieving, philandering sadist who also happens to be the president. More importantly, they implicitly accept the legitimacy of American evangelism’s definition of manhood.

If Pence were really a manly Christian unafraid of catching the coronavirus among people who were recovering from it, why didn’t he just say that? Sure, he would have courted controversy, but so what? The president’s supporters would have loved it.

Instead, Pence lied. He said he was following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Actually, the CDC’s guidelines, according to NPR, recommend “wearing cloth face masks in public to help prevent transmitting the virus to others.”

Pence lied in another way. He said he is tested every day to make sure he isn’t infected. “And since I don’t have the coronavirus,” the vice president said, “I thought it’d be a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible health care personnel, and look them in the eye and say ‘thank you.’” Again, Pence is no dummy. He understands the difference between being uninfected and being immune to future infection. He is one, but not the other. Why did he lie?

I suspect it’s because the president refuses to wear a mask. If the president does something, the vice president does it too, because this vice president is pretty much the opposite of manly, never mind manly Christian. Deciding on his own how to think, how to talk, or how to even walk is too risky for a man who’s conformist to his core.

Mike Pence conforms so much to the president that he’s even starting to look like him. I can’t be alone in noticing the manner in which he toured the Mayo Clinic Tuesday — leaning forward slightly, arms dangling, appearing to tiptoe, as if he shared Trump’s heft and girth. He’s less Iron Vice President than Mighty Morphin Power Pence.

Manly Christians like to brag about being self-reliant. All they need is Jesus, after all. But self-reliance takes courage. It takes standing up to power when necessary, as Christ did. “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. “He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

Pence isn’t alone. The Christians who triumph in the belief that “the meanest, toughest, son-of-a-you-know-what” is the president are the same ones wailing about unfair persecution in American modernity. They complain with breathtaking consistency, which might be admirable if consistency, as Emerson said, weren’t “the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 April 2020

Word Count: 855

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It’s a common question. What have the president’s ordinary supporters gotten out of their deal with him? The answer is just as common — not much. Before the pandemic, the only material outcome of backing Donald Trump was a slight decrease in their federal income taxes. Other than that, gains have been performative, not substantive.

Some say that’s enough to sink an incumbent. If he can’t deliver for his base, then he can’t win reelection. If he presides over a fragile economy, as is currently the case, then he’s bound to lose. But what most people don’t understand is that Trump is delivering, and he will keep delivering even if the economy collapses. The deliverable doesn’t come in the shape of economics, policy or law. It’s entirely psychological.

Think of it this way. Remember those men at “anti-quarantine protests” strolling around state capitols carrying semi-automatic rifles? They said they were protesting stay-at-home orders. They said their goal was demonstrating their rights to bear arms, individual liberty and personal sovereignty. But that wasn’t their immediate goal.

Their goal was intimidating peaceful and unarmed protesters. Their goal was deriving pleasure from the fear of seeing a man brandishing a weapon the likes of which have massacred thousands in mass shootings around the country for the last decade and a half. Their goal was savoring the flavor of gaslighting someone into thinking their goals were high-minded and pure rather than what they were: low and barbarous.

“Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters,” wrote Umberto Eco in his 1995 classic, “Ur-Fascism.” “This is the origin of machismo. … Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons — doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.” (Many thanks to Charles Sykes for reminding me of Eco’s essay.)

I’ve tried coining a phrase capturing the essence of Trump, but I don’t think I’ll ever come close to the elegance and accuracy of “ersatz phallic exercise.” This is what the president delivers. This is what he will continue to deliver even if the US economy falls into a full-blown depression. Trumpism is a mirror — a fetish you might say — more than it is a political ideology. The key to understanding his presidency isn’t what it is but what it isn’t. It isn’t governing according to morality, the Constitution and the law for the benefit of all Americans. That takes lots of time. That takes lots of labor. That’s not nearly as fun as swinging your phallus around to the horror of the “snowflakes.”

“Ersatz phallic exercise” helps explain one of Trumpism’s key contradictions. On the one hand, supporters say that he’s manly man, and that his manly manliness is why liberals, Democrats and Never-Trumpers hate him. On the other, Trump is a fire hose of whining. He pules and keens at the slightest offense, real and imagined, but mostly imagined. He can’t take hard questioning. He’ll blame anyone for his mistakes. You’d think a manly man would have skin made of iron. Trump’s is made of onion paper.

