 |
| "Comedian talks to 'Past Self' about Covid-19" screenshot from here |
There’s a funny video about a woman early in the year
talking to her future self four months later, getting some surprising news
about what turns out to be important in 2020. Great fun! One of the things
about this crisis combined with social media is the opportunity to enjoy the
talents of individual Americans we’d probably never hear from otherwise.
Along those lines, you might want to tune in to SGN—that is,
Some Good News, a low-budget, homemade “news” program put together by John
Krasinski.
Good humor and looking for the positive are a good approach
to a crisis. We’re not wired to thrive in negativity.
I would so much like to be past this pandemic, so we could
turn our attention to other things—like we were doing last January, before all
the changes revealed by the future (current) self of that video.
One of the purposes here at the Spherical Model is to
educate about our Constitution. So let’s turn back to that today, while still using
this current situation, and cover the concept of federalism.
Federalism
Federal: relating to a type of organization that is
made by joining together separate organizations or states
State: a politically unified people occupying a
definite territory; a nation
When the thirteen original colonies
declared independence from England, they were a loosely joined group of
separate states (i.e., nations), a confederation. The
document joining them, the Articles of Confederation, was weak and imperfect.
That’s why, a few years later, representatives from these separate but
confederated states worked out a new Constitution, “in order to form a more
perfect union.”[i]
They did not give up being their own
sovereign states, but they united with the other states in a stronger union.
It’s important to remember that it was states joining together, and not merely
a few million unaffiliated individuals suddenly becoming a new single nation.
The nature of America is that it is the United States (nations) of America.
Over time, with inadequate history and
civics being taught, too many people think of the states as just provinces.
Province: any one of the large parts that some
countries are divided into
America didn’t divide itself into
provinces that it called states; states united together to form America. We’re
all Americans, but we’re also citizens of our respective states. You might
forget that in some states, but you don’t forget it here in Texas.
Federalism Applied to the Pandemic
Issues of federalism are coming up a lot here, in America,
during this pandemic. Some of the posturing between governors and the president
come from these questions : “Who pays?” And “Who bears the blame?” If a state
can make the federal government assume responsibility, then costs come out of
the federal budget rather than the state budget. And if a mistake is made—not enough
protection of the people, or putting small business out of businesses by
ordering them to close for a time—then the blame and responsibility for restitution
get laid at the feet of the federal government, rather than the respective state
governments.
But we’re set up to be a federal government—each level of
government handling all it can, and the next level up handling only what it
must. Ideally.
During a pandemic, the federal government should be expected
to handle border issues—people coming in and out of the country—with more
vigilance and care than during normal times. Shutting down air traffic from
China in late January is an example, followed not long after with flights from European countries that were having severe outbreaks.
The federal government can also provide information from
national resources, such as the CDC, which can be used by state and local
authorities, combined with their local data sources, to determine actions. The
federal government is stepping up to its line of authority by recommending shut-down
procedures. It does not, however, tell all states what they must do. A state
still has authority to follow those guidelines exactly or adjust according to its own
situation and needs.
And states have varied widely. Wyoming—with a lot of natural
social distancing, and very few cases—shouldn’t have the same rules placed on
their people as NYC, where more cases have happened than anywhere in the US. More cases
actually than most of the rest of the US combined. South Dakota has turned out
to be a good experiment of more openness in a less densely populated state.
Texas is huge, and a mix of rural and urban counties, so Governor Abbott is
giving a lot of autonomy to local areas on when and how to open back up.
So federalism is a good thing. As opposed to top-down,
one-size-fits-all arbitrary authoritarian rule.
Authoritarianism
An odd phenomenon has been happening. One of the complaints
about Donald Trump, since before his election, was that he was authoritarian. I
believed that myself. He often talks like an authoritarian. But his actions
have been federalist. He didn’t shut down the country. He didn’t order the
states to do exactly as the CDC recommended. He didn’t order them all to reopen.
He left the authority with state and local jurisdictions.
And while he’s been doing that, those who claim to fear his
authoritarianism have insisted that he has failed to protect America by not
being authoritarian enough.
Earlier today, Andrew Klavan illustrated this in his podcast.
He played a clip from an old 2004 Saturday Night Live skit, in with Donald Trump
participated. This was during the time when Trump was allowing his name to be
licensed to all kinds of products. In the skit, it’s to a thing called House of
Wings. With dancing chickens (people in costumes) around him, he plays it
straight.
 |
| Trump's 2004 "House of Wings" skit on SNL screenshot from here |
Here’s Donald Trump's part of the script:
Am I saying I’m a chicken wing expert? No, but I can tell you
this: the wing is hands down the best part of the chicken. Better than the
head. Better than the torso. Better than the back. And at Donald Trump’s House
of Wings you can get them with 5 different levels of hotness: regular, hot,
3-alarm, suicidal, and hell spawn. And, if you like celery, congratulations! It’s on the house.
