It Is What It Is

 Of all the things Donald Trump has said and done as President, this really sums up his attitude toward his job and the American people he was elected to serve. And he's done and said a lot of troubling things:

- "Good people on both sides" at Charlottesville, after a white supremacist plowed his car into a group of peaceful protesters, killing one;

- Calling for boycotts of great American companies like Harley-Davidson and, this week, Goodyear;

- Quietly acquiescing to the Russian government putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan;

- Openly claiming that if he loses the 2020 election, it will be because it was "rigged";

- Telling the Gold Star widow of a US soldier killed in Niger that "he knew what he signed up for."

Many of you can add to that list, no doubt.

But "It Is What It Is" signals unconditional surrender. The declaratory statement says that we don't know what to do, we don't care to seriously investigate what to do, and even if we knew what to do, it's not worth the effort to try it. It tells the families of the 170,000-plus who have died from COVID-19 over the past 7 months that they simply are the victims of a fate for which we can do nothing. It is worse than a simple failure of leadership. It is the complete and utter absence of any capacity for empathy, which is prerequisite to being a leader.

We have had corrupt Presidents in our history. We have had inept Presidents in our history. We have had clueless, in over their heads Presidents in our history. We have had Presidents whose policies and agenda I vehemently opposed. But we have never, at least in my lifetime, had a President so completely devoid of concern for the well-being of the American people, or some basic acknowledgement of the nation's founding principles and governing documents.

It is what it is. But it doesn't have to be that way. We The People have the opportunity to demand better from our leaders on November 3. Vote like the future of the Republic depends on it, because it does. Vote like our lives depend on it, because they do. 

The Month of Despair

Here are some notable August headlines from my memory 

• August 7, 1964, LBJ signed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution
• August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate
• August 2, 1990, the Iraqi Army invaded Kuwait, triggering the first Gulf War
• August 3, 2019, 31 people killed and 51 people wounded in separate shootings, one at a bar in Dayton, OH, and another at a WalMart in El Paso, TX

And the headlines so far this month (from the New York Times)?

• August 1, Trump's Attacks on Mail Service Sow Voting Fears
• August 2, Brief Reprieve, Then the Virus Charges Back
• August 3, Scientists Fret as White House Rushes Vaccine
• August 4, Lessons from Hasty School Reopenings
• August 5, Blasts Rock Beirut, Killing Dozens and Wounding Thousands
• August 6, US Examines Nuclear Goals of the Saudis
• August 7, The Unique US Failure to Control the Virus
• August 8, Russia Continues Interfering in Election to Try to Help Trump, US Intelligence Says
• August 9, Without $600 Weekly Benefit, Unemployed Face Bleak Choices
• August 10, Trump's Orders on Coronavirus Relief Create Confusion

Americans became somewhat serious about COVID-19 in mid-March, when the NBA, closely followed by other professional sports, shut down its season. I say somewhat serious, because even then there were those who denied the danger posed by the virus, led by the Denier-in-Chief. Five months and 160,000 dead Americans later, and there are those who still refuse to take the pandemic seriously. 

By now, every one of us knows someone who has fallen victim to COVID-19. Even with that personal loss, too many apparently believe that it was "their time," that "God's will" controls, that "he or she was old, anyway." The disease won't affect me, because I'm in my prime and healthy and invincible. 

So let's not worry about school kids, because "they don't get sick." And the teachers I guess are easily replaceable, interchangeable cogs in the machine that parents too often see as babysitting so mom and dad can go to work.

Let's not concern ourselves with the waitress or the barista or the personal trainer or the retail store clerk or the supermarket shelf stocker. After all, their job is to take care of me, and I might humble myself so much as to get through a meal without complaining about something, and might be so generous as to leave a bit of spare change as a tip. And if that restaurant has to close, well it's their fault to not have a "real job" with benefits and paid time off, so why should the rest of us do anything to take care of these freeloaders? If they can't pay rent, let them live on the streets.

And on top of that despair, we see Trump ramping up his attacks on the very heart of our constitutional Democratic Republic. He'll slow down the mail to create chaos for the November elections. He'll ignore science in favor of magic potions and wishful thinking. He'll seek help from anyone, including our foreign enemies, to help him win an election. And he'll ignore the separation of powers, trying to grab the headlines with his unconstitutional and ill-conceived orders. 

All while Americans die from the coronavirus at the rate of 1,000 per day.

An Economic Cliff

Last week, Dr. Paul Krugman wrote in his New York Times column that Americans are facing another economic cliff. This cliff comes not on August 1, when extended unemployment benefits from the CARES act expire, but rather this Friday, when states will cut off that extended unemployment benefit for millions who are collecting unemployment.This comes on top of more and more businesses closing again after states reopened prematurely. Even last week, there were more than a million new unemployment claims, and that will grow in the next few weeks. 

