On Our Own

George Kennan, perhaps America’s greatest diplomat and Cold War strategist, spent his career moving within the highbrow circles of US State Department postings throughout Europe. Most of his adult life was spent abroad, and any reading of his autobiographical content makes clear that is as he preferred it. When he was “home” in his native land, more often than not he would grow impatient, even exasperated, with the civic and intellectual complacency of his fellow citizens, the lack of interest they exhibited to anything much past daily routines.

What really made Kennan bitter was the belief his countrymen weren’t up to understanding the nuances of the containment strategy he developed to check Soviet aggression. Instead of digesting both the strengths and weaknesses of America’s principal adversary, necessary to support graduated measures to keep communist power at bay, the masses instead gave in to fear and even hysteria. That paved the way to ugly episodes like McCarthyism and failed military adventures like Vietnam, not to mention a suicidal nuclear arms race he abhorred.

As he aged, Kennan’s estrangement with the citizenry of his own country only increased. He lived to be 101, passing away in 2005. Were he still alive in the days of Coronavirus, it’s a sure bet he would be ensconced in his library far away from the infecting throngs, surely frowning on his peers as much in the new millennium as he did in the old. Any thoughtful observer of recent developments would hardly blame him. Whether or not Kennan was an elitist, he certainly was no fool.

By any metric Maine appears to have Covid-19 under control. Whereas Florida now tops 10K new cases per day, Maine reported 13 last Friday for a grand total of about 3500 since the pandemic began; that’s now topped by lunchtime in the Sunshine State. Hospital capacity? Seven Coronavirus patients are currently being treated in critical care units statewide. Only 111 deaths have been attributed to the virus, all people over 60 years old. Yes, as too many other states now seem to be losing control of their pandemic response, Maine has avoided Covid’s worst. However, it’s not for lack of trying by many of its finest, or visitors without concern for what their own footprints leave.  

Maine’s Democratic Governor, Janet Mills, has been as prudent and cautious as any in the the US since March. Throughout the crisis she has not hesitated to take heat for orders business interests, fully goaded by state and national GOP voices, have bristled against. When she re-opened beaches and campgrounds in June, she explicitly included language meant to ensure both distancing and mask wearing. Anyone interested in observing the gap between policy and practice needed only to spend a few hours at Gooch’s Beach in Kennebunk over the weekend.

The difference between low and high tide on coastal Maine beaches is extreme, averaging nine feet. Where low tide permits up to near 100 yards of beach space, high tide reduces it to less than 10. Distancing at low tide isn’t hard, at high tide it isn’t possible. At Gooch’s Beach few cared either way, as most seemed oblivious to any requirement to check their behavior. Wearing masks produced double takes, as circles of families and friends mixed together with zero concern for anything past returning to normal. 

No epidemiologist credentials are required to figure out how fast one Covid-positive husband could start the ball rolling on infecting his immediate group, who likely would not begin to show symptoms until after they returned home from vacation, and spent the week infecting others throughout this postcard vacation spot. Whatever care and good faith Governor Mills has taken to ensure phase 2 proceeds safely, the bipartisan sensibility at Gooch’s Beach wholeheartedly matches the White House’s… what virus? We’ve sacrificed enough.

Corona fatigue was always going to be an issue, regardless who was President. Locking down America for a couple of months required a great marketing job from the start, not to mention obsessive focus on the cause and effect relationship between flattening the curve and successfully reopening the economy. The irony our first salesman President failed so miserably at the job is only exceeded by the outrage he never even tried, and now passive-aggressively agitates for his wretched core to equate the smallest inconvenience with an unacceptable loss of personal liberty. When wearing a mask is too much to ask, it is no mystery how contentious revisiting Phase 1 is going to be.

The parade of civic awfulness being documented on video is prevalent and should make us all lose sleep; it is certainly America at its worst, and it’s occurring from top to bottom. Loathsome Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wouldn’t wear a mask on a commercial air liner. Think about that. We know he panders as he breathes, and only does what he thinks the prevailing political winds will bless. So a US Senator from a Covid epicenter doesn’t mind sickening others because doing the right thing will hurt polling. Can you say disgusting?

One doesn’t need Kennan’s sensibilities to feel contempt and embarrassment as leaders and fellow citizens act unmoored from decency. Yet and still, it is clear up here in the vacation state a passive delusion exists that is just as dangerous to public health. There is nothing militant or bad hearted about it, but the results will be just as crippling. It is the natural emanation a total lack of leadership produces, and until that void is filled with the constructive messaging this crisis necessitates, it will predominate.

We all generally require context to deal with situations that confront us, a beginning, middle and end. We don’t have that right now; there is no central voice to provide it. Dr. Fauci, who long ago became way too candid for our liar-in-chief to tolerate, was clear this week “we aren’t anywhere near the end of this.”

My son Luke has autism, but his most crippling deficiency is the absence of an innate sense of time. Without it, he lives life suspended in a purgatory of directionless inertia. And that’s exactly our national condition right now. Without leadership we are adrift, each defining this problem in line with the scraps of information they lift from whatever news sources they depend on; that’s a recipe for a health catastrophe. Near four more months of the same is an eternity, with thousands of deaths, and much worse, societal indifference to them a certainty.

At Gooch’s Beach everyone simply wishes things were over, and with nobody in central authority advising them when that may be and what we all need to do to make it happen, too many will just pretend the worst has passed and proceed accordingly. Meanwhile, as Trumpie minions governing Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina etc. pander to the lowest civic common denominator, literally pretending their states aren’t blowing up around them, America hurdles toward 100K infections per day. When you can’t muster the will to order people to wear masks, leadership is the last thing you care to offer. We are on our own, and we’re not up to the task. And thousands are going to die unnecessarily because of that.

Seventy years ago. once convinced of an emerging preeminent threat, America became affixed to whatever our national leaders required for addressing it, regardless of cost. It led to the early deaths of thousands of American boys. Now a far more direct danger is here, throughout our land and killing us day in and day out, but without leadership millions make believe it is too much ado about not enough of anything. Kennan would have been pissed. BC