Young people have a gripe

"We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent,

---And young.---

We should be together.
Come on all you people stand-in around.
Our life's too fine to let it die
We should be together."

          Jefferson Airplane, October 1969

The virus response gives young people renewed grievance. It gives the political system a new reason to re-think health care. 

We should be together.

Spring break

Bernie Sanders had a clear path. It was down to Sleepy Joe versus the guy who electrified crowds. Sanders was going to expand the electorate by getting young people to vote their interests.

On Super Tuesday young voters did what young voters do: they didn't show up. Young Americans blew their chance, but maybe they get a do-over. 

They have a grievance. The virus has put attention on public health, a concept that has been largely missing in the debate over access to health care.

The young are getting screwed. Maybe they know it, but likely not. They just know it is expensive. The Affordable Care Act--Obamacare--makes health care affordable for more people, and assures people with pre-existing conditions can get health insurance. It does it primarily by expanding the health insurance pool. Young, healthy people are induced to buy health insurance, putting them into the same pool as older, less healthy people, subsidizing them. The system is made less bad for the young by the taxpayer contributions. Still, the heart of the program is the intergenerational transfer.

The Republican approach has been worse. It is to end both the ACA and taxpayer contribution that made it semi-affordable for young people. 

There is one policy proposal out there which is young-people friendly: Medicare for All. Republicans relentlessly campaign against it. Democrats are better on this issue than Republicans, but in choosing "Medicare for all who want it,"  they still leave in place an intergenerational subsidy. 

Why do the young get taken advantage of? Old people vote and young people do not.

Coronavirus response refocuses attention on generational equity. We are asking a lot of young people. It is time to repay them.

There is reportage and commentary on the unequal burdens created by the virus pandemic.  The people most at risk of death, the elderly and health-impaired, are the ones best able to shelter in place. 

Policymakers and the public are aware that the best response to the virus is shutting down the economy so the health care system can cope with the emergency. That hurts everyone, but it especially burdens the young. They have jobs to get too. We aren't telling seniors to deal with the issue by hide from an active economy. We are telling everyone to shut down the economy.

Reportage and commentary tsk-tsk at young people ignoring social distancing. They get sick, too, the experts warn, and are urged to think of others, to be considerate. They should understand that the health of all of us depends on joint sacrifice. Young people spread infection to the old. We are all in this together.

Now? So now we are in it together?

The virus reminds us of the value of having healthy people around us. Obama attempted partially to socialize the costs in the ACA. Republicans fought it at every step, and then won big in 2010 on a platform of opposition to the ACA. They said paying for your health care is your problem, not society's problem. Republican messaging was about individual responsibility. Get off the taxpayer's back. We aren't our brother's keeper. That is socialism. 

Socialism

Yet, in the midst of a contagious disease we are confronted not just with the socialization of disease but the socialization of the response to the disease. 

Young people are asked to sacrifice, to protect their own health, yes, but primarily the health of another generation. Why shouldn't a young person go ahead and risk infection and spreading it? The person he is protecting--the senior who votes for candidates opposing expanded health coverage-- doesn't care about that young person's health. Why should that young person all of a sudden care about the health of the senior? Isn't that socialism? Is he his brother's keeper?

State governors have shut down the economy for the good of the whole society. At some point the politicians will begin calling it the socialization of health care. 

Perhaps, if young people wake up and make the argument loud and strong enough, seniors will recognize their own obligations, and young people will actually turn out and vote their own interests. That is the missing ingredient for Democrats. It isn't the will. It is the votes. Democrats need young people to show up.

Democratic candidate who planted a stake in the ground before the coronavirus crisis have a justification for changing their position, and maybe the electoral wherewithal to win an election.

Our life's too fine to let it die.

We can be together.

Patriotism is for saps. Trump seeks "appreciation."

     "We are doing very well with, I think, almost all of the governors, for the most part. But you know, it's a two-way street. They have to treat us well."

Ask what you can do for your country.

