Churchillian, If You Squint

The president compares himself to Winston Churchill, which, sure, fine, whatever.

Common sense might tell you that for a leader in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, there is some middle ground between telling the nation “everything is fine” and jumping up and down “screaming ‘Death!' Death!’”

Other leaders have found it. Angela Merkel in Germany has found it, and been roundly praised for it.

Donald Trump could not find that middle ground with floodlights and a map. But being that his brain is made of soggy cardboard and Raid, he thinks his pandemic response has been Winston Churchill-esque.

This is not sarcasm. It has been his defense in the days since Bob Woodward revealed in his new book, “Rage,” that the president lied to the public about the lethality of the coronavirus, playing down the dangers of it, saying it was no worse than the flu, even as the disease spread across the country and killed almost 200,000 Americans (and counting).

To Trump, his behavior was reminiscent of Churchill during the Blitz in World War II:

When Hitler was bombing London, Churchill, a great leader, would oftentimes go to a roof in London and speak. And he always spoke with calmness. He said, ‘We have to show calmness.’

This is, to put it mildly, ahistorical horseshit. In reality, Churchill did not shy away from telling the British people that they were in a fight for their very survival as a nation against the Nazis, that the battle was going to be long and brutal and violent, that not everyone would make it through. At the same time, he called on the people to pull together, to not take their eyes off the goal of winning, “however long and hard the road may be.”

What Churchill did not do was play down the threat, as Trump has done with the coronavirus. He did not tell his people that the Luftwaffe was a hoax even as bombs were falling on London. He did not demand that 50,000 people pack themselves into stadiums to watch soccer while making a very inviting target for the enemy. He did not tell them that the Nazis would just go away on their own, so there was no need for precautions such as blackouts or bomb shelters.

In short, Churchill did not encourage the country to take actions that would make the problem demonstrably worse. Trump, however, has belittled and actively scorned even mild precautions against the virus, such as always wearing masks in public. This has signaled to his fans that they should feel free to not just ignore the public health experts and officials charged with managing the pandemic, but in some cases to threaten them to the point where more than a few in states around the country have resigned out of fear for their lives.

Consequently, the U.S. has been unable to corral the virus while other countries led by leaders and not a giant, walking id, are getting back to some semblance of normal.

This is Churchill-esque behavior only if, in some alternative history, Churchill had been a Nazi mole.

AND ANOTHER THING…

Today is the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, which means it is time for the country to pretend the crisis resulted in a shared vision of American unity and not a national nervous breakdown.

I have no wish to slam New York Times columnist Paul Krugman for his weird Friday morning tweet stating that “overall, Americans took 9/11 pretty calmly.” Rather, I thought I’d share a memory.

On 9/11, I was living in Los Angeles, just around the corner from the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and La Brea in the heart of Hollywood. One weekend afternoon, perhaps two or three weeks after the attacks, I was driving through that intersection on my way home from somewhere. Standing on the southeast corner was a man who looked like a stereotypical vision of a Vietnam vet turned peace activist that you might see in films from antiwar marches. He wore a camouflage jacket and pants. He was heavily bearded. He looked like an extra from “Born on the Fourth of July.”

The man held an American flag in one hand. In the other, he held a sign that read, “PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, IT’S TIME TO KICK ASS!” Every few seconds, a passing car would honk its horn in support.

There were other moments in the immediate aftermath of the attacks when I thought the country had lost its mind. There was the crowd that had gathered at that same intersection the Friday night after the attacks to wave signs and flags and chant “U-S-A” like they were at a pep rally before a big football game. There were the repeated evacuations of my office anytime someone in the building saw a pile of dust or powdered sugar and became convinced it was anthrax. (The building was being remodeled, so there was a lot of dust.) There was George W. Bush immediately declaring a “War on Terror,” as if terror was a physical object to be beaten, and not a state of existential fear that no amount of bombing countries thousands of miles away was likely to quell.

But the weirdo with the sign exhorting us all to “KICK ASS” is what stands out as the moment that really drove home for me just how far off the rails the country was going to go in its response, even as we returned to what Krugman referred to today as “normal life.” Nineteen years on, I think I was right.

YOUR BARTENDER’S GUIDE BY TRADER VIC NOVELTY COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK

I finally got around to this feature where I make one drink from this 1947 book of novelty cocktail recipes I found in my parents’ attic a couple of years ago, and options were limited because my booze closet is fairly unstocked, and I still had to cheat a bit.

The Jamaican Honey Bee:

2 oz. Jamaican rum
1 tbsp. of honey
1/2 oz. lemon juice

Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker with fine ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass.

So a couple of notes: I went to pull a lemon out of my fridge and found the two that I had were so old they had started to rot. So I used a lime instead. Also, I didn’t really have fine ice per se, but I did have the shards of broken cubes in the bottom of the freezer tray. And because I didn’t have as much time as I’d like to chill the cocktail glass, I threw in a single ice cube after I poured the drink.

For all of that, it was a decent drink. I used Gosling’s Black Rum, which is a nice one. At a minimum, it took the edge off the day, and since every day seems to have an edge, that was all I hoped for.

SHEARWATER SONG OF THE WEEK

Oh, I haven’t used this space for a song from their excellent 2012 album Animal Joy? Let me rectify that immediately.

Back next week, with bells on.