James M. Redwine

COVID-19

The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body

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James Buchanan was the American president from 1857-1861 and is credited with that description of the United States Senate as a place for respectful, intelligent and impassioned debate. Such luminaries as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun forged a senate known for its ability to get hard jobs done well. Those three served when the annual pay was $5,000. Today, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky earns $174,000 per year as one of our one hundred senators.

Henry Clay represented Kentucky also. Clay was called the Great Compromiser due to his ability to get senate consensus on such volatile issues as war, then peace, with Great Britain in 1812-1814 and preservation of the union during ante-bellum days. Anthony Fauci is not a senator but he is our highest paid federal employee, $434,312 per year, as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as the chief medical advisor to the President of the United States. On July 20, 2021 Senator Paul and Dr. Fauci sat in the hallowed chamber where Henry Clay used to orate. Their exchange about the Wuhan China laboratory funds received from America was notably different from issues concerning war and slavery. It went something like this, “You are a liar!” and “You are another!” If the famous Ohio River brawler Mike Fink (c. 1770-c. 1823) had been involved, either Paul or Fauci might have been challenged to knock a red feather off the other’s shoulder. Or if two twelve-year-old boys during a school recess had been at odds one might have shoved the other and kicked dirt on him.

For several hundred thousand dollars in salaries and such seeming trivialities as a world pandemic involved, one might expect the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body to be, well, more deliberative. As reported over the cable news networks, Paul and Fauci were each claiming the other was not just incorrect on the arcane science known as gain-of-function research; the direct accusations were that both public servants were deliberately misleading their employers, i.e., you and me, Gentle Readers.

Further, Paul accused Fauci of perjury before Congress and Fauci pointed a bony finger at Paul and yelled that Paul was intentionally confusing the facts. I do not know about you but I have found this Wuhan gain-of-function thing confusing enough on its own. Our leaders need not obfuscate things further. Research into how science can manipulate the genetic code of the coronavirus in order to create new more deadly ones sounds ominous enough. And according to some reports, the mysterious Wuhan Laboratory “Bat Lady”, Shi Zhengle, has already combined the genes of two bat viruses with genes from a SARS related strain to make a new and even more deadly virus. I am thinking we all might want to step back a way. Supposedly the good reason for such research is to prepare us for some future deadly disease. Unfortunately, history teaches us the altruistic motivations do not always win out.

Paul got his medical degree from Duke University and Fauci got his from Cornell University. They should know better than to bandy about with such concepts as world plagues, present or future. I respectfully suggest we may want to use the resources of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body for good and not expend our precious and limited resources on schoolboy shouting matches while Washington, D.C. burns.

Vladimir Lenin Meet COVID-19

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Margaret Thatcher said the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money. Thatcher noted this truism long before ’Ole 19 brought about payments of trillions of dollars to people to not go to work. These trillions were not created as a gift from the gods but are borrowed from future generations. Such largesse with the earnings of contemporary small business owners and yet to be born taxpayers may cause warm fuzzy feelings but the concept of something for nothing is a zero-sum game. It can lead to an attitude of entitlement. Unlike teaching folks to fish, entitlement can instill a belief that fish will hook themselves and that if someone else has caught a fish they must share it. A moral society has an obligation to care for those who cannot care for themselves. But it is immoral to foster an attitude that the able bodied have no obligation to contribute. Even worse is the idea that those who do have means must not deserve them so it is okay to take their property without paying for it.

According to the office of the Attorney General for the State of California a large number of folks who frequent retail establishments such as CVS, Walgreens and Target in the San Francisco area simply take items off the shelves and leave without paying. This attitude of “what’s mine is mine and so is thine” may be infecting the American psyche beyond the land of free love and tent cities on the public streets. Evidence of this creeping social virus can also be found on our public roads and byways.

Some people apparently assume all the world is their trash can and dump their refuse on the rest of us. How difficult could it be to carry a trash bag in a vehicle and occasionally put the filled-up bag in one of the large containers that populate every public park or roadside rest stop? Once again it is the entitlement thing. The thought process may go something like this:

“I am going to shoplift some items or buy some beer or fast food and then dump the refuse on my fellow citizens. It is okay because I should not be expected to be responsible for my own mess. After all, I either didn’t pay for it to begin with or bought it with COVID-19 money I didn’t earn and may not need.”

Perhaps there is no direct connection to socialism, COVID-19 and people who are too lazy to properly dispose of their own trash, but my guess is it’s an apt tautology. Anyway, in a few more years of dolling out other peoples’ money our federal, state and local governments will run out of ink and maybe our society will then care for those who cannot care for themselves but will respect others who can work enough to require them to do so. Also, that newly engendered sense of self-worth might encourage them to pick up their own trash.