     Trump on Fox News, March 24

It is how Trump thinks. He says it out loud. 

Republican voters are OK with it.

Donald Trump was impeached because of quid pro quo. To review: Trump wanted campaign dirt on Joe Biden in the form of an announcement by top Ukraine officials that they were investigating Biden. That would give third party validation for campaign attacks on Biden. To extract that, Trump and his political team held up Ukraine defense authorizations and dangled-but withheld--a public meeting at the White House. 

Democrats considered this indisputable abuse of power, with Trump caught red handed. It was both illegal (withholding appropriated funds) and morally wrong (injuring an ally and cheating in an election.)

Republican voters and their officeholders disagreed. It was no big deal.

On March 27, at a coronavirus news briefing Trump volunteers an answer to a question about Trump's complaint that state governors aren't "appreciative" enough of him.

Trump: 

     "I think the governor of Washington is a failed presidential candidate. He leveled out at zero in the polls. He's constantly tripping and, I guess 'complaining' would be a nice way of saying it. In Michigan, all she does is--she has no idea what's going on. All she does is saying 'Oh, it's the federal government’s fault.'

Watch, beginning at 24:00  Click: CSPAN

     I want them to be appreciative. We've done a great job. 

    Mike Pence, I don't think he sleeps any more. He calls all the governors. I tell him--I'm a different kind of guy--I tell him, 'Don't call the governor of Washington. You're wasting your time with him. Don't call the woman in Michigan.'

     You know what I say: if they don't treat you right, I don't call."

The shocking thing is not that Trump says this. We know this about Trump. What is important to notice is that Republican voters are OK with it.

American political culture has changed. The World War Two and Cold War eras solidified a spirit of national unity. All of America was at risk. Soviet missiles in Cuba weren't just endangering Florida, they were endangering America. Soviet ICBMs were aimed at everyone. JFK could call for patriotic sacrifice and people heard it as stirring words, not satire. 

Obama leapfrogged into national consciousness at the 2004 Democratic convention with words of national unity.

"The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

Words like that worked in 2004 and it still worked in 2008. By 2016 this sounded naive. For all Democrats, but especially within the Democratic left--approximately the Sanders wing--Obama is understood to have been rolled by the Republicans. He tried to negotiate with them on health care expansion, and wasted valuable time. He shouldn't have bothered. Republicans openly stonewalled his 2009 infrastructure stimulus, preferring to prolong the recession rather than let Obama have credit for pulling us out of it. They paid no price for that. Didn't Democrats notice?

The pundits--including the ones Obama referenced in 2004--observe that Republicans played hardball; Obama played beanbag. Hardball worked. Mitch McConnell said the primary goal of Republicans was to make Obama a one term president. He failed at that, but 100% opposition succeeded in denying him a governing majority by 2010 and ability to fill court positions by 2012.

Trump understands the state of American politics. Democratic moderates don't, remaining stuck in a gauzy sentiment. Democrats voted unanimously to spend 2 trillion dollars in a stimulus, much of which will go directly to giveaways to corporations, with Trump writing in a signing statement that he has no intention of obeying the law's provisions on Congressional oversight. Democrats weren't invited to the bill signing. See what Trump did, not what bi-partisan government did. Soon the checks will come, signed by Trump.

Democrats are getting rolled again.

Trump understands that we are a nation divided. The "we" in Trump's America are Trump's Americans, not all Americans. 

Republican voters are unified by what and who they don't like. They don't like Democrats. They don't like Obama, Pelosi, nor Schumer. They don't like woke culture. They don't like know-it-all Harvard experts. They don't like immigrants waltzing in and getting stuff. They don't like people of color getting benefits. They don't like affirmative action. They don't like snooty European globalist types. They don't like environmentalist job killing weenies. They don't like strange gay and queer and transgender people with their pronouns. They don't like Christianity being treated like just another religion. 

They especially don't like being made to feel guilty over the they way they actually feel. They are still pissed off about the changes that arose out of the 1960's. 

