Dear Tony

Open letter to Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council.

24 November 2020

Dear Tony Perkins,

The first letter forwarded to my address after my Dad's passing was from your organization, asking him for money.

The letter alludes to an apocalypse, to weathering anxiety and chaos as God's remnant. I don't understand how your "remnant" could hold so many of the highest positions of power but still consider yourselves a lone Elijah, buffeted by "dangerous policies of the Left" as you "stand firm against a radical social agenda."

You promise to "seek and speak truth" but you have stood by a leader who has lied to more people more often than anyone in US history. Among the lies were many about the corona virus pandemic. (Consider reading "All the President’s Lies About the Coronavirus" last updated by The Atlantic on November 2.) Apparently, you are OK with these dangerous lies. 

I truly hope you will one day care about all families, not just those that hold to your skewed political agenda. If you were truly blind, you would have an excuse, but because you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

I cannot say whether my father would have been one of the ones spared had President Trump's administration made a reasonable attempt to curb the virus. I can say I am not proud of our nation's deplorable response. This letter from you praising the President, pretending to love truth, and begging for money from susceptible senior citizens was enough to prompt this written response of my own.

My father was ill for some time. COVID-19 only hastened his death. He will no longer be contributing to your organization. Please remove his name from your mailing list.

Sincerely,

Tim Slager
Grand Rapids, MI

Nothing

A series of German video ads, recalling heroes in the fight against the corona virus, have gone viral. Before I spoil them for you, check them out

• here,
• here,
• and here.

There is a worldwide emergency, and all we are being asked to do is nichts. Nothing.

You might think we could handle that. Doing nothing is an American specialty. In response to other emergencies, it has so often been our response.

• Rooms full of schoolchildren are murdered in cold blood. What should we do? Nothing.
• Church members at a prayer meeting are murdered for the color of their skin. What should we do? Nothing.
• 460 people are shot at a concert. What should we do? Nothing.
• Millions have no health insurance. Some of them have big medical bills after being shot while attending a concert. What should we do? Nothing.
• Worldwide, millions of refugees seek safety, some at our borders. What should we do? Nothing.
• Climate change threatens the globe in innumerable ways. What should we do? Nothing.

Now a pandemic is killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens. What should we do? Just what we are good at: Nothing.

Instead, we:

• Declare it's not happening
• Protest restrictions
• Visit friends
• Go out to eat
• Mock people wearing masks
• Have parties
• "Rise up" against governors who are trying to save lives
• Spread the disease

Sometimes I'm not so proud of my country, not nearly as proud as I'd like to be. But sometimes, if you ask me what's the matter, I just say, "Nothing."

Scales of Economy

The world economy is suffering, and I wish I had more background in economics to understand what is going on.

I didn't take an economics course in college and have often regretted it. So I listen to Marketplace, and recently I bought a book, Economics: The User's Guide, by Ha-Joon Chang. It helps some. For one thing, it introduces a whole roomful of schools of economic thought. It also warns against thinking that any one school is superior.

I admit, though, there's much I don't understand. Why do many economists believe we will bounce back more quickly from this dip in the economy than from the last recession? Was the economy not strong before earlier crashes? Or is it that the government has done more this time to offset the dip? If that's true, then why didn't we do that last time?

I also don't understand why some economists don't worry about government debt. Most of us agree that debt can be a good thing if it is invested in things that improve a financial position. And with interest rates low, I suspect these are good times to invest. But eventually you have to pay up, right? What are the effects of incurring more and more debt?

There's something else I'm trying to understand: a recent analysis in the Washington Post cites a poll that gives Trump an edge over Biden on handling the economy. In the article, Aaron Blake suggests that Trump may weather our economic downturn.

Trump inherited a steadily growing economy that was recovering from the financial crisis that began during the last Republican administration. When the country was suffering from the mistakes of our banking industry, Republicans in Congress were reluctant to increase the deficit to help us get out of the slump. This was consistent with traditional Republican policy, so we gave them a pass (for better or worse) as they bailed out the bankers and then tightened their fists.