Republicans in the Senate are completely oblivious to the plight of working-class Americans, as they consider another round of disaster relief spending. They want a huge payroll tax cut - threatening the health not only of Americans, but of Social Security and Medicare. And that doesn't help unemployed Americans who - wait for it - are not getting a payroll check. They want to limit the liability of companies who open their doors, forcing employees to work, but not holding companies accountable when those employees contract COVID-19. And, of course, they want more tax cuts for the wealthy.

More importantly, they are resisting more funding for schools, while demanding as a bumper sticker slogan that schools reopen. Again, they simply ignore the facts and recommendations of experts in education, epidemiology, and building systems design and operation. Many on the right actually threaten to withhold Federal money to states/school districts that don't reopen schools fully, while cash-strapped states, who cannot run deficits, are trying to deal with a myriad of public services that the people need in the middle of a pandemic.

So get ready for the cliff.

Privilege in America

We are seeing today the evidence of privilege in the United States of America in two different, but related stories in the news. 

In one, the Attorney General of Kentucky, a Republican, is seeking to charge some 87 protesters who were trespassing on his private yard. Yes, with trespassing, a misdemeanor. But also with a Kentucky felony, "intimidating a participant in a legal process." The protests were over the Attorney General's slow roll of the investigation into the death in February of Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville police.

The second case involves the wealthy St. Louis couple who pointed weapons at protesters on the street in front of their house. In that case, the St. Louis District Attorney, acting within her prosecutorial discretion, is seeking felony charges of brandishing a weapon in public. The Governor has called for the DA to resign, and Trump, along with US Attorney General William Barr, are looking at ways they can intervene in the case.

Threatening and intimidating public officials in the conduct of their duties happens every day all across America, in the demands and threats around campaign contributions. Businesses are looted every day by "private equity" that buys up companies using tons of borrowed money, strips the companies bare - including any employee pension funds - and then sells the remains at a huge profit. Big companies and wealthy people avoid taxes every day, with all sorts of schemes to hide money (see the Netflix movie "Laundromat"). Businesses and the wealthy have their minor violations overlooked all the time.

But if you're poor - white or black or brown or whatever - you get charged with a felony "threatening and intimidating." You get arrested and put in jail for a long time for breaking a window in a business, or blinded in one eye by a beanbag round from a 2nd story window as you're complying with police commands to disperse. You get choked to death for selling loosey cigarettes on a city street or passing a counterfeit $20. You get pulled over for not signaling a lane change in a deserted town on a sleepy Sunday morning, and then put in jail with cash bond for "resisting."

The determination isn't always race or ethnicity, but it's always money.

Reopening Schools in the Middle of a Pandemic

On July 7, President Trump reiterated his call to open public schools this fall. “We want to reopen the schools,” Trump said. “We don’t want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons. They think it’s going to be good for them politically, so they keep schools closed. No way.” Apparently he believes that children aren't susceptible to the virus, that they can't carry the virus back into their homes and communities, and that even if they are susceptible, they don't get as sick as the elderly who are frequently after-school caregivers. 

The reality is that COVID-19 is a highly contagious airborne pathogen, and that groups of people in enclosed spaces create a perfect petri dish in which the virus can thrive and spread quickly. Experts in building systems design recognize the contribution of HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems to the spread of airborne diseases. Over decades, they have developed standards for design and operation of such systems in hospitals, where infection control matters. Such systems in operating suites, critical care units, and isolation rooms are designed, installed, and operated under very exacting regulations in order to keep patients and hospital staff safe and healthy. Even in the rest of the hospital, systems use 100% outside air, meaning that no air is recirculated in the building.

Schools, on the other hand, are not designed with the spread of highly virulent airborne pathogens like COVID-19 in mind. There are minimum ventilation standards, and in recent years the concept of ventilation effectiveness has taken hold. That basically means some percentage of the air coming through the air handling system is outside air, and that room air distribution (the registers in the ceiling) are designed and positioned to better mix the air from the air handling system in the room. But the systems don't have the capacity typically to operate with 100% outside air, which is expensive. Besides, only schools built in the last 20 or 30 years are designed with these considerations in mind, and we know that most schools are older than that in most areas of the country.

That said, there are ways to improve ventilation, and thereby improve the indoor environment where students, faculty, and staff spend their days. ASHRAE- the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers - issued a Position Paper in April with recommendations for building systems operation in a pandemic. Those recommendations include installing high-efficiency particle filtration (HEPA filters), a 2-hour outside air flush of the building every morning before opening the building to its occupants, and increased outside air throughout the occupied period.