But that doesn’t matter to his supporters, because consequences don’t matter, and consequences don’t matter, because there’s always a way of escaping accountability when intellectual dishonesty is the lens through which one engages the world. What matters is impulse, urge, appetite, an itch, and other neurological bliss points. You don’t swing your phallus around wondering what the outcomes might be. You swing it around, because your reptile brain demands that you swing it around. If you need a reason for horrifying some bystanders, you can later on fabricate one out of thin air.

Those who take responsibility for their actions will always seem weak to those who do not take responsibility for their actions. That’s just the way things are. But let’s not pretend “ersatz phallic exercises” are tougher, stronger and manlier than virtue. “Virtue” is derived from the Latin vir, which means “man.” Virtue, among ancient Romans leaders, who were nothing if not men’s men, privileged it above all other qualities, as it connoted valor, excellence, courage, and the strength of character. Real virtue is harder to put into practice. It takes lots of time. It takes lots of labor.

Even so, it too can be a source of profit and pleasure.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 28 April 2020

Word Count: 725

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The conventional wisdom holds that Joe Biden must have a message about what he stands for, and why, in order to persuade a majority of Americans to vote for him in November. This now seems more assertion than fact. The incumbent keeps talking himself into trouble. In comparison, the former vice president might coast by doing the minimum — e.g., combing his hair, brushing his teeth, and standing up straight.

Donald Trump is now into his fourth day in a grudge-match against the White House press corps over whether he suggested that injecting disinfectants, and exposing the inside of one’s body to “light and heat,” might cure COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, which has killed nearly fifty-five and a half thousand Americans. Trump’s face-off with the press has turned into a vicious cycle. The more he says, no, I really didn’t say that, the more reporters say, yes, you really did, and the more they say that, the more the president compares them to the “Invisible Enemy” (i.e., the virus).

If it’s true that Joe Biden must have a message to win a majority of voters, what might that message be in a context of a four-day-old conflict over whether the president really did say what he really said? “Don’t drink bleach” or “I believe in science” or “Trump isn’t worth poisoning yourself”? Or more generally: “I will defend and protect the health and well-being of all Americans” or “I will honor my oath of office”? This would sound like parody if the reality of our current moment weren’t so absurd.

Making is more absurd, of course, is the press corps’ habit of taking everything this president says deadly seriously. He doesn’t mean half the things he says, yet reporters dutifully record each word as if he did. A consequence is the separation of intent from effect so Trump can claim credit for the latter but no responsibility for the former. Fact is, half of what he says doesn’t make sense, because it wasn’t suppose to make sense. Indeed, half of what he says is hostile toward sense-making. Its true purpose is communicating to celebrants of the politics of the occult. All a Democratic opponent must do is point to it and ask voters: Is this what you want from your president?

I introduced on Friday the concept of the politics of the occult. It’s another way of characterizing what others have called “epistemic closure” among Republicans during the George W. Bush years. It’s another way of describing what others have called the “cult of Donald Trump.” But it’s better, I think, in that “occult” connotes something hidden, something that must be kept secret, because once it’s exposed — once it’s named — it ceases to exert power. The magic spell, you might say, is broken. Half of what the president says doesn’t make sense, because it isn’t supposed to make sense to people who privilege making sense of the world. Those who don’t want the world to make sense, or who want it to make sense only to them, practice the politics of the occult.

The politics of the occult lends itself, I think, to discourse on conspiracy theory, the psychology of political paranoids, the golden-calf idolatry of white evangelical Christians, militia movements and other rightwing organizing, white nationalism, and so on. All share in common not only a hiddenness from the mainstream of American society, but a desire to remain secret even as they work to take over the mainstream. None of these hope to persuade a majority of their rightness. All of them hope to replace the majority’s view with theirs, to replace facts with “alternative facts.” The means of replacement isn’t reason or democracy. It’s demagoguery and violence.

If a president says things that not only don’t make sense (how about we look into injecting disinfectants!) but also denies that he ever said anything that doesn’t make sense (like saying how about we look into injecting disinfectants!), it’s safe to say his intent, whatever the effect, was always already malign.