He doesn’t take himself too seriously. And—this is the
point Klavan makes—he deadpans it.
That tells you absolutely everything about what Donald Trump
has been doing during these press briefings—specifically when he said, “I have
absolute authority to open everything up.”
And the governors all reacted: “What?
This is unconstitutional. We have power! We’ll sue. We have power.”
And so he
said, “OK. It’s up to the governors.”
“What? What do you mean?”
It was one of the great deeks (?) in human history. It was
absolutely terrific, and I’m going to be talking about this today. Trump has
preserved federalism during a crisis. He has done what I said he should do at
the very beginning, which is that he has let this crisis go to waste.
New word for the day: deeks. I have no idea how to spell it,
and I couldn’t find a definition. But from context, I imagine it means he
ensnared them in his game. Or it was an amazing feat.
Also, "letting this crisis go to waste" is Yuge, and I thank
Andrew Klavan for putting it that way.
 |
| Andrew Klavan, screenshot from his podcast |
Later Klavan says,
He has essentially done something that conservatives should
be cheering…. He has put the Democrats in the position of defending federalism.
He has put the press in the position of calling for him to become a tyrant
while he tells them about the Constitution. That is an amazing, amazing feat on
his side.
And it should tell us something about him, first of all,
that, not only has he got a good sense of humor and he’s been deadpanning the
press and just letting them make fools of themselves. But also that he is
committed to the country working the way the country is supposed to work.
I think my Congressman, Dan Crenshaw, gets it. He
understands that the federal government is not the nanny protector, and
certainly not God. He had an exchange with Bill Maher over the weekend—which almost
never goes well for conservatives, because Maher has an agenda he plans to put
out regardless of what is actually said. But Rep. Crenshaw did well.
 |
| Dan Crenshaw with Bill Maher screenshot from here |
Bill Maher said Trump didn’t act quickly enough, after one
advisor, Peter Navarro, suggested things were more serious than others were
saying. Dan Crenshaw points out, "Two days later he implemented a
restrictive travel ban from China which he was widely criticized for. And, you
know, that same day, on January 31st, Nancy Pelosi proposed the 'No Ban Act,'
which would be congressional limitation on what President Trump is actually
able to do with that travel restriction."
Maher countered that not all travel from China ceased. Dan answered
that American citizens and other passport holders were allowed to return (under
quarantine for 14 days) to the United States.
And I loved this:
If you're saying you wish that travel restriction had been
more extreme, okay, fine. You apparently had the foresight back then when
apparently no one else did. But the fact is that if Joe Biden was in charge at
that moment, he's already said he wouldn't have done it.... Nancy Pelosi
actually proposed legislation to stop it.
Local Decisions Can Be Different
We were only able to act on information we had at the time. Now
we have new information. Lately the information shows a couple of things: the
disease is more contagious than we had supposed, which means more people have
contracted it that previously thought. Simultaneously, new data shows an even higher percentage who are
asymptomatic or mild enough that they didn’t notice they had it. Most testing
has been done on those with severe enough symptoms to need medical assistance. That
means the data have yet to show us the percentage of deaths among those who
contract the disease—what we need to know for the best decisions.
The coronavirus still appears more likely to cause death
than a typical flu. However, it’s a lot less likely than originally thought—back
when the economy was shut down because of the danger.
The social distancing we’ve been doing was never designed to
eradicate the illness; it was designed to spread out the spread, to avoid
overwhelming resources. We’ve accomplished that. Yay! We’ve done it!
So, what is the rationale for continuing to keep all “non-essential”
businesses shuttered? Or why prevent people from practicing sensible social
distancing and hygiene as they go out? Why—as Michigan’s governor has ordered—prevent
people from driving from their primary home to their second home within the
state, typically a more rural cabin, which they own and haven’t touched since
their last visit, and in which they can continue social distancing? Or why
prevent people from driving in a car with another family member—whom they’ve
been isolated with already for a month? Is there some way the disease spreads
from inside one car to inside another car? Or from one person who clearly doesn’t
have it to another person who clearly doesn’t have it?
We need common sense. Leaders at every level ought to be
able to support their plans with data that applies to their situation. But if a
leader doesn’t use data or common sense, at least they can only affect those
within their jurisdiction, not all of us.
Because we’re a diverse country—urban, suburban, rural—we need
local decisions. And they shouldn’t the same in a dense city with a lot of mass
transit as in a rural area where people travel by car and are easily able to maintain
distance even in public.
Federalism is ideal for a country like ours. Let decisions
be local. And let them be different one from another.
No comments:
Post a Comment