I have been a follower of history and politics for many years. My age is shown when I admit to remembering the 1956 Presidential campaign, and was unhappy that in 1960 I couldn’t vote. But beginning in 1964 I made my way to the polling booth to cast my first vote in Presidential politics, and I chose a loser. In that campaign, Lyndon Johnson, who had become President on John Kennedy’s assassination the year before, had a sympathy vote going for him. A contentious Republican primary season selected Barry Goldwater, Senator from Arizona to run against him, and the Democrats successfully portrayed him as a warmonger (how many of you recall the infamous nuclear ad?) and Johnson won in a landslide. As an aside, of the two, which one was more prone to get the U. S. into a foreign war? Think Vietnam.
Studying history in university, one of the axioms we learned was that to accurately assess an era or even an event would take many years, as documents and memoirs would surface and change historical perspective over time. Even today, there are documents from the Kennedy assassination that still haven’t been declassified even after 56 years, five months and one day since that event.
Would it be a fool’s errand, then, if I undertook to posit what a post COVID-19 America would look like? Perhaps, but here goes!
First, a short term look at what will have happened by this time in 2021 shows my crystal ball clearing up at what we will see when this pandemic ends and the country gets back to its “normal” state economically and socially.
America’s economy will have not only survived, but it is thriving again. Jobs are being created, unemployment is low among all demographics and the future looks bright for the nation. Last November’s elections (2020) had President Trump reelected with a majority not only in the Electoral College, but with small but significant majority in the popular vote.
Republicans held the Senate and even added a couple of seats to their advantage over the Democrats. “Cocaine” Mitch McConnell won his reelection bid, and continued his confirming federal judges at a record pace. Chuck Schumer remained the minority leader for the Dems. The House elections had a mini red wave, giving the Republicans control over the lower chamber by a margin safe enough for most legislation to pass without too much trouble. Kevin McCarthy was selected as Speaker of the House; Nancy Pelosi won her district, but had to give up the gavel as Speaker. Subsequently, at age 79, she decided to retire to her San Fransisco mansion and her ice cream being kept in her $24,000 regfrigerators.
All major sports leagues were up and running, and taking a big leap here, the Cardinals were leading the National League Central in the early going. Cruise lines were having a banner year, travel to Europe and other foreign climes were teeming with American tourists and the ties between the U. S. and the U. K. were stronger than ever. The United States continued to be the leading military and economic forces they were before, and the prestige of the nation was on the rise.
COVID-19 had been contained, and both public and private labs were hard at work to make sure that no such outbreak in the future would disrupt the domestic life of the nation. Social distancing was a thing of the past, and crowded venues showed we learned little from the “experts” of the crisis of 2020. Even frequent hand washing, though improved over pre pandemic days, was down.
Democrats and Republicans continued to blame each other for the crisis, but President Trump’s approval ratings rose to the high 50s and even into the low 60s (in some polls). Once again, our great nation rose above the problem to become greater than ever.
China was blamed by almost all nations for the devastation wreaked world wide, and they were aided by the false information released by the World Health Organization. Churches had a spike in attendance, but with the crisis overcome, reverted to pre 2020 numbers., The U. S. remained a major player on the international scene. Russia continued to be a third-rate power, the Middle East was less of a powder keg, for by this time the Iranians had overthrown their Islamic leaders.
Keep this for further reference in April 2021; we’ll keep score to see how well this look into the future holds up.
But to foresee how future histories of our republic will view this tumultuous time will take a couple of caveats. At least 25 years must pass before an objective look at the events of 2020 can be judged fairly. Objectivity can be illustrated by a couple of books which were written with the prejudices of their author on full display.
One was titled Back Door to War by Charles C. Tansil. This posits that Franklin Roosevelt, as President, wished to go to war with the Allies in Europe, but could not persuade the American people nor the American Congress to agree to intervene in a foreign war again so soon after World War 1. Therefore, FDR manipulated events in the Far East to get the Japanese to attack us at Pearl Harbor in late 1941. With German and Italy locked into the Tri-Partite Pact, the Japanese would call on their Axis to declare war on the U. S. and voila! Roosevelt had his war against Germany. What this took was a biased look at all the events leading up to Pearl Harbor, a bias that few, if any, historians hold today.
Howard Zinn’s A People’s of the American Empire has been accurately subtitled The Mein Kampf of the American Left. That accurately displays the prejudice of the author, as he views our history from the perspective of Marxism and socialism. Few historians hold to Zinn’s cynical and biased ideas he found in the events in our storied history.
But the objective historian of 2020’s events will need to put aside prejudices and if done so, the following will be written about this traumatic time in our nation’s story.
One of the first assessments should be that the reaction of the politicians was totally unnecessary. This reaction of the President and his staff was based on experts’ opinions which were based on computer models, which were grossly inaccurate. These predicted as many as two and half million deaths in the U. S., and frightened the government into taking more serious action than should have been needed. By doing so, these flawed models also bring into question all the computer models about climate change. Shutting down the economy, except for essential businesses, hurt the country more than the virus. People lost jobs, companies, especially small ones went out of business, more suicides were caused by the economic dislocation, divorces went up — all sorts of social ills were exacerbated with the overreach of our elected officials in the economy. Hoarding became part of the public’s reaction to COVID-19.
Another problem seen was the unprecedented amount of money spent to alleviate the suffering of the populace. As of this writing, with another stimulus bill in the offing, almost $4 trillion will have spent from the public treasury for individuals, businesses and industries, money that was borrowed and will have to be repaid. In the ensuing years, some of this was, but most of the debt remains. Only the strong economy has kept the American credit rating from sinking into debt bond status.
Individuals will come in for a major share of the blame for the things that went wrong. President Trump will be praised for his transparent leadership, but criticized for some of his misleading rhetoric and his sometimes flipflopping on how to handle the crisis. Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will shoulder much of the blame for the slow response to the virus’ impact, and their blocking aid to the most vulnerable among the people will also stand out as failures. State governors seemed to use the crisis to unleash their inner tyrants; Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Ralph Northam of Virginia and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan used their ephemeral powers to control their states’ people, and mayors and other local officials put in place some draconian rules. A true objective view will also show that some basic rights of people were abrogated in the rush to control society by those elected to serve their people.
(If I were doing the writing of this year in history, three men would come in for some harsh criticism. Three former Presidents were either MIA, or contributing to the acrimony between Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama hued to the Democratic line of blaming Trump for failures, both perceived and imagined. On a much lesser scale, Bill Clinton did also. George W. Bush was almost totally silent. These “elder statesmen” could have laid aside partisan politics to lend their expertise to those who needed guidance, and could have urged bipartisan action to combat the problems the pandemic brought. All three failed in the moral leadership one should expect, but they never brought to the table.)
Overall, this era will be seen as a manufactured crisis, one made worse by the misguided and partisan attacks of Democrats and Republicans on each other and by the robbery of public monies to placate those who needed help the most.
History will not be kind to this time in our republic’s long history of meeting and overcoming setbacks. The Great Depression will be seen to have been handled better than the Great Virus attack. If any of you live until history judges us, perhaps some of this will seem prophetic. God help us all, and God bless America.
(This is not a fantasy, but as objective a look as I can give, with the facts at hand at the present time. Prophesy sometimes comes to pass!)