They aren't giving up. There is still a Nixonian "Silent Majority" and there is still a 1990's "Moral Majority." Make America great again. They know they are outnumbered in the cities and college towns, but they still have the countryside and a civil war is underway.

They know it. Trump knows it. Democrats who support Biden think we can all get along.

Jobs. Don't forget about jobs.

ABC Headline:  "Trump's push to open economy could cost lives."

The virus kills. Poverty kills. 

The tradeoff between jobs and other values is an old one. Today the virus.  The battle has split environmentalists on the left from union and non-union laborers. The battle has fueled the rural-urban divide. Prosperity is found in cities, by people working in offices, moving data around. Doing less well are people in rural areas, who used to make money extracting a resource.

This week readers of the New York Times got more sad news. Reporter Nicholas Kristoff updated his sad story of his childhood classmates in the rural coastal town of Yamhill, Oregon. The last of the five children in one family died young, this one of heroin overdose. Each of them in essence died, he writes, of poverty and despair. The economy of their small town had collapsed.

When the resource extraction industry declines--coal in some regions, minerals in others, timber in Oregon--the jobs dwindle. Then follow human pathologies. Alcoholism. Drug use. Crime.

The job loss is a tolerable cost--sometimes an invisible cost--to people who live elsewhere and visit those places to vacation or retire. How nice that the houses are so inexpensive, the streets so uncrowded. The lumber mill is now a casino, how nice. Too bad nearly all the restaurants have closed.

Among people in the relative urban area of Medford, Oregon, with a diversified economy built around medical services and government, there is a near political consensus opposing a Liquified Natural Gas Export terminal 100 miles to our west at the Port of Coos Bay. The pipeline needs to transverse a rural part of our county and that give us leverage to stop the multi-billion dollar project. It would be by far the largest taxpayer in the neighboring country, but that is them. Their jobs, their port, their taxpayers. 

We have other interests. 

Local environmental activists stand on a principle. If we can stop natural gas from mid-continent from getting to market it is a strike against fossil fuel development. Natural gas would replace coal, but actually, thinking globally, China should be putting in solar panels and wind turbines, not importing gas. There are no fossil fuels to develop in our area and the export terminal is another county's windfall. They can be a quaint tourist town. 

Today, we have a guest post from a Coos County resident with a more nuanced view. She identifies as an environmentalist. She also sees Coos Bay, Oregon for what it is, a place struggling, whose primary economic edge is their well placed port. As Kristoff has documented, there is a cost to poverty, a human cost.

Guest Post by Sheryl Gerety

Gerety

"LNG Terminal: Coos County Asks For It"

I retired to Coos Bay in 2014, where within weeks House Representative Peter De Fazio held a town hall. He wanted to talk about fishing and transportation issues; many in the audience had questions about his support for or resistance to the LNG terminal.  

There were colored T-shirts for Team LNG, with a lot of folks standing behind the rows of seats who pressed him to throw his influence into the ring. March 19, 2020 FERC (Federal Energy Commission) conditionally approved the Jordan Cove LNG export terminal and Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline.  

Since attending that meeting 6 hears ago I've been asked where I stood on the basic question: should it happen?  I've had and heard many conversations, some with City and County officials, some with private sector residents who make their livings operating and repairing tug boats, farming cranberries, running an Italian restaurant, within and without Coos County. I've learned that whether Pembina builds a pipeline connector and the LNG terminal on the Port of Coos Bay is not about exporting natural gas per se.  

The actual problem is that our port, the only deep water port between San Francisco Bay and Seattle Tacoma Puget Sound, is an outdated and significantly underused facility fighting to attract investors to power the local economy. The one potential solution arrived at after 40 years of searching for funds to maintain and expand Port services turns out to be exporting natural gas to Asia. Maybe. 

Channel dredging

As a way to imagine why coastal Oregon has had to make such a long and only partly successful project out of revitalizing it's one surviving economic engine, think of the state of Oregon as the Inca Empire. All commerce runs along the inland altiplano, the seats of culture, religion and wealth are in Cuzco, Arequipa, Quito, but not Lima.  The Incas were not a nation of seafarers and their highlands survivors' contempt for the coastal cities remains visceral to this day. Oregon's seat of government and major cities lie east of the coastal range along the I-5 corridor. The interior view of our coastal towns is that they would do well to remain isolated, quaint e.g. poor, vacation retreats for the inlanders who golf, beach comb, charter fishing boats or ply kayaks along the tide pools.  

Since the bad old 80s, when the timber industry failed, Coos County and the cities of North Bend and Coos Bay together with the Port Authority and the Coast Guard have pursued federal and state grants to rebuild a railroad spur that carries lumber from mills in Coquille, Coos Bay and North Bend to the docks for export, but also on to Eugene. TARP funds were awarded for that project.  But money to dredge the ship channel from the Charleston Bar has been in short supply as has money to build out the docks and repair the railroad bridge that crosses the Bay to the west of the McCullough Bridge on OR101. The support sought from the State House and Senate to establish a pilot wind farm off the coast hinged on building out docks to load equipment and service vessels to build the turbines hit gale force political headwinds.  

When LNG terminal talks began, the Obama administration had been promoting a scaling down of fossil fuels, eliminating the worst offender, coal, by offering natural gas as the cheaper and cleaner fuel source available immediately and useful for building out renewable energy projects. 

The local intent has been and continues to be leasing locations on the port to (now) Pembina while once again looking for off-shore wind farm ventures.  The enormous front loading required to get the port up to speed will have been helped along almost to completion for the next generation of energy sources.  

Now, with CO₂ levels climbing toward a point of environmental no return, using the port as a means to a worthy end is not viewed as principled enough to pass the smell test.  It's money, after all, that is driving the decision. And what decision of any magnitude should be taken because of money?  Here, Pembina money for schools, law enforcement and city/county services pretty much stands between us and no functional government, school districts, roads and a hard won hospital. I've made many a Red Cross fire call to multi-generational households of working poor that consist of a tenant in a fifth wheel or camping trailer connected by an extension chord to a 60-100 year old house with original wiring. 

We have thousands of households maintaining this tenuous mutual life support system, and hundreds of homeless sheltering in the woods around town.  Cooking meth is still a way to make cash. It is about money, folks, and money is one currency we have that measures how well we are doing as a society.  

Biden: Time to re-evaluate

At a time of worry, humans don't look to the nicest leader.

They look to the strongest leader.

The coronavirus changes everything. Democrats have a problem.

Joe Biden wins the category of compassion and empathy. Biden understands the pain of grief and the humiliation of the parent who loses a job. Sentimental, good guy Joe. By contrast, Trump is very comfortable looking cruel. He know who his enemies are and he wants to crush them.

Likable, approachable Joe Biden

Democrats are stuck in the past if they think this gives Biden an edge. Not anymore.

The economy is in chaos. The monetary dashboard has gone haywire because the indicators policymakers normally use aren't relevant. The economy is led by a disease, not a business cycle. Businesses are closing, people are out of work.

The politics of the nation feels chaotic, too. The rise of populism on the right grew out of ideas spoken by Barry Goldwater, made eloquent by Ronald Reagan. Government was the problem. Under Newt Gingrich's influence bipartisan cooperation was the problem as well. For government to shrink, the public needed to learn to have contempt for it, and they did.

In the aftermath of the bailout of the banks in 2008 and 2009, the public realized that the guilty wealthy had been saved by the many. It confirmed and accentuated populist discontent on the left as well. Both Trump and Sanders say the institutions of government-- from the campaigns, the election counts, the elected officials, the operations of government itself, and the media that covers it--all are biased and corrupt.

Democrats looked at Sanders, saw a proud disrupter, but one who had failed in his hope to grow the left with new voters and failed to unify Democratic voters who had been comfortable with Obama. Sanders represented risk; Biden represented calm. Democrats chose calm.

