Plague fatigue – The virus in East Asia and the Antipodes – Patrick Buchanan on the January 6th riot – The border crisis – Why the investigation is needed – Evening statistics
“I feel more discouraged now than I did a year ago,” one friend told me, “even though the numbers for this new wave are not as much as the other ones. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”
I think it makes perfect sense. In some ways the situation is more difficult psychologically than it was in the earlier phases. In accounts about plagues not much attention is given to the trials people undergo during the recovery phase. In general it is assumed that the plague recedes, after which the survivors – weary and sad, undoubtedly, many of them grieving for lost relatives and friends – begin to pick up the pieces again and by degrees embark on the business of restoration. But this half-and-half situation, in which one part of society lives in an environment in which the plague is effectively contained and matters are nearly restored to normal, while another part continues to get infected and its death toll continues to mount is, I believe, somewhat less common, or at any rate not written about very much. A year ago the population as a whole were aware that the disease was a threat to everybody and that we all needed to rally together to combat it. It cannot be said that we Americans were particularly successful in this respect; still, the perception was there and the need to take protective measures was acknowledged, even if we could not reach agreement about the nature of the measures to take. Now the nation is effectively split in two, with those who are protected as a result of the vaccines are at odds with those who have rejected them. Many health care professionals in particular resent those who have been hospitalized as a result of their refusal to accept the vaccines – it is not openly discussed, but the resentment is widespread, and some have simply dropped out altogether, saying that they have done enough already and that they are not obliged to fish foolish people out of the mud they have walked into. The unvaccinated, in turn, feel that they are being bullied into accepting a vaccine that has not obtained full FDA approval (the vaccines have the status of Emergency Use Authorization, full approval being a careful and painstaking process that requires many months to complete). In short, we are suffering when what I call “plague fatigue,” and everyone’s nerves are a bit on edge as a result.
This new wave, of course, has been affecting many other countries besides our own. Nations that were previously all but free from the disease have now experienced surges in cases. Vietnam, which once had known hardly any cases on account of its rigorous controls imposed since the beginning of the pandemic, has by now experienced nearly 150,000 cases of COVID. It is still quite a small number in proportion to its national population, less than 0.15%. Malaysia, again, has changed from its status as a national with a minimal number of cases to that of something of a hotspot, with 3.3% of the population having come down with the disease. Japan, Australia, and Thailand have also seen dramatic increases. New Zealand, however, has held firm; it has only 45 active cases at this point; out of a population of slightly over 5 million, it has sustained 26 deaths.
Patrick Buchanan wrote an article on the investigation into the riot of January 6th, which I was sufficiently curious to read. Patrick Buchanan’s name is, I suspect, less familiar to later generations than to my own. He was a well-known political commentator in his day, of the type that is sometimes described as “paleo-conservative,” and at one point he ran as an Independent presidential candidate, without, however, any very notable success – he obtained no electoral college votes and a bare 0.4% of the popular vote. He was always a bit too extreme for my tastes, but he was an honest man in the main; for instance, in the controversy about the confusing design of the Florida ballots in the 2000 election, he said that when he first saw the ballot he could readily understand how it might be possible for a voter to cast a vote for Buchanan himself in the belief that he was voting for Democratic candidate Al Gore instead. Moreover, Buchanan wrote an eloquent tribute about Ronald Reagan upon the death of the latter; and for that reason alone I was willing to give him a hearing, feeling fairly well-assured that he would not attempt to defend the antics of Donald Trump during the aftermath of the 2020 election. I may say at once that he did not and that, indeed, he barely mentioned Trump’s name at all. The argument he gave against having an investigative committee delve into the events of January 6th is not in line with the usual rhetoric of Kevin McCarthy and his like, and is worth looking at in some detail.
Basically, Buchanan’s position amounts to this: that the people besieging the Capitol were conducting a demonstration that eventually expanded into a riot, as many political demonstrations have done, and that while the riot was a disgraceful episode – and he uses the word “disgraceful” – it was simply that: an episode, and not an event deserving a focus that he describes as obsessive. It would be far better, he argued, that the Congress concentrate on a far more wide-ranging crisis: namely, the influx at the border of numerous illegal aliens, and the fact that Biden has consistently hampered the efforts of various state governors to contain them.
Biden has certainly been handling the border crisis recklessly and irresponsibly. Governor Abbott of Texas, for example, recently issued an order allowing Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to reroute civilian vehicles back to their origin point or a port of entry, or to seize the vehicles, if police suspect the driver is transporting migrants who have COVID. The Biden administration has sued the state on this account and one federal spokesman argued that singling out people for interrogation simply because they are undocumented is an invasion of privacy – completely ignoring the fact that entering a country clandestinely and without documentation of any kind is in itself an invasion, particularly when multiplied by a factor of several hundred thousand. It has been projected that Biden’s policies will enable about 2 million undocumented foreign nationals to enter the country annually. He has persisted in this program with dogged obstinacy and – what is particularly remarkable – against his own interests. He desires to be known as the president who was able to contain the virus and to restore the country to its former degree of health and prosperity. But the influx of thousands of undocumented people from Latin America, which has one of greatest concentrations of the virus on the planet, cannot fail to introduce a large number of infected people into the general population and thereby to undo, to some extent, the benefits of the vaccines Biden has striven so vigorously to administer. The issue is a pressing one and it certainly deserves more attention both from Congress and from the popular press than it is currently receiving.
Nonetheless, Buchanan’s claim that the attack on the Capitol was merely an ordinary riot that got out of hand is disingenuous. It was not an ordinary riot. It was an attempted coup d’état. The rioters entered the building with the explicit intention of compelling Congress by threats to rescind its ratification of the Electoral College votes; and, if they had had the opportunity to come in contact with any Congress members, it is more than probable that they would have gone beyond mere threats. The exact role that Donald Trump played in this event is still unclear. Presumably the investigation currently ongoing in Congress will shed some light on the matter. It would be inaccurate to say that he orchestrated it – that would imply strategic abilities and a capacity for detailed planning that he simply does not possess. At this point no one knows the extent to which he deliberately goaded them in advance or whether he confined himself to cheering them on after the fact. But there can be no question that they launched their attack with his full approval, that he urged them in their violence, and that, had they succeeded in intimidating Congress to overturn the Electoral College vote, he would have used the opportunity to remain in the Oval Office. It is bare justice to acknowledge that he has made no secret of his determination to overturn the results of the election by any means that come to his hand, be they fair or foul.
Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie announced today that she is pregnant with a second child. She had miscarried earlier this year, but if this birth comes to term it will bring the total number of children fathered by the British Prime Minister to . . . no one knows, exactly. He has had four children by a previous wife and another one from a brief liaison with an art consultant. There were numerous other episodes of this nature, some of which undoubtedly had consequences. He has refused to disclose how many children he has had from these affairs; possibly he himself has lost count by this time.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 198,499,214; # of deaths worldwide: 4,232,165; # of cases U.S.: 35,743,144; # of deaths; U.S.: 629,310.