Then, in 2017, a tax cut provided a tax exemption primarily for the richest people in America. Argue about what's fair, but our annual deficit spiked under Trump even before this emergency. The growing debt was not only tolerated but cheered by so-called fiscal conservatives. Mitch McConnell pushed the cut, knowing we would need to borrow money, so that he and his richest supporters could collect financial benefits. He now races to install judges who support inevitable inequity by siding with the rich whenever they can get away with it. I imagine that some of the money from the tax cut (borrowed from our children and grandchildren) did flow into the economy, and it made Wall Street happy. But Republicans have come clean: they no longer make a pretense of concern over the deficit or the national debt.

Or do they? As more stimulus money in response to the corona virus goes to people of modest means, concern over the deficit begins to grow once again. If Biden is elected, I expect Republicans will continue to defend the tax cuts but shift back to being fiscal conservatives, except in the sectors that benefit their richest constituents, which include:

• The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against
• The prison industrial complex, in which for-profit prisons benefit from higher rates of incarceration
• The fossil fuel industry, which in the past century has been a key stimulant of our economy and way of life, but now seriously threatens both these and the planet.

It is an old economic principle, now out-of-fashion, that a robust economy provides an opportunity to prepare for hard times. But it seems we couldn't be bothered. While boasting about a fantastic economy, we went further in debt. We badgered the Fed to lower interest rates and whined about not going even farther out on a limb. Now our luck may have run out. Unemployment statistics for April jumped higher, faster than they have since being tracked. This would be a good time to tap into some savings. But the cupboard is bare, so we borrow.

Unlike in 2017, now is a time to borrow, given the low interest rates and dire need. But financially we sure were unprepared, so we'll have to borrow more than if we had behaved responsibly when we had the chance.

Never mind. In another puzzle, the stock market doesn't much seem to care. That is a scale important to Mitch Uncle Pennybags. McConnel begins to show concern over the deficit again, advocating to let pensioners languish so he and his gilded ilk can avoid contributing to pay the piper. He'll protect those with the most money from being tapped and maybe even argue for giving them more breaks. He takes his responsibility seriously to provide a crutch to the least crippled Americans.

As our economy flounders, like a lot of people I'm trying to figure out what is happening, what is likely to happen, what we should do. I also wonder what economic soap box our political leaders are going to jump onto next. I don't trust the Administration or the Senate Majority Leader to act in our best interest.

Since initially writing this, I read an article by Marilynne Robinson, in which she says this about the American economy:

As adapted for what was recently the present, this wealth is still a product of national policies—favorable taxation, imaginative banking regulations, and low production costs, including depressed wages and lowered safety and environmental standards. The cinch that tightens such slack as remains in the lives of the underpaid is called “austerity” or “fiscal discipline.” Austerity has not touched the beneficiaries of these arrangements, nor has fiscal discipline."

 It's a slow read, but worth the effort.

Thy Neighbor

Atul Gawande, a doctor at a hospital in the Boston area, writes about how cultural change is more difficult than many of the other challenges facing us in this pandemic. He says "the culture of the operating room [is] about wanting, among other things, never to be the one to make someone else sick." We would do well to strive for such a goal.

Once again I am mortified to see some of my fellow Christians lead the fight against regulations—and common sense—as we struggle to navigate the effects of the corona virus. If we were serious about loving our neighbors as ourselves, we would lead the way in wearing masks, keeping distance, avoiding the possibility of infecting anyone, and respecting authorities who juggle efforts to keep us safe and prevent a depressed economy from devastating us and our neighbors. But perhaps that path is too narrow and too difficult.

