{"id":2861,"date":"2020-04-07T13:01:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T17:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=2861"},"modified":"2020-04-07T13:01:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T17:01:57","slug":"crisis-here-in-trump-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2020\/04\/07\/crisis-here-in-trump-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis Here in Trump Country"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Governor<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m listening to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his daily press conference.   He\u2019s personal, he\u2019s empathetic, and he is organized.  He is letting the people of New York, and now America, know what the status of his \u201chot spot\u201d state is.  He is telling us how many people are in the hospital, how many are on ventilators, how many are dying.  And most importantly, where his state is \u201con the curve\u201d, and what his citizens can do to make things better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t lose anybody because we couldn\u2019t provide care.  We lost people we couldn\u2019t save,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His words are deadly serious, and he is convincing.\u00a0\u00a0And though he is telling us dire news, more deaths, he is also leading New Yorkers, and really the nation, \u201c\u2026through this, together\u201d<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blue and Red<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

COVID-19 spreads fastest in the tightest environment.  It is no surprise then, that the densely packed region around New York City, and Seattle, and Los Angeles, and soon New Orleans and others, are the areas that are most impacted by the virus.  That it also happens that those are \u201cblue\u201d regions, Democratic areas; isn\u2019t really a surprise.   Is there an urban area in America that is \u201cTrump Country\u201d?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That last sentence just led me into a research reverie.  Name a city in America that is \u201cTrump Country\u201d?  I found it \u2013 you can\u2019t do \u201ccities,\u201d you have to do \u201cmetro-areas\u201d.  By metro area Birmingham, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Cincinnati and Nashville \u201cmetros\u201d are the top \u201cTrump\u201d vote getters in 2016. They range from 58% in Birmingham to 55% in Nashville. But that was the metro \u2013 the cities themselves (City Lab<\/a>) were Democratic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrump Country\u201d is by definition not the city.  \u201cTrump Country\u201d is the suburbs, and the long stretches of highway between urban centers in America.  You can see the Trump flags and MAGA signs along the interstates, and flapping in the small towns and villages of our nation.  One\u2019s across the street and down the road here in Pataskala.  They are not the \u201cfirst strike\u201d areas for the corona-virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once in a Lifetime<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

COVID-19 should not be a political issue.\u00a0\u00a0We have a nation in crisis, under a threat we haven\u2019t faced in three generations.\u00a0\u00a0It was back in 1918, when we were unsure of the mechanisms of infection and disease that we had the last world pandemic to deal with.\u00a0\u00a0It was the Spanish flu then, and 675,000 Americans died. The percentage was 675000 out of 106 million, or a little more than one half of one percent of the population.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s six out of one thousand.\u00a0\u00a0But it was near six times more than the number of Americans killed in World War I at the same time. It would be over two million dead today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we have only a vague collective memory of this kind of plague.  And it’s easy, sitting out in \u201cTrump Country\u201d, to think that it\u2019s someone else\u2019s problem.  Here in Licking County there are numbers too:  fifty-seven confirmed cases, nine hospitalized, two dead.  Small when compared to New York: easy to ignore, or worse, to blame.  Is the corona-virus crisis creating just one more \u201cBlue v Red\u201d division in our nation?  We now are finding that the current epidemic is impacting African-Americans at a greater rate than white Americans, is that just one more wedge prying us apart?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American Way<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not that here in Pataskala we aren\u2019t following \u201cthe rules\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0We are socially distanced, isolated from our neighbors and community.\u00a0\u00a0The street conversations now take place from either side, voiced across the stretch, rather than a huddle in the middle.\u00a0\u00a0The five in the morning traffic is way down, people working from home, or perhaps not working at all.\u00a0\u00a0And the kids, all pent up in their homes \u201cgoing to school\u201d in a way that seems an awful lot like ten tons of homework, are for the most doing their part.\u00a0\u00a0Not many \u201cgroups\u201d wandering, even the \u201cHuffy bike\u201d gang can\u2019t be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you wonder if the blue and red difference in the emergency might just wedge our national divide wider.  It would be easy for one side or the other to claim \u201crighteousness\u201d.  It might not even be from the campaigns, but maybe worse, just a social media trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s hope not.\u00a0\u00a0America is in one-time a lifetime crisis, hopefully the last of this kind.\u00a0\u00a0There will be enough blame to pass around once it\u2019s over, but for now, we should share in the suffering and pain of our fellow citizens.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the American thing to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Governor I\u2019m listening to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his daily press conference.   He\u2019s personal, he\u2019s empathetic, and he is organized.  He is letting the people of New York, and now America, know what the status of his \u201chot spot\u201d state is.  He is telling us how many people are in the hospital, how many are … Continue reading “Crisis Here in Trump Country”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCrisis Here in Trump Country : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Somehow the impact of the corona-virus seems to be Blue - not Red. 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