The transitional phase of a pandemic – Visiting New York, then and now – An attempt to create a viable third political party – Why Americans feel let down by Republican and Democratic parties alike – The Winslow Homer exhibit – Evening statistics
Dr. Fauci has said that we are now in a “transitional” phase and that the full-blown pandemic phase is over. This, of course, is not an official pronouncement. I suspect that the CDC has no wish to say anything that would make people behave even more carelessly than they do now. In my recent experience of public transit (of which more hereafter) hardly anyone wore a mask. This fearlessness is dangerous. The newer strains of COVID are certainly less virulent than the old ones, but the threat of long COVID is not to be regarded lightly.
Still, my recent visit to New York, which began on Wednesday and ended today, explains the rationale behind Dr. Fauci’s statement. I had gone to celebrate my aunt’s birthday, and I cannot help contrasting the ease of this visit with the difficulties I encountered two years ago.
Two years ago I could not even travel to state of New York or indeed to most other states outside of Maryland and West Virginia. My relatives and I had to content ourselves with setting up a video of each of us sending my aunt our best wishes – well enough in its way, but not the way one would wish to celebrate a 90th birthday. The past Wednesday, by way of contrast, I drove to Princeton Junction, took the New Jersey transit to Penn Station, and then took the subway to the Upper East Side neighborhood where my aunt lives. During my visit I went with my aunt to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I dined with her in a few restaurants. All of the rigorous enforcement that characterized my previous visit to New York City has completely disappeared. Hardly anyone bothered to wear a mask either on the commuter train or the subway; while at the museum the guard at the entrance assured us that wearing a mask was, to use his expression, “optional.” Occasionally waiters in restaurants will wear masks on their own account, but only occasionally. And New York was formerly enforcing COVID-related restrictions much more thoroughly than the DC metro area. Just as with my visits abroad, I ate in restaurants a great deal, to a much greater extent than I do while I’m at home. And I confess that I do not wear masks in them, since I have to remove masks anyway for the purposes of eating and drinking. All of which lends credence to Fauci’s contention that we have moved on to a different phase.
The visit was illuminating for another reason that has some bearing on recent events. A new national political third party, known as Forward, has recently been formed by several dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials. The initial chairs are former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. Their hope is that the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate US politics. And we certainly need one.
Women in particular must feel totally abandoned by the Republican party. I think that even the staunchest pro-lifer among them must be somewhat taken aback by the spate of laws that prohibit women who have been raped from obtaining an abortion unless they manage to do so within six weeks after conception – which is generally much too short a time to detect pregnancy at all. The Republicans don’t seem to realize that they will eventually be fighting a losing battle with demographics: the younger a voter is, the more likely he or she will favor a lenient abortion policy.
Their eventual desuetude would be small loss, one might say, were it not for the fact that the Democrats are proving themselves equally insensitive and inept. I happened to stop by in one of the shopping areas near Columbus Circle, and at one point I went to its restrooms, where the following notice was prominently displayed:
“Patrons are welcome to use any restroom that matches their gender identity or expression.”
In other words, a biological male can enter a women’s restroom simply by claiming to be transgender, regardless of whether such claims have the slightest validity.
It is simply naïve to believe that sexual predators will not take advantage of such opportunities. While Republicans are making it as difficult as possible for women who have been raped to overcome the emotional trauma of such an experience, Democrats are striving to create a situation that diminishes their safety in public places and makes them more likely to get raped in the first place. How can any American woman repose her confidence in either one or the other?
Something similar must be said about the economic policies of the two parties: the Republicans favor laws that benefit modern robber-barons and the Democrats try to place as many people on welfare as possible, not excluding illegal immigrants. In the meantime the concerns of the ordinary wage-earner whose income is continually diminished by taxation or by corporation greed fall by the wayside. It is no wonder that the average white-collar or blue-collar worker has little liking for either.
In the words of Mike Taylor, a former Trump Homeland Security official who denounced Trump in a scathing op-ed article in October, 2020, “The fundamentals have changed. When other third party movements have emerged in the past, it’s largely been inside a system where the American people aren’t asking for an alternative. The difference here is we are seeing a historic number of Americans saying they do want one.”
On a more pleasant note, the visit that my aunt and I took to the museum was for the purpose of viewing a special exhibit on Winslow Homer. Even now, it is startling to see how original an artist he is. “We frankly confess that we detest his subjects,” Henry James once wrote at the time that the paintings were first seen in public, “he has chosen the least pictorial range of scenery and civilization; he has resolutely treated them as if they were pictorial . . . and, to reward his audacity, he has incontestably succeeded.” Even if one feels that James has overstated the novelty of the subject matter, it still presents a contrast to the accepted notion of “artistic” subjects. In his treatment of women, for instance: Homer would on occasion show women at leisure, but only occasionally. For the most part the women in his pictures are laborers – and engaged in fairly exhausting labor at that. Many pictures from his earlier years deal with the Civil War, and he does not glorify either side. One picture shows a sniper poised in the branches of a tree, and it is a frightening picture. We don’t see any of his targets, his features are half-concealed by his weapon; but his stance as he steadily holds his rifle has the earnest intensity of someone embarking on a difficult task – the task set before him, of course, being that of killing any soldier from the opposing side who comes within range. It frightened me, at any rate, because I could easily imagine myself, if I had been trained that way, approaching such an assignment in exactly the same spirit. The sharpshooter, as he is called, is typical of figures in Homer’s paintings: he is looking at something that we, the viewers, do not see. Sailors look away from us towards the ocean; hunters glance about for potential targets; children gaze wistfully in the distance. Homer prefers to suggest rather than to tell outright; this feature occurs continually and must have been consciously established.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 581,441,004; # of deaths worldwide: 6,418,666; # of cases U.S.: 93,068,141; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,055,039.