Americans had a choice: Chaotic Trump vs. Biden Normalcy.

Then the coronavirus.

Normalcy is not an option. Between economic chaos and the health fear, we are in wartime. An enemy invader haunts the streets. There is invisible death on any doorknob, grocery cart handle, dollar bill, and the air we breath. Cancel everything. Shelter.

Americans observe failed states and don't perceive their relevance, but there is a lesson In mafia controlled areas, in drug states, in battle torn areas: security comes from the barrel of a gun, not the rule of law. People seek strength. They want to ally with it and have its protection. The shared agreement--the social compact--dissolves. It is an emergency. America just voted a two trillion dollar special deficit. The old rules no longer apply.

It's a new election environment. The safe, low drama candidate is no longer possible. 

Biden is singularly unsuited for the role of wartime president. He doesn't look or sound strong because he isn't strong. He doesn't project competence. His addled gaffes aren't harmless or endearing anymore.

Trump, too, is ill-suited for the job of wartime president, but less so. Trump is patently, obviously self-centered. A wartime leader projects a singular focus on the needs of the polity he leads. Trump fails that test. He shirks blame. He shamelessly, openly craves adoration, displaying a weakness for flattery. He takes the easy road, not the responsible one. Still, Trump can argue that what is good for Trump politically and personally is good for the country.

I expect that to be a winning argument.

Can Biden grow into the role of the strong, resolute leader who communicates competence in a crisis? Maybe, but I have not seen it, either in person or on television, and I ached with desire to observe it. Biden is who he is, a nice sentimental guy, suitable for leading us back to normalcy.

But there is no normalcy. That was last month, not now. If Biden realizes it on his own, he will drop out. If not, Democrats would be wise to push him out.

Trump blames

Trump message: 

Who is at fault for the lack of supplies to deal with the virus? Someone else. 

Trump points at General Motors.

The discussion on CNBC is surprised and critical of Trump. The commentary is about GM being up and ready, the ventilators ready to be built, but that Trump and FEMA are attempting to do a late re-negotiation. Trump wants to present himself as the guy "strong-arming" GM.

This is pointless, they say, and it is an obvious attempt to shift blame to GM.

Yes, Trump is obviously shifting blame. That is the point. He is shifting blame. This works for him.

The Virus Presidency

     "Seven hundred people died in Madrid last night!"

        Jim Cramer, CNBC, Friday morning, March 27, 5:50 a.m. PDT

   

 

    "The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP."

          Trump tweet, Wednesday.

The stock market just crashed, losing 35% of its value in a month.  Then for three days it rebounded half way back up.  This morning, it is falling again.

The stock market is a barometer of business and consumer confidence. It is a battle between fear and greed, between the virus spread and the virus being just an overblown Democratic hoax. Even though only a minority of Americans own significant stock investments, a majority of employers own stocks. The stock market reflects their "animal spirits," their willingness to take the risks that keep their business working.

The stock market drew Trump's alarm at the end of February. It was falling, sharply. The happy talk and reassurances persisted by people in the know--including two US Senators were selling. Trump continued happy-talk, all was well. Larry Kudlow recommended people "buy the dips." 

The stock market kept falling. Gloom. Worry. The US would be like Italy. People would die.

Donald Trump started this week with a message that the shutdown would be brief. We would re-evaluate at Easter, Trump said.  Cheerleading didn't work. 

The Fed flooded the economy with liquidity, the Congress voted massive fiscal stimulus. That worked. But the reality of the virus persists. Financial liquidity is not a cure. Yesterday the US became the country with the most known cases of the virus. 

A cheerleader can motivate, but at some point the crowd cannot help but watch the game. The virus is winning, the stock market notices.  

Trump has a dilemma. The behavior most likely to minimize the spread of the virus is the behavior most likely to damage the economy for an indeterminate time. He wants what his own experts say is the impossible: business as usual and no virus. He needs that miracle. Maybe the spread is seasonal and the cure is the Easter spring season. 