Distancing

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President Lincoln reportedly used to occasionally sit on the back steps of the White House and talk to old friends who might just drop by. President Truman used to play poker at his Key West, Florida White House with ordinary folks. President Jackson invited the hoi polloi to his inauguration and they came and trashed the White House. There was a time America’s leaders thought of Americans as equals, or at least not as persona non grata. Now there are fences and armed guards at the White House and the only time a president makes personal contact with Americans is to have a photo op. Democracy is now pretty much non-democratic.

Our politicians often ascribe the responsibility for this metamorphosis to need for security, that is, fear of contact with us. I suggest it has more to do with their desire to just pick up their tax payor funded paychecks while being left alone. Kind of like getting COVID-19 checks not to work. Anyway, my experience in working for the public has been that it has not been a concern for my security or anyone else’s that has brought about such distance between public servants and the public. But it comes more from a realization that there simply is very little difference between those who control the government and those who are controlled by it, and the controllers are afraid that will be found out. At least that is true with the judicial branch and the legal system. I invite you, Gentle Reader, to return with me to at least one incident from those “thrilling days of yesteryear” to help me illustrate my concerns about the loss of direct connection to our office holders.

When the State of Indiana used justices of the peace to process most minor legal matters such as driving offenses and small civil claims, the “courts” were often held in the homes or store fronts owned by the justices. One would appear before some non-formally trained person who would dispense justice in a relaxed atmosphere and at little cost. Then we “improved” the system by requiring legally educated and licensed judges and publicly financed court facilities. Everything became more complex, costlier and more distant.

In Posey County, Indiana the County Court that replaced the Justice of the Peace system in 1975 was jammed into a portion of the 1927 Memorial Coliseum Building. The original coliseum was built as a community center. It had a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a stage for shows and a pool table. The new County Court, including the judge’s chamber, took up three small rooms next to where the pool table was. And another feature was the closet in the approximately 20-foot by 30-foot courtroom where the Daughters of the American Revolution ladies kept their regalia to be used in their meetings that also were held in the courtroom.

When I was the Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Posey County, 1976-1978, I tried six-person jury trials in that courtroom. As we had no separate jury room we would try a case then leave the jury in the courtroom alone to deliberate on their verdict. Everyone in the courtroom could reach out and almost touch everyone else. Of course, there was little pretense of confidentiality. I know it sounds bizarre but it worked okay and no one, including the judge and the attorneys, could arrogate themselves into special status. Please let me tell you about one of my favorite cases from that halcyon time.

I was a little younger then and one of the cases I prosecuted involved a misdemeanor charge against a Billy ______ who was about my age. Billy represented himself in the jury trial. After Billy and I traded accusations and insults during final arguments the judge gave the case to the jury then ordered the courtroom cleared except for the jury. Billy and I stepped out to the adjoining room where both a soft-drink machine and the pool table were located.

As we attempted to ignore one another, Billy turned to me and said, “Hey, Jim, do you play pool?” As I grew up in Pawhuska, Oklahoma at a time when the only thing other than the ball field was the pool hall, of course I played pool.

“Yeah, Billy, I play pool and I can beat you at that too. By the way, I thought you did okay in court, but be prepared for the gavel to fall.” I was much more sure of myself then.

“Jim, do you want to put anything on the pool game?”

“No, Billy, that would be illegal; go ahead and break.” I did not mention that a portion of my tuition at Oklahoma State University came from non-legal lucre.

Well, we played as the jury was busy deciding they didn’t care if I thought Billy was a menace to society; they sided with Billy. Since that trial Billy and I have had several contacts of the legal variety and you may note Billy is still playing pool but now my pool table is in my barn.

In my opinion, America could use a reprise of some of that by-gone legal system where the people who are processed and those who do the processing are not separated by layers of convolution. As Eva Peron might say, ♫ I’ll keep my promise, don’t keep your distance.” ♫

Sans Sand

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Just when it looked like it might be safe to leave the beach and go back in the water the beach is disappearing. After more than a year of masks and isolation Peg and I finally got our second Pfizer shots last Friday. We just need to avoid all human contact for one more week. We were anticipating a return to a normal life. Then I read of an alarming new and totally unexpected world crisis, a sand shortage? Yep, that was the cautionary tale screaming from the Internet. I know I should not use my iPhone for anything but ordering from Amazon, but I find it impossible to ignore the AOL pop-ups in my email.  I know better but still click on the cleverly worded come-ons beseeching me to read about global warming, COVID-19, politics, sports or even Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex. This morning as the sun rose I was dinged with an exposé about our planet’s disappearing sands. Had I been aware of the situation I wouldn’t have recognized it even was a problem until I read the CNBC article shouting out the impending catastrophe of sans sand. So, Gentle Reader, just in case you might not have been panicking over this issue either, let me share my newly found angst.

