". . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." John Donne (1572-1631)
"Over the last week, the Democrats held the darkest and angriest and gloomiest convention in American history." President Donald Trump (August 21, 2020)
Today, August 22, we will officially pass 178,000 American deaths due to Covid-19. This number, in fact, is demonstrably low, as demographers and epidemiologists will establish after the pandemic. More than 1,000 Americans are dying every day from the virus. The most rosy projections predict 300,000 dead by December 1. The U.S. pandemic results have, thus far, been horrific.
Are there reasons for gloom? For anger? Can the president not understand that gloom and anger are reasonable responses? If not, what exactly would be rational reasons for gloom and anger? Ah, but I ask a rhetorical question, because as long as the stock market maintains, as long as one and two percenters thrive, the president can't acknowledge the propriety and even the necessity for anger and for gloom. If you are simply and truly deaf to the bells for 178,000 deaths, many avoidable, then indeed all is well within your world.
As the days pass, my questions about President Trump become more complex. I have never aspired to play psycho-historian or historical psychoanalyst or whatever the titles of those journals. Seems one small step above pure speculation. But questions must be asked.
Does Trump not understand that 178,000 people have actually died? And that these people had families and friends who mourn? Does he also not understand that we are on track to lose another thousand a day for the next three months?
What makes the president's quoted response even more curious is that his younger brother, Robert, died last week. How did that play into the president's criticism of gloom and darkness, if at all?
I suppose that there are two theories here. Either the president is playing cheerleader for the nation (again), and his brother's death has sensitized him, so he refuses to dwell (or even acknowledge) the country's cumulative loss and pain. Or conversely, the president is simply deaf to the tolling of any bell. He cannot process it, so he ignores it, deflects it, and assumes others share his anesthetized sensibilities. His niece's book, Too Much and Never Enough, describes his avoidance of his older brother's death. Does the president lack the ability to emotionally feel others' pain, to get inside "the other's" head, to empathize?
If a man cannot hear a single bell toll up close, then it should not be surprising if he remains unaffected when tens of thousands chime together from a distance. I make no judgements regarding the value of empathy or the public projection of empathy. That seems a subjective debate for people much more versed in politics and civics than me. As I've said previously, I have no problem attending a lecture by Count Dracula. The hair on the back of my neck rises, however, in those moments when I scan the lecture room and realize that most of the audience has bite marks in their necks.
A man without empathy leading the way doesn't, by itself, bother me. What chills me to my core is the realization that he's the champion of my compatriots in the room. And none of them hear the tolling of the bells.
Bob Dietz
August 22, 2020