In the meantime, Trump does what he does: deflect. If there is a problem, there is a villain to look at, and it is someone else: 

     "We've done a hell of a job, nobody's done the job that we've done--and its lucky that you have this group here right now for this problem because you wouldn't even have a country left." 

He was addressing reporters at his daily corona virus press conference on Wednesday.

Trump has his story: the virus is a problem but it has been over-hyped and things are getting better all the time because what the government has done is perfect. Trump is the hero, and Democrats are secretly cheering for virus deaths and economic destruction. Therefore, in Trump's version, Democrats and their media allies are playing up the risks. "The media would like to see me do poorly in the election." 

Will that message sell? It might. His audience is receptive. Trump supporters have fully internalized the message that Democrats, liberals, Never-Trump Republicans, and the news media all dislike Trump and will accentuate the negative. Referring to the economy Trump said: 

     "Just so you understand--are you ready?--I think there are certain people that would like it not to open so quickly. I think there are certain people that would like it to do financially poorly because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls."

Reality is reality. Trump's problem is that there are two fixed points which anchor Trump's fate. The virus will spread, or it won't. And businesses can go back to work, or they can't.

If the virus spreads, the economy continues to tank.

Jim Cramer: "The numbers we are hearing in Italy and Madrid are horrifying. . . . I wish the markets would calm down." 7:10 a.m. Friday, March 27.

Right to Life, Part Two

Heads up to Democrats:

Trump is winning on the virus issue. People want to go back to work.

Thad Guyer brings an unusual eye-witness perspective to American politics.

   

1. He spends a lot of time in Vietnam, where people routinely wear face masks and gloves in public. The air pollution in Saigon is intense. Vietnam has 100 million people and 150 cases.

  

 2. He just escaped out of Honduras on a charter flight to get Americans out and home. He heard the conversations of young people all around him. They resented the disruption to their vacation plans and work life brought by what they considered a crazy over-reaction to the virus.

 3. He understands the liberal media bubble, but he is not siloed in it. 

 4. His political orientation is leftist, and he is oriented toward a sense of responsibility of the individual to the whole. We are in this together. From his military experience and his law practice, he is confronted with the reality that sometimes people--whistleblowers--attempt to do the right thing, but their "reward" for that service is that they are crushed.

Guyer is an attorney who represents whistleblower clients, with an international practice.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer:

Bob Warren is right: People Die in War, Except this Time the Sacrifice Should be by the Elderly

I had a bad reaction to Bob Warren’s message way back on March 10 in this blog.  But now I think he is right.  

I will not be willing at some point to have the American economy and way of life thrown into a 1930’s style depression with food rationing, massive unemployment and widespread misery in exchange for protecting the longevity of a relatively small proportion of the elderly from Covid19. Nor I am willing to see the bulk of our hospitals turn away other urgent care needed by younger patients because most of the beds are all filled with elderly Covid19 victims. I think it is fair that my demographic take their chances without causing the American economy to collapse.

I was lucky to be around as Peter Sage’s dad--Robert Sage--dictated his autobiography, and then to read the final drafts. Peter's father was an archetype of the "greatest generation," born in 1919, a youth during the Depression, a soldier of prime military age in World War II. It was remarkable how this public school principal’s life had been marked by his sacrifices during that war, seeing young healthy men like him killed by the tens of thousands. Robert Sage's view was that we have to sacrifice to protect our freedom and way of life. 

Although I left the Vietnam jungles cynical toward the mission, I initially had embraced it with a similar view: The “American way of life” was worth dying for. War actually is not fought just so the majority can live. Instead, the sacrifice of the young and healthy is to die to protect a way of life, to prevent being conquered and ruled by others who don’t share our values. The philosophy is explicit: death of the few is secondary to the way of life of the many. 

