Len Zwelling

In The New York Times Business section on January 2, Sarah Lyell writes a cogent piece about customer fury and meanness. Apparently, the country is at a boiling point and the place where the heat can be best measured is the intersection of service providers and the public.

In the many instances Lyell relates of rage in the supermarket, in the pharmacy or on an airplane, most of the recipients of the ire have become aware that what this is about is not what this is about. People are Covid exhausted, supply chain weary and masked out.

In the recent HBO series Landscapers, one of the two protagonists accused of killing her parents is repeatedly described as “fragile.” And, she, played by Olivia Coleman, is. You’ll have to watch the four-episode mini-series if you wish to find out how she is fragile and why that matters.

Today, the United States is fragile—in a position to be broken. Why?

According to Peggy Noonan in the above op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on December 18, the new Steven Spielberg film version of West Side Story cleared $10.5 million at the box office during its opening weekend. This must be a grave disