The Invisible Enemy
Read an article about disinformation tactics in the Atlantic yesterday and fell asleep thinking about Trump's nightly rallies. Millions of captive, bored TV watchers, listening to him congratulate himself on his victory over the “Invisible Enemy” night after night between choruses of praise from his toadies. He can’t do much to influence reality, but he can sure shape people’s perceptions of it. He’s said that he wants us to forget all about this plague as fast as possible, and we know from the scant traces that the Spanish Influenza left on our collective consciousness that people can and do and will.I’d known about the Spanish Influenza as an episode of history, of course, and, a little bit as a piece of science, since I read Oliver Sacks’s AWAKENINGS thirty years ago. I was in the book business, so I remember all the trade books about pandemics that came out after the SARS scare in 2003—one of them inspired GW Bush to create the medical stockpile that the Trump administration neglected. But a couple of months ago, I was rereading a chapter of my book THE NEW HATE (an editor was putting together an encyclopedia of hate and was thinking of adapting it--a project that I bet is on permanent hold now) in which I recount an episode in 1918 where Henry Ford accuses an innocent Jewish army officer of murdering a fellow officer. The official story was that the victim was overcome by the flu while he was target shooting; the pistol went off when it fell from his hands. Suddenly, I realized that “the flu” was the Spanish Flu—and that the terror, confusion, and “blame the Jew” mentality were all familiar reactions to plagues. Even though I’d written about it, I’d done so without having any understanding or appreciation of that critical context. It was as if I was writing about the Kent State shooting without any knowledge of the Vietnam War. The “Invisible enemy” indeed.What will future book writers make of this hinge moment in our own history—when our corrupt, idiot president either became our Hitler or was swept away by the democratic reaction? People like William Bennet and Dr Phil and Dr Oz can go on TV from the shelter of their rich, celebrity lives and call the pandemic a hoax while tens of thousands of people are dying around them, bodies are being stacked up in NJ nursing homes, and an actual head of state has been in the ICU and some of their fellow celebrities have died from it—what will people think in 20, 50, 100 years? Or will we be living in a climate-altered world by then in which pandemics and superstorms are routine, and the balance of power and wealth in the world have long-since shifted to China and Americans no longer have any hope or great expectations for themselves? These are the things I wonder about as I lie awake at night.