Until this morning about my only concern in regard to sand was Peg’s complaint that I traipse it into our cabin after I have been out walking on the sandstone covered prairie. Peg demands that I leave my boots at the door and slide around in my socks on our bare floors. Now I can tell her I am helping to save the planet when I accumulate sand on her clean floors. She just needs to start bagging it up. Anyway, here’s what the Internet says is as significant to the world as fighting the pandemic.

According to an article on CNBC by Sam Meredith, sand is the world’s most consumed raw material after water and it is, “… an essential ingredient to our everyday lives”. In a “coals to New Castle” type comment the article goes on to say the United State government is hauling in countless tons of sand to protect Florida’s beaches that have been decimated by global warming. Apparently this is a world-wide dilemma and just as some people blame China for COVID-19, China’s over use of sand in massive construction projects accounts for almost 60% of the world use of sand as it is mixed into cement. It takes 10 tons of sand to produce 1 ton of cement.

You, as did I, might think that with such deposits as Sahara or Death Valley or the front yard of JPeg Osage Ranch, we would never run out of sand. However, it turns out that not all sand is created equally.

Desert sands, those created from wind instead of water such as by the seas and rivers, are too smooth to be used for construction so we are depleting our “good” sand too rapidly. There is even a huge illegal enterprise in sand excavation in some countries that has led to mafia type activity or so says CNBC.

As for me, I have resigned myself to continuing to pour cement into fence post holes and hope there will be enough to circle our new barn. If Peg does her part we might be able to make it stretch.

 

 

A Goat Roping

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Last Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. Peg and I joined supplicants from numerous Oklahoma communities at the Grant County Health Department in Medford, Oklahoma, population one thousand. Medford is 105 miles from our home in Barnsdall, Oklahoma but there were pilgrims there from even further away. The convocation had the feel of a Hadj with the tiny health department being the Ka’bah and Medford being Mecca. Instead of seeking a later reward we were all beseeching the higher authority, our government, for salvation here and now from COVID-19.

The congregation consisted of a continuous stream of persons all of whom had the same color hair, were of similar size and shape and shuffled along as if in fear of falling. Because Medford’s Health Department is staffed with small-town Oklahomans who were born in the 20th century they were unfailingly friendly and efficient. Peg and I arrived early, of course, as did many others and were welcomed in out of the forty mile per hour cold wind gusts into the 10’ x 20’ reception area. We were there about 45 minutes, most of that time being required to see if either of us had a bad reaction to the shots; we did not. However, since these supplicants were mainly friendly refugees from an Oklahoma of the 1940’s and 50’s, in that time we learned more about them and they about us than any government census worker ever would.

Our experience with the fine folks of Medford, most of whom were unpaid volunteers, was difficult to reconcile with America’s over all response to COVID-19. Whereas our federal government should receive praise for developing vaccines in record time, we have fallen way, way short in delivering the vaccine. Every day the battle we are in with the constantly mutating virus becomes more dangerous and ’Ole 19 has already killed over 450,000 of us.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) has her main character, Milkman, in her novel Song of Soloman thinking, “Perhaps all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?” Morrison clearly understood Franz Kafka’s (1883-1924) anguished frustration with the legal system in his novel The Trial. Kafka’s main character, Joseph K, cannot even get the legal system to explain what he is charged with or why. William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) Macbethsums it up: “Life is a tale told by an idiot”. Apparently Morrison, Kafka and Shakespeare were trying to get their governments to provide something as essential as a COVID-19 vaccination or whatever basic public service they needed then.

Whereas most of us are amazed that our government ramped up vaccines in about one year, the euphoria over discovery appears to have interfered with actually inoculating us. It is as if we have been so proud of finding a potential prevention of the plague that we have failed to develop a plan to employ the prevention. At the rate we are inoculating ourselves ’Ole 19 will mutate us out of existence. Supposedly millions of doses of vaccines will soon be shipped to CVS, Walgreens and Walmart. That is great but if our government has to use the existing Internet portal system, the virus will outpace us. We must be able to sign up “at the door” of the pharmacies or have the vaccine delivered and applied at our doors. We have already appropriated trillions of dollars to respond to COVID-19. We have spent enough taxpayer vaccination money to send a trained UPS, FedEx, Amazon worker or National Guard soldier to every one of our 330 million citizens with a needle and a vile of vaccine and the knowledge, training and emergency supplies to check for and respond to any bad reactions. Although in the millions of shots already given there have been virtually no deaths reported. We are allowing an extremely unlikely deadly reaction to the vaccination to interfere with the delivery of the vaccine and the almost guaranteed possibility the virus will continue to kill us in huge numbers if we do not quickly vaccinate a large percentage of our population. Another possibility would be to have the vaccines delivered directly to us and then allow us to contact medical providers of our choice to inject them. After all, millions of us receive billions of doses of medication by mail already.

