What We Can Learn from Philadelphia 1918

*First published as an opinion column by Quest Lakes in the RGJ and MVN Feb. 28, 2020.

As concerns grow about the new coronavirus, COVID-19, the public needs to trust that they’re getting accurate information about it in order to follow recommendations for slowing the spread. In his 2017 Smithsonian essay about the 1918 flu pandemic, historian John Barry wrote that when the world faces the next pandemic, “the effectiveness of interventions will depend on public compliance, and the public will have to trust what it is being told...The most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth. Though that idea is incorporated into every preparedness plan I know of, its actual implementation will depend on the character and leadership of the people in charge when a crisis erupts.”

The spread of COVID-19 motivated me to learn more about the 1918 flu pandemic that resulted in the deaths of millions of people around the world, possibly as many as 100 million. I read Barry’s article “How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America” and Allison Meier’s 2019 article “The 1918 Parade That Spread Death” to learn more. Both put the impact of that pandemic in perspective by describing how 12,000 people died in Philadelphia in a period of just six weeks in 1918.

How did it spread so quickly in Philadelphia in particular? Here’s the simplified timeline: a few sailors with the virus arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in September of 1918. Within days 600 sailors had it. About ten days later, a patriotic rally and parade to raise money for the war brought 200,000 Philadelphians to mingle in the streets. Within a few days after that gathering, every hospital bed in the city was occupied with people suffering from the flu. Reverend Thomas Brennan recorded what he saw at Holy Cross Cemetery during the pandemic, writing, “Who can describe the scenes that met the eye during these harrowing days? Animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit” (meaning, “my soul shudders at the recollection”).

But why, knowing that the deadly disease was spreading so quickly, did the city allow the rally to go on? In the days just before the parade, why did the head of Philadelphia’s Naval Hospital tell newspapers that, “there is no cause for further alarm. We believe we have it well in hand.”

Barry explains that part of the answer to this puzzle is that Congress passed the Sedition Act in May of 1918, making it a crime with a possible sentence of up to 20 years to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States...or to urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of any thing or things...necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war.” Government propaganda instructed Americans to report to the Justice Department anyone “who spreads pessimistic stories...cries for peace, or belittles our effort to win the war.”

In this wartime atmosphere, some public health officials tried to keep morale high at the cost of truth. Shortly before the parade, newspapers reported that Philadelphia’s public health director, Wilmer Krusen, said he had “no concern whatever” about his ability to “nip the epidemic in the bud.” He ignored doctors pleas to call off the rally. Doctors tried sending letters to newspapers, but editors wouldn’t print their letters, or stories based on the doctors’ warnings.

Writing about the problem of misinformation from U.S. government and health officials during the 1918 flu pandemic, Barry noted that the public became suspicious of all information: “without leadership, without the truth, trust evaporated.”

Learning about mistakes made in Philadelophia in 1918 makes me ponder the situation we find ourselves in now, with the new coronavirus.

Earlier this week, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said of the virus that “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness...We expect to see more cases of person-to-person spread among close contacts. ... The goal here is to slow entry of this virus into the United States.”

President Trump reacted to these facts with tweets suggesting there’s a widespread conspiracy among the media and Democrats to weaponize the outbreak to hurt him politically. He tweeted, “low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”

Then during a press conference Wednesday about the virus, President Trump claimed, “We're rapidly developing a vaccine...In speaking to the doctors we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly." In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that a vaccine won’t be ready for 12 to 18 months, and that’s only if trials taking place now succeed.

