What Is to Be Done?

Last fall—before Covid-19 even had a name—I read historian Maury Klein's 900-page masterpiece A Call to Arms.

Little did I know I was reading the playbook Trump ought to have.

December 7, 1941, hurtled America into war with the Axis.

FDR—a leader who listened—saw in 1939 that to win, the US would have to "bury the Axis in weapons."

(On December 7, the US ranked 28th in the world in the size of its military, which relied on obsolete equipment, weapons and ammunition left from previous conflicts.)

To bury the Axis, FDR undertook what Klein calls "the greatest industrial expansion in modern history.”

But mass mobilization wasn't easy. Union leaders, bureaucrats and businessmen—especially businessmen—pushed back, as did many citizens.

FDR simply pushed harder. 

He guaranteed wary businessmen not only that the government would buy every item manufactured no matter the length of the war, but would assume all the costs of converting the factories back to peacetime production for 10 years thereafter.

The president also enlisted hundreds of "czars" to ride herd on every conceivable raw material, process and product—czars who were experts, not toadies, daughters and sons-in-law.

Within only months, FDR built America's colossal "arsenal of democracy," using brains and brawn—not blustery bullshit.

And America rapidly buried the Axis.

Blame the Left

If you do something bad, never, ever blame yourself.

— Donald Trump

The president's all about blame.

But who's to blame for him?

The left.

The late American philosopher Richard Rorty made that clear in his 1998 book Achieving Our Country.

In the first six decades of the 20th century, according to Rorty, the left tackled big issues like income redistribution and civil rights (think of the New Deal and the Great Society).

But in the latter decades—disillusioned by the Vietnam War—the left got sidetracked. It was led to champion only niggling issues like reparations and cross-dressers' rights (think of Anti-Columbus Day and the Transgender Legal Defense Fund).

Rorty predicted that tragic digression would lead to Trump's election.

American workers would see that government doesn't give a hoot about jobs and wages, Rorty wrote, and "decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots."

And there you have it: America has elected a demagogue to distract itself from its misery.

We have only ourselves to blame.

NOTE: To learn more about Richard Rorty, listen to this podcast.

Lambs to the Slaughter

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Across America this weekend, fundamentalist clergymen are calling congregants to worship, despite the alarms sounded by scientists, while, inside the White House, pro-business advisors are calling the nation to "reopen" immediately.

Why do followers put credence in such advice?

Do they all harbor a death wish?

Three Cheers for Mom and Pop

Notice the pattern?

Most small businesses—those lucky enough to be deemed "essential"—are innovating.

Most big businesses, on the other hand, are shuttering for the pandemic; so, too, are most mid-size ones.

Employees of "mom and pop" companies are working; employees of large and mid-size companies are filing for unemployment.

We're seeing incarnate which business leaders value employees and customers over shareholders.

And we're seeing which leaders know how to pivot, and which merely talk about pivoting when it suits them.

Three cheers for mom and pop!

These are Days

In late July 1606—part way through a season that would soon premiere King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra—William Shakespeare was ordered by London's Privy Council to shut down his theater. 

The plague was in town.

The Privy Council was worried that audiences would be “pestered together in small romes" where "infeccion with the plague may rise and growe, to the great hynderaunce of the common wealth of this citty.”

Rather than lay off the troupe, Shakespeare urged his actors to flee hot-spot London for a tour of the provinces, where they could strut the stage while staying safe from the dreadful disease.

But country villages were sleepy places; and many of the days and weeks the actors spent in them were spent idly.

Shakespeare, however, chose to capitalize on the downtime, using it to write three new plays, as recounted by historian James Shapiro in The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.

Thanks to the plague, 1606 was a very good year for the bard. 

Indeed, no other of his remaining life would be as fruitful a year.

And how about you?

What are you doing with your time?

These are days you'll remember. 

When May is rushing over you with desire
To be part of the miracles you see in every hour.

You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky. 

It's true that you are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you.

— Natalie Merchant