Then, with everyone cooped up, going crazy and going broke, some fussbudget with a loose mutt in Central Park calls 911—“There’s an African American man threatening my life”—after being admonished by a Harvard-educated bird-watcher (who, if video is anything to go by, is the very picture of a Harvard-educated bird-watcher).
On the same day as that Central Park display of American inclusiveness and mutual respect, members of the Minneapolis police force decide to take a knee—on the neck of George Floyd. After nearly nine minutes of suffocation, Floyd died. He was accused of spending twenty dollars in the form of a banknote that had no actual value. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are currently spending billions of dollars in the form of banknotes that have no actual value. Would the police employ the same bigotry and violence on them?
No. All across the country the police would employ bigotry and violence on people protesting the bigotry and violence of the police.
Chaos cried out its appeal. The thievish and the vandalistic are friends of chaos, and when their friend calls they come.
The president of the United States called for peace, understanding, and unity. In a pig’s ass he did. The president waddled down to his bunker hidey-hole under the White House and urged the U.S. military to invade the country they live in. Then he talked trash and went to church (he could use it) attacking thousands of nonviolent demonstrators to get there (not a very Christian way of going to church).
That’s where things stood as this book made its—socially distancing and peacefully protesting—way to the printer.
All this is to say that my book looks back on an era of troubles that, in retrospect, seem to have been the good old days.
And now I—who have covered politics and all its works and all its empty promises for half a century and who had so very many things to say about them—am left mute.
There are people possessed of the expertise necessary to explain, analyze, and make judicious commentary upon the present and future effects of the novel coronavirus. And there are, I suppose, people endowed with the foresight to determine the outcome of the social upheavals accompanying the pandemic. I’m not one of either of them.
And the last thing the world needs at the moment is more pundits who don’t know what they’re talking about.
Journalists are supposed to provide answers. But all I’ve got is questions.
Starting with, isn’t somebody supposed to be in charge?
Too many of America’s elected leaders have been acting as if the pandemic is a children’s party game where they’re all blindfolded and swinging sticks—except they’re clobbering each other instead of the virus piñata.
Under microscopic view coronavirus does look like it would make a swell papier-mâché target full of . . . lethal pathogens. Let’s leave the politicians to amuse themselves while we skip this fiesta.
Which raises another question—about this book itself. Is it now completely beside the point?
Will American politics be fundamentally changed by the pandemic? Will Americans emerge from their grievous health crisis, lock-down isolation, economic collapse, and material depravation with a newly calm, pragmatic, and reasonable attitude toward our political system? Will our reawakened awareness of systemic prejudice cause us to critically analyze and democratically restrain our civil institutions? Will we abandon the factional hysterias and histrionics of the early twenty-first century in favor of a polity based upon competence, civil discourse, and good will?
Or will we revert to our petty arguments and stupid animadversions? Having had time alone to dwell on our grievances and affronts, will we maybe even return to our spiteful quarreling with renewed vigor? This is often how human nature works.
I’m betting that human nature will triumph over adversity and challenge. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
—P. J. O’R.
June 8, 2020
Preface: Manifesto For Extreme Moderation
A Voice of the Political Far-Middle
What this country needs is fewer people who know what this country needs. We’d be better off, in my opinion, without so many opinions. Especially without so many political opinions. Including my own.
Our nation faces a multitude of difficult, puzzling, complex, and abstruse problems. Most Americans aren’t sure what to do about them. But we lack politicians with the courage to say, “I’m not sure what to do about them either.” We even lack politicians with the courage to say, “I’m not sure what ‘abstruse’ means.”
Our economy has been upended by technological changes that make the industrial revolution look like James Watt putting a bigger teakettle on a hotter stove.
Our second Gilded Age, with its golden pathways across the ether, is a goldbrick when it comes to crumbling roads, decaying bridges, rackety public transit, corroding water pipes, and collapsing sewers.
A soaring economy has left absurd deprivation in the midst of ridiculous luxury. A click on a website can now deliver everything to everybody—except a living wage.
Meanwhile we’re undergoing social changes so swift and profound that they send even the best cultural anthropologist fleeing. A latter-day Margaret Mead would be hiding out in Samoa, hoping like heck to study something as relatively uncomplicated as teenagers.
The tic-tac-toe of Cold War diplomacy has given way to the foreign policy conundrums of tri-dimensional chess, like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock played on the starship Enterprise, except the pawns have nukes.
Transformations in health care have turned the historically cheapest part of being alive—dying—into something so expensive that many people can’t afford to do it.
And surviving Americans are left trying to weigh the delicate balance between having a life worth living and having a planet that can support life.
Yet our political leaders all think they know the answer to “What Is to Be Done?,” to quote Vladimir Lenin, a political leader who—among his other faults—flunked his own quiz.
The problem with opinions is that they’re not synonymous with accomplishing anything. I have three school-age children with strong opinions about climate change but who can’t remember to close