If he doesn’t mean what he says, he doesn’t care, and not caring is, at the very least, a violation of his oath. Such a president doesn’t persuade “the enemy of the people” (i.e., the press corps) that he is right and they are wrong. He goes to war. He lies and lies, and he lies, until they decide that checking his “facts” and holding him to account are useless, then giving up.

Compared to Trump’s politics of the occult, Joe Biden doesn’t need a message. All he needs is to make sense:

“I will not break the law.”

“I will not undermine the US Constitution.”

“I will not commit treason.”

“I will not encourage people to eat poison, then deny saying it, making isolated Americans feel crazier than they already feel amid a pandemic whose death and destruction are partly my fault.”

Sounds like a winner!

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 27 April 2020

Word Count: 820

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Since the start of the pandemic, the president has acted frequently as if a cure for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, were just around the corner. He does this, I suppose, because someone somewhere is going to believe him as long as he says it with enough confidence. (And Donald Trump is nothing if not bigly confident.)

One of his advisers must have told him that hydroxychloroquine, an old malaria treatment, was being studied as a possible remedy. That was enough for the president to blow up a possibility into a guaranteed reality. Of course, someone somewhere believed him, took it and died. The FDA issued a warning today, saying that um, yes, ingesting it might actually kill you. Otherwise, it had no effect on the seriously ill.

That Trump was proven wrong is no impediment to continuing his shuck and jive. This president will not recognize the authority of facts, reason, scientific method or empirical truth. Yesterday, during a press briefing, he hinted at another surefire cure that, again, someone somewhere is almost certainly going to believe, inject and die.

I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.

In front of TV cameras, Trump also asked the White House task force coordinator, Deborah Birx, to look into “a rumor that — you know, a very nice rumor — that you go outside in the sun or you have heat and it does have an effect on other viruses.” Addressing the good doctor, the president added: “Speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure, you know, if you could.”

It’s natural to call Trump an idiot. It’s understandable to call him deranged. A more sophisticated reaction might be that he’s a conspiracy theorist or a fascist demagogue or an anti-intellectual populist. I have touched on all of these. But today, I’d like to suggest another view: that Donald Trump’s politics are the politics of the occult.

I’m borrowing from Joan Didion’s Political Fictions. In the introduction, she explains her difficulty comprehending the 1988 election. “There remained about domestic politics something resistant, recondite, some occult irreconcilability that kept all news of it just below my attention level. The events of the campaign as reported seemed to have taken place in a language I did not recognize. The stakes of election as presented did not compute. … I could clearly bring no access, no knowledge, no understanding.”

Didion’s chief complaint in her classic analysis is that the campaign press corps invents a vernacular that only those already inside the machinations of Washington can understand, leaving those outside the circles of power to wonder what it all means, which is detrimental to the American principle of democratic self-determination.

I think “occult” can be adapted for our own times if we think of it as more than belief in “vampires or fairies and movements like ufology and parapsychology,” to quote occultism’s Wikipedia entry. If we think of the politics of the occult as those things just outside our normal human comprehension, things just behind the reach of our senses and our reason, but also things hostile toward established knowledge, then virtually everything associated with Trump is more coherent, because it’s clear it’s not supposed to be clear — unless, you’re already on the inside the politics of the occult.

Coronavirus protesters, sovereign citizen militias, Deep State conspiracists, QAnon (the belief that Democrats worship Satan and have orgies with children), and even white evangelical Christian preachers defying stay-at-home orders and turning congregants into idolaters — all of these and more can be better described as variations on a theme of the politics of the occult. None of it makes sense, because it was never intended to make sense, and our trying to force it to make sense actually empowers it.

I don’t intent to besmirch the good names of genuine believers in the occult or the earth-centered religion of magick. (I’m thinking specifically of the late Margot Adler, an esteemed NPR reporter who was also a Wiccan priestess and wrote a book that established what’s now known as neopaganism.) But the fact is, occultism has a bad reputation, and I’m not above exploiting it to put Trump’s politics in a rhetorical box.

So the next time a white evangelical preacher says his followers can defend against the new coronavirus by drenching themselves in the blood of Christ, know he’s not practicing the Christian faith so much as practicing the politics of the occult. Same thing goes for anyone deciding it’s a good idea to inject themselves with bleach.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 24 April 2020

Word Count: 804

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