During that same press conference, Trump announced that he is charging Vice President Mike Pence with leading the national COVID-19 response, asserting that Pence “has a certain talent for this." However, as a former Governor of Indiana, Pence oversaw a rural HIV outbreak that spread to epidemic proportions when he slow walked approval for needle exchanges. It became a case study in what not to do during a public health emergency. During the press conference, Trump noted that he was also requesting $2.5 billion to respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The scramble to assign unqualified people to carry out the U.S. response to the virus and to fund that response is happening because the Trump administration has hollowed out the government agencies needed for pandemic prevention and response. For instance, the executive branch team charged with coordinating a response to a pandemic was eliminated by the Trump administration in 2018. With regard to funding, there have been significant funding cuts to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) under Trump. In 2018, the CDC’s funding for global disease outbreak prevention was cut by 80 percent. The result was that the CDC canceled its work in 39 of 49 countries – including in China- to prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics.

In a step sure to further erode public trust, the day after Trump’s press conference the New York Times reported that Mike Pence will be vetting all statements about the COVID-19 situation coming from government health officials and scientists. Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s leading experts on infectious diseases who has advised half a dozen presidents on public health crises, was scheduled to go on five talk shows this coming Sunday. According to news reports today, Friday February 28, Dr. Fauci canceled all five appearances.

"“But if such desire drives you to know our disasters,
although my soul shudders to remember and once more shrinks from grief,
I shall begin.”

A Direct Current Through the Body Politic

Gleichschaltung was the Nazi word for strategically establishing a synchronized system of totalitarian control over all aspects of society – the press, clubs, schools. In simple terms, Gleichschaltung was the “Nazification of state and society.” It was a coordinated campaign that pushed the whole society into line with Nazi ideology and policy. Everything became political – sports, the arts, libraries, entertainment, family. There was no ideology-free zone. Even during a religious event, perhaps something like this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., politics would be front and center.

The goals of Gleichschaltung included paying homage to der Fuhrer (the Leader), removing all foreigners (which meant most everyone except those of the “Aryan” race), intimidating or murdering anyone who opposed Nazi ideas (such as communists and members of trade unions), and brainwashing the populace to believe that sacrifice for der Fuhrer and the state was both welcome and desirable. With regard to embracing sacrifice, in the U.S. today that might look like encouraging farmers, who have borne the brunt of President Trump’s trade war with China, to believe that his trade war will entail only short term sacrifice, with big benefits for farms and the Homeland in the long term.

Under Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” gained almost complete control of communications - newspapers, radio, television, movies, magazines, books, public ceremonies, as well as music, theater, and art. In this way, Germany became saturated with Nazi ideology and full coordination – or Gleichschaltung - was achieved. Today in the U.S. if one wanted to achieve something similar, strategies could include demonizing and repressing the free press, and calling for the elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which includes National Public Radio and PBS), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. But that could never happen here, right?

In their mission to create Gleichschaltung, the Nazi Party co-opted or destroyed any organization or club – from sports clubs to community choirs to agricultural associations - that might have influence. If such a strategy was enlisted in the U.S., for example, one might replace the heads of the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and the Environmental Protection Agency with people hostile to the missions of their own departments. Or the president could insert himself into the National Football League by repeatedly tweeting threats such as, “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!"

On a local level, mayors and town council members did the bidding of the Nazi Party, with the threat of reprisals from Nazi stormtroopers if they did not oust Jews and opponents of the Nazis from jobs in public institutions. In addition, purging the civil service was central to Gleichschaltung. In an example from our own time, someone like former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Maria Yovanovitch would most certainly have been pushed out.

People who read my column sometimes email me to ask, in essence, “what should be done then?” One of my answers is to pay attention to the warnings of history. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder puts it much more eloquently in his book “On Tyranny.” He writes, “European democracies collapsed into right-wing authoritarianism and fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s...The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands...We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex...Americans today are not wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism...Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