We inoculated the whole country for polio without so much as a ripple. We all have had shots for smallpox, measles, TB, etc., etc. without this bottleneck. As Jonathan Reiner, Professor of Medicine at George Washington University, said back in January 2021, “The bottleneck is actually the logistics of vaccinating people (not the supply of the vaccine)”. And former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated in The Wall Street Journal, “New variants of the virus that appear more contagious increase the urgency to deploy the vaccine as fast as possible”.

The craziness of signing up on Internet portals, waiting in lines of vehicles or waiting in lines outside in the weather adds another level to Dante Alighieri’s (1265-1321) Inferno. Americans can order everything from food to computers over the Internet and get them sent overnight right to our doors with simple instructions on how to use them. A packaged, pre-loaded syringe packed in dry ice is not a space shot problem. A looped YouTube video and public TV demonstration would get to 99% of our cell phones and homes for those who wish to DIY.

If our government does not think we, their bosses, are competent to give ourselves or our families shots then why not use each state’s National Guard or our 2 ½ million regular military personnel. When I joined the United States Air Force fifty-eight years ago, they gave us enough inoculations in one day to save the world from all known diseases and some not even thought of. Surely we can adapt from that system.

By the way, in a week or two after we get the promised email notices from the Oklahoma Board of Health, Peg will have to get back on the online portal to schedule appointments for our second shots at a location somewhere around the state. Hopefully it won’t take a month of checking daily/hourly to schedule the second dose as it did with the first. And, of course, we each have to get a separate appointment within the three to four week allotted period before the next dose is due. All this must take place while the virus continues to out fox us.

Attenuation

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From The Ford Library Museum Website

The season of our discontent is set to begin February 08, 2021. Soon we will be forced to talk to our spouses again and eat an actual meal instead of gobble chicken wings during commercials or at half-times. I can feel the ennui closing in. ♫ It is a long, long time from February to September ♫ when football season returns. It is not that I have no interest in other sports, but other than the Olympic downhill ski race and the baseball World Series I just do not want to watch them on television. On the other hand, I will gladly spend four hours watching Goadie Bowl Tech and Reyfert Hogart Junior College drop passes and fumble kick-offs. Such pursuits as yard work and household chores quickly fade in the afterglow of a football game. Ah well, perhaps it will give me an opportunity to ask Peg what she has been doing since September 2020. Also, I might give some thought to such things as our battle with ’Ole 19 and our political malaise.

Perhaps I can combine my concerns about the end of the football season, the Corona Virus and such political madness as the January 06, 2021 assault on our Capitol including its impending impeachment imbroglio. After all, President Gerald Ford was the hero or villain, choose one, of the President Richard Nixon impeachment controversy and President Lyndon Johnson often alleged Ford’s decisions were affected by Ford’s having played too much football without a helmet. Gerald Ford played center on the University of Michigan football team. Ford graduated from college in 1935, an era when leather helmets were in vogue. For safety reasons leather has been gradually replaced with the rock-hard plastic we now use. Hello, spearing or targeting penalties and TIB’s (traumatic brain injuries). However, from an esthetic viewpoint, the hard plastic provides a better surface for team logos and sticker awards for hard hits.

Football and politics do have some similarities, and when it comes to dealing with misdeeds in either, the legal concept of attenuation is relevant. With football a hard hit with his helmet by one player against the head of another player can be analyzed by re-tracing backwards from the hit. While not even the player himself, or now perhaps herself too, may know for sure if he intended permanent harm, the referees and the re-play booth can carefully review and discuss the event. This may disclose guilt or innocence of the player but is he the only one to blame?

The fanatics who cheer on teams often call for the players to “fight’ or even “kill ’em”. One’s teammates may urge super aggression. Coaches spend months in conditioning drills and two-a-days pre-season practices explaining how starters push the limits while bench setters are more timid. And what about the player’s parents? Who is responsible for engendering mayhem instead of mercy?

The same type of analysis is an element of our criminal justice system. When there is a lynching, how far back the causal chain should punishment go? Is it just the one person who slips the noose over the victim’s neck? What about the on-lookers, the news media that fanned the flames, the leaders who gave rousing speeches, the sworn law officers who did not intervene and the rest of the community who acquiesced in silence either during or after the lynching? Perhaps an entire country might be responsible or even a silently accepting world. How do we decide whether we are applying appropriate punishment or simply burning a few witches to shoulder the blame for everyone?

Then, of course, we need to look at the dynamics of the attenuation itself. Who is making the choices about whom to burn? Are the decisions just or are they just decisions because the ones who execute them have the power to do so? And most importantly, are we a better society because of the choices or are we simply fomenting more targeting? Finally, where and how does it end?