I intend to fight for my longevity, but I accept it as my fight, not the sacrifice of my son’s generation. Like Robert Sage and me as soldiers, we had to prepare for being killed in the war and we need to prepare now for being killed by a pandemic. Preparation, not surrender. But this time it won’t be the young and healthily carrying to whole burden of mortality, it will be the elderly facing a maybe 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 of chance of dying by disease. As Bob Warren put it in Peter's blog on March 10:

"There is no great harm to America if a large number of people like us here get the virus and die. We are due to die very shortly anyway. It's a grim fact, but it's a fact. I've had my turn. I have no regrets about that”.

Bob Warren said he “is not depressed or eager to die”, nor am I. I am free with my social security or retirement money, as is almost everyone over age 62, to isolate myself, to keep younger people away from me, to have the supermarket deliver my food. For the few I let into my space, I insist they sanitize and wear face masks. We elderly are not being sent onto the battlefield. We are being told to isolate ourselves or else take a chance of being killed by Covid19.  

America should get back to work soon.

Right to Life

Poster circulating in leftist groups

     "How can people be so heartless

      How can people be so cruel?

      Easy to be hard.

      Easy to be cold."

               Three Dog Night, Lyrics: Easy to be Hard, 1969

Life is precious. The two parties have battle lines. A switch is underway.

Few posts in this blog created backlash and firestorm like the one by Bob Warren on March 10. 

He turns 93 in April, and he said that he recognized that people like him were old, vulnerable, and at this point mostly "dead weight." He enjoys his life and wants to continue it but said that he and other elderly people had their turn. Click: "It's time for us old people to get out of the way."

Critics of me and this blog used the words "callous, indefensible and most unmindful" and "un-analytical, selectively biased, misleading, truth opaque." The criticism came primarily from the political left: life is precious. Warren and I were disgusting ogres for even bringing up the subject.

Critics say that of course we shut down economic activity to slow the virus spread because it is the right thing to do to protect something priceless, the lives of Americans. Protecting life is the highest value.

Click: Washington Post reporter blasted

(A Washington Post reporter had the same experience as this blog, after talking to the parents of a man whose blunt tweet said that social distancing was sacrificing the young to protect the old. How dare he contact the tweeter, and worse, the parents--who frustrated the outrage by saying they agreed with their son.)

The response to the virus is partisan, and it is coming in surprising directions, given the context of the abortion issue. 

Republicans have been the party that says--on abortion--that "life is precious." A Republican litmus test requires a candidate in good GOP graces to say a fertilized egg is a human life, and abortion was murder. It's a matter of principle. Life must be respected and protected.

Meanwhile, almost all Democrats in good standing support a woman's right to decide for herself on whether to bring a conception to term. Democrats consider the woman's autonomy to be the precious thing to protect, not the potential life of the embrio. 

Marching for the unborn

Switch. In the context of the virus, Democrats are the ones talking about the preciousness of life, sounding just like Republicans on the abortion issue. Democrats argue for the primacy of compassion for the vulnerable. NY Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks of his elderly mother and says it is outrageous and offensive that people would risk the lives of people like her and rush to return to normal. 

(In an ironic twist and yet further complication, my interview subject, Bob Warren, comes from the political left, when he argues to stop spending huge resources to protect seniors. He isn't advocating for business, but rather for fairness. Each owe a duty to the whole community. People his age are gobbling more than their share of resources, thereby impoverishing the young and holding everyone back.) 

Republicans are following Trump's lead. Don't make the cure worse than the disease. Trump gave the virus a deadline, Easter. A meme circulates in conservative circles, shake hands to annoy a liberal. After all, the virus is a Democratic hoax and a blue state problem.

It is also partly the residue of Trump's early downplaying of the virus. Fox switched from scoffing at Democrats as worrywarts and hoax promoters, but the idea remains that it is in  Democrats' interest to damage Trump's economy by over-hyping the virus threat.
Republicans are coming to the economy's defense from regulation-loving, job-killing Democrats.

Cartoon circulating in left social media

The end result is a switch in the language one hears from political leaders of the two parties. Republicans are now the practical ones. "Life" is subject to a balance of values.

Meanwhile, Democrats are talking about life being precious.