*RGJ posted this opinion column on Feb. 6, 2020 but then deleted it soon afterward due to complaints. Fortunately, they put it back up on Feb. 11. The incident reminds me of something London-based author Umair Haque recently wrote. He asks, "What happens to a society that can’t say the unspeakable? The answer is both simple and obvious: the unspeakable does...A set of words that Americans can’t say, because America’s thinking class, leaders, politicians, and so forth, won’t, can’t say them, to begin with. You know the words. The words are ones like “fascism” and “authoritarianism” and “theocracy” and “concentration camps” and “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.”..There are four key political effects of failing to speak the unspeakable. Opposition becomes appeasement. The opposition fractures, because it’s not unified in fighting a thing that doesn’t exist. And because those terrible things have never happened, nobody can be held accountable for them at all. Finally, reality stops mattering in any way whatsoever, because what you see before your eyes doesn’t really exist. What happens culturally when a people won’t speak the unspeakable? The result is the development of one of the most crucial institutions of any social collapse: a silent majority. A silent majority is called that because it’s made of people who should, and mostly do, know better. But they lack the courage, wisdom, insight, and defiance to speak. They are cowed and intimidated. They are fearful and anxious...As a silent majority refuses to speak, as it holds its tongue, so norms begin to disintegrate, from democratic ones of peace, tolerance, equality, and fairness, into fascist-authoritarian ones of violence, intimidation, bullying, ethnic hierarchies, and purification. What was once severely abnormal and unacceptable becomes a grim everyday reality...Remember what we are really fighting for — and always have been. Freedom, truth, democracy, justice, equality. Progress and civilization. Decency and humanity. Then we are capable of unifying around those things..."

The Show Trial

*First published as an opinion column by Quest Lakes in MVN on Jan. 31, 2020

This week Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Trump’s legal team for the Senate impeachment trial, declared that “if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

I was astonished by this statement, even though it was made by the likes of Dershowitz, a celebrity lawyer known for representing people like Claus von Bülow, Mike Tyson, and Jim Bakker. Dershowitz is the guy who got a sweetheart plea deal for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who preyed upon girls as young as 14.

Dershowitz was saying that anything Trump does should be interpreted as for the public interest, which would make it legal. So even though there was clearly a quid pro quo in which Trump withheld U.S. aid to extort a foreign government to conduct a sham investigation of his domestic political rival, that is ok. Why? Because, Dershowitz proclaims, Trump believes that his re-election, at any cost, is in the “public interest.” This sounds very much like the old belief in the divine right of kings that said monarchs cannot be held accountable for their actions by any “earthy authority.”

Dershowitz is a Yale educated lawyer, and he knows very well that his assertion is utter nonsense.

As the impeachment trial in the Senate went on, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann doubled down on Dershowitz’ absurd proposition. Herschmann delivered a melodramatic plea, declaring that Trump’s “accomplishments” as president, such as trying to build additional sections of walls along the southern border, show that *all* of his actions are in the public interest. Herschmann then begged for an end to investigations into the numerous instances of abuse of power that Trump has engaged in. Finally, he urged an immediate end to the impeachment trial itself, saying, “Let’s try something different now. Join us. One nation. One people.”

Herschmann is a well-educated man. It’s likely he knows that one of the Nazis' favorite political slogans was "One People, One Empire, One Leader" (“Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”).

During the process of this trial, it has become obvious that this is nothing more than a show trial, a way for the GOP to show their allegiance to Trump. They’re signalling that they’ll go along with the idea that Trump has the rights of a king, that he is the chosen one, an imperfect vessel chosen by God to carry out His will.

And indeed, for the last 11 days, Republican Senators have given interviews and made declarations on Twitter to this very effect. The impeachment trial has provided them the public opportunity to agree with Trump’s statement last summer that “'I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president” (nevermind Articles 1 and 3, the foundations for the powers of the legislative and judiciary branches, and checks and balances on executive power).

So now here we are, on what might be the last day of this show trial, with no witnesses, and with “jurors” who declared before the trial that they had already decided to acquit the defendant.

This spectacle has cleared the way for Trump to carry out all the plans he has for this nation. Every terrifying last one of them. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.

*First published as an opinion column by Quest Lakes in MVN on Jan. 31, 2020