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When the Levee Breaks
It sure feels like the momentum for reopening schools to in-person instruction has increased in recent weeks. The New York Times ran a story about very few kids in its open public schools have contracted Covid, even suggesting that the results “could serve as an influential model for the nation” for reopening schools. The Oregonian ran an op-ed by a Bend pediatrician pointing out that keeping schools closed is doing far more harm than good to kids, and urging Governor Brown rewrite the metrics to make it easier for schools to reopen. It’s no longer just cranky Republican newsletter writers who are pushing to reopen schools. People with credibility on the left are saying it publicly too.
The pressure is building, and the timing is good for the State of Oregon to shed its title as one of the states, if not THE state, where it’s hardest to open schools. Governor Brown said a couple weeks ago that she would revisit the metrics, and implied that at least some loosening and thus more opening, may be in store. With recent studies, including the Brown University study I’ve beaten like a dead horse here in previous weeks, and the New York Times coverage, among others, Brown now has a face-saving route to re-open schools – she can say she was cautious about in-person instruction but now the science (SCIENCE!) supports more re-opening. There’s nothing like an easy out to fast-track policy change.
It feels, as Robert Plant might say, like the levee’s gonna break. Finally.
(And while I’m on it, dear reader, if you have seven minutes and eight seconds of audio availability, indulge in one of the finest cultural offerings the West has ever produced.)
Good news on Covid
I like to write about good Covid news because I like good news and because the media focus tends to be on the bad news, of which there has been plenty. If you’re hospitalized today due to Covid, you are 70% less likely to die from it than you’d have been if you were in that situation at the beginning of the pandemic. The study controlled for age, so the results are not based on the fact that younger people are getting Covid now more often than older people, which was not the case early on. Most of the improvement is due to better treatment approaches once people are in the hospital.
Covid-19 didn’t even exist until the end of 2019 (hence the name). Very few people in the U.S. even knew it existed until early January. The first confirmed case in the U.S. was announced on January 20, 2020. In the intervening nine months between then and now, doctors have figured out how to save the lives of countless, countless people that would have been lost in the Spring
Historically speaking, the rapidity of this advancement is remarkable. During the 1918 flu outbreak, for example, doctors, to the degree patients had access to doctors, were unable to treat the underlying flu and even follow-on infections like pneumonia. Antibiotics wouldn’t be invented for another 10 years.
We are truly fortunate to live in a time when technological advancements, perhaps especially communications technology, allow medical providers to share information at lightning speed and improve treatment practices for so many so quickly. As we grapple with the sometimes unpleasant political and social implications of nearly everyone’s ability to communicate instantly with nearly everyone else, it’s important, I think, to highlight the lifesaving effects of technological advancements, and of our highly trained and capable medical professionals.
Portland on the Deschutes?
I used to sometimes describe Bend, Oregon to people as largely apolitical. People here have, for as long as I’ve been around, been highly engaged in the community, but the public engagement in politics was more muted. In 2010, when I was on the City Council, there was a Tea Party protest downtown, and it was the first protest I remember seeing in Bend. Then in 2011 an Occupy Wall Street-ish group occupied a city-owned vacant lot located, yes, on Wall Street. Following the death of George Floyd, there were protests in Bend as there were in many other cities. All of this went down without any violence to speak of.
Then Saturday, October 3 happened. A group of Trump supporters planned a rally and an group opposed to Trump called the Central Oregon Peacekeepers announced plans for a counter-protest which they called a picnic. There are competing versions of who chose to appear at the same location of the other, and frankly I don’t particularly care, but both sides ended up at a park near Pilot Butte. That park is well-known to many Bendites – it’s where you start if you’re “walking the butte,” as we do ’round these parts. There’s a playground and a grass area. We’ve taken our boys there many times.
What happened next is familiar to anyone who’s followed the political violence in Portland. Someone stole a Trump flag. Someone demanded return of the Trump flag. Someone sprayed mace. Someone drew a gun. Thank God no one was shot or otherwise seriously injured in the incident, but it was, to me anyway, shocking. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in Bend. People move to Bend to get away from this kind of thing. On a sunny, warm Saturday, there would have been kids at that park.
The police investigated the incident recommended charges including riot, disorderly conduct, and illegal use of mace and a stun gun against 15 as-yet unnamed people. The Central Oregon Peacekeepers apparently believe that one or more of its members is facing potential charges, as they encouraged supporters to call in to last night’s Bend City Council meeting to, among other things, demand the City Council fire Mike Krantz, the police chief who has been on the job for less than four months. The Council didn’t take them up on their offer. Final charging decisions related to the Pilot Butte incident will be made by Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel.
A lot of the discussion in the wake of this mess is who should be blamed for the violence. The Trump people blame the Peacekeepers who blame the Trump people. That debate misses the main point: that both sides chose to engage in political confrontation that led to political violence. They chose to go to, or at least remain, at a place they knew was occupied by folks on the other side. It’s reasonable to surmise at least some among both groups sought out the confrontation.
This is madness, and it’s going to get someone hurt or killed. I’ve worked in and around politics for a long time, and I assure you that no presidential election, or any election in this country, is worth getting hurt or killed or going to jail over. There is no excuse for this. Bend needs to take a stand against political violence and condemn it regardless of which “side” we’re on. The Bend police did the right thing in recommending charges, and the DA should file charges against those who broke the law and vigorously prosecute them, regardless of any given defendant’s position on who should fill the role of chief executive for the next four years. We can’t allow our city to become a literal political battleground – Portland on the Deschutes.
The deification of the presidency
Relatedly, longtime readers will know that I’m really worried about the outsized importance of the presidency in modern American politics and culture. I think the intense focus on the presidency is both a key instigator of the new brand of political violence in Bend, Portland and elsewhere, and is also futile, because the presidency remains, for now, at least somewhat constrained by our constitutional structures of separation of powers and federalism.
Kevin Williamson, who is a conservative but no fan of Donald Trump, wrote a really good piece earlier this week about the deification of the presidency. Williamson’s focus is on the Biblical warnings against idolotry, and how we’ve turned our presidential candidates into idols, much like the Old Testament Jews did with objects. If religion isn’t your thing, it’s still worth a read, as one need not believe in God to believe that humans have an innate desire to idolize people or things that are harmful to them. Here’s a sample:
“[W]e believe that the country cannot be put right if the wrong man is president — and about 40 percent of the country, maybe more, is going to believe that the wrong man is president at any given time. Worshipers of this or that tribal totem feel themselves to be excluded, degraded, and humiliated if the highest elected office in the land is held by a member of the rival clan. The sacral king is the vessel in which the tribe as a whole worships itself — and America is no longer one tribe but two.”
In the coming weeks, as tribalism reaches a fever pitch in advance of and possibly following the election, my hope is that Americans will remember that there is much more at stake than which tribal totem occupies the White House. What is at stake is the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of humankind, a system that has, directly or indirectly and, yes, imperfectly, freed and made prosperous billions of people of all races, ethnicities and religions. We have our different opinions about who is best situated to retain and improve that system, and there’s nothing wrong with holding those positions strongly, but tribal violence and antipathy presents by far the greater threat to our system and us than the outcome of the election.
Correction
In rereading last week’s OR, I realize that in the process of trying to make a joke I mistakenly suggested my wife had lobbied her friends to support Thursday. She didn’t do that, and I don’t want to sully the transition from Friday to Thursday with fake news, as it were.
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Have a great weekend!
Jeff Eager
jeff@oregonroundup.com
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