Yet implementation of these recommendations will not come without a cost:

- Many air handling systems are not sized to accommodate the thicker HEPA filters, meaning modification to filter housings

- Some air handler motors/fans might not be able to operate properly with the increased static pressure introduced by the HEPA filters, meaning replacing motors or fans

- Increasing the outside air to the building means increased costs to heat or cool that ventilation air (called tempering in the business)

- All this also increases personnel costs to monitor and manage the ventilation systems operation

I realize this is pretty dense for the lay person. But these highly technical considerations are essential, in my view, to reduce the risks to our children, their teachers and administrators and custodians and cafeteria workers, all those families, and the community at large. The only question is whether we have the willingness to pay.

Monuments, names and flags

Growing up in Union County, we sometimes would visit Rose Hill with a school class, or a Boy Scout Camporee, or a simple family outing. That was the plantation home of South Carolina's secession governor, William H. Gist, and is now a State Historic Site. Dad used to say that Governor Gist was in our family tree, although I haven't been able so far to trace that connection. We studied South Carolina history in 7th grade at Buffalo Elementary. Our principal, Mr. Burton, taught that class, and took the class on an overnight to Charleston to visit historic sites and even spend a couple of hours on the beach at Isle of Palms. But that's a different story for a different day.

But as a kid growing up, I guess I was especially naive. I look back on conversations and events from today's perspective, and things are so much more clear. It turns out Union County in many ways wasn't the idyllic Southern community. Business leaders were also Klan organizers. Union would have been in the straight shot between Spartanburg and Columbia, but Interstate 26 swings west to Laurens County instead, apparently because some of those leaders didn't want "outside influence." And it took until 1969 to desegregate our schools, 15 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

As a Navy officer back in the day, I served as the Weapons Officer on USS Semmes (DDG-18), one of only a few Navy warships named after men who served in the confederate navy. The New York Times of the Civil War era referred to Semmes as a pirate, because basically that's what he was. I actually chose Semmes coming out of the Navy's Department Head school not because of the name of the ship, but because she was homeported in Charleston.

So when it comes to monuments, military base names, and flags, I can claim that Southern heritage as much as anyone I know. But the "erasing history" complaint doesn't cut it, because very few Americans know the truth about confederate generals like Braxton Bragg or John Bell Hood or A.P. Hill. If my family connection to William H. Gist, and his cousin States Rights Gist, are indeed true, I take no special pride in their open rebellion against the United States of America 160 years ago. While I am proud of my Navy service, including on the Semmes, I celebrated a few weeks ago when the statue of Semmes in Mobile was removed from the public square by city officials.

So I say obliterate those monuments and base names from the public square. That's not erasing history, it's simply eliminating those men from a place of honor they don't deserve. Replace the monuments with symbols of peace and unity. Rename the bases for Medal of Honor winners - Fort Bragg could be renamed Fort Charles George, after PFC Charles George, the North Carolina native and Cherokee who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously after being killed in action in Korea. 

Like the bumper sticker on my truck says, we are one nation with one flag, or as when we pledge allegiance, we are One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Masks

We have known for months that masks reduce the spread of COVID-19. That theoretical knowledge is supported by empirical evidence from nations like South Korea, where masks in public are almost universal.Yet here in the United States, we have some people with some aversion to masks, with some laughable reasons to not wear them. Here is a sampling:

- "Masks are hot." Yes, they do make a person feel warmer. But think about that the next time you want to tell a mother to put a blanket over her baby's head while breastfeeding.

- "Masks make it hard to breathe." Yes, imagine how difficult breathing is in the surgical suite for all the doctors, nurses, and techs when you get wheeled in for your knee replacement or heart bypass or hernia repair. They wear masks for hours at a time in order to protect you, all the while performing intricate tasks, often under extreme pressure.

- "Masks interfere with God's Breath of Life." My theology speaks of a God who can give life even when we do everything to reject that gift, can be present everywhere even when we "kick God out of schools," whose Grace is present even before we are aware of it. If God gave us the intellect to figure out how to protect ourselves and those around us from a virus, then I'm sure God can deal with the Breath of Life concern.

- "Freedom." Well, there's much to be said about this attitude. But let's focus on the notions of freedom held by the Founders of our nation, especially as they are documented in the Declaration of Independence. Many think of the Declaration of Independence as some libertarian catechism. But the first specification in the indictment against King George III is this: "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." That's not exactly a cry for individual freedom! That several of our states (Pennsylvania, Virginia, and others) are called "Commonwealth" is the acknowledgement that there are circumstances where the "public good" outweighs the desires of the individual.

So, just wear a mask. Yes it's hot, inconvenient, slightly uncomfortable. But don't do it for yourself, do it for those you encounter in public.