And at what point are we willing to put away our fear to help our neighbor? Is it even fear? A Facebook post says, "You won't see a mask on this face!" That's not fear; it's inconvenience. If it were only your safety at stake, you should be allowed to go wherever you want without a mask. But it isn't just your safety. We can choose to be considerate. We can choose not to risk infecting our neighbor as we would have them not risk infecting us. What has come over us? Is our outlook so sour that we must be suspicious of everyone's motives? And, being suspicious, must we wish them evil? Maybe they aren't the ones that are the problem.

An old man sits on his front porch, the story* goes, when new neighbors arrive. They ask him, "What's this neighborhood like?"

The man pauses and says, "What were people like where you come from?"

They reply, "Most everyone was wonderful. They were kind and friendly and helpful. We are sorry we had to leave."

The man says, "I reckon you'll find people pretty much the same around here."

A little later, another new family shows up and asks the same question. And the old man says,  "What were people like where you come from?"

They reply, "People were rude and mean and stingy. We are happy to be gone from there!"

The old man says, "You'll likely find folks pretty much the same around here."

I'm reminded of some middle managers I've mostly just heard about who are frustrated that they keep getting the irresponsible and troublesome workers reporting to them. Comes a point you wonder if it's their subordinates.

There's a lot of suspicion going around these days. At what point does our distrust begin to say more about us than about those we resent?

*I heard this story song on Mike Flynn's Folk Sampler, but I can't seem to locate it. Much obliged to anyone who can help me out.

Foreign

When we heard on Wednesday, March 11, that the president was consulting with Stephen Miller prior to his national address, I wondered why. We soon found out.

In the address he blamed foreigners for our problems. In the first sentence the president pointed out that the virus originated in China. He then referred to it as "a foreign virus." He then boasted about restricting travel to the US from China, which, despite his assertions to the contrary, was in keeping with the advice of his advisers (and, by the way, seems to have been a good move).

By the middle of the speech we learned that he was suspending travel from Europe. This action was taken without advice from his experts, other than Miller apparently, and without informing the affected countries, most of whom have been important allies. As with many of his policies, the primary purpose seems to capitalize on an innate fear of others and propose that, if it weren't for THOSE people, we would be safe.

This is nothing new. In 2014, Trump was sewing panic about Ebola. He proposed a travel ban then too, in spite of nearly all health experts advising against it. If he had gotten his way, many would not have been able to go to Liberia, Sierra Leone, or Guinea to help with the crisis. Or, to be more specific, we would have been banned from returning to our families. Fortunately, the administration at that time heeded expert advice.

Of course, in the current crisis, when experts were saying we need to take it very seriously, our president was saying that his China travel ban was a cure-all and there was nothing to worry about. "Do not panic!" is good advice. But the hypocrisy of such advice from someone who did everything in his ability to get people to panic a few years earlier is a hard pill to swallow.

Now, instead of apologizing for disbanding the epidemic teams in the NSC and DHS and for initially downplaying COVID-19, Trump has characteristically chosen to deflect blame to other countries. And of course he couldn't resist comparing our response to that of European countries, concluding that we are much better than they are. This is false, senseless, and divisive, but it is precisely what we have come to expect.

There is an exception to the European travel stoppage. Travelers from the UK are still welcome.* Why? Well, the only answer seems to be that, because Boris Johnson is almost as xenophobic as Trump and has withdrawn from that European Union, no harm can come from his country. Of course, people from the EU can travel to the UK and then to the US, just as travelers from China used connecting flights to get to the US. But the UK exception is in line with Miller's strategy: let's emphasize that this is not about safety from the virus; this is about safety from foreigners who don't share our prejudices.

As it turns out, Miller's ever-toxic advice may have backfired. On Thursday, the stock market stopped dropping only when it was automatically halted because it plunged too far too fast. One can only hope that Wormtongue will lose some of his influence. But I won't hold my breath.

_______________
*March 14: Today the UK and Ireland were added to the list of countries from which travel is restricted. This may in part be due to the UK's controversial strategy of encouraging infection among its lower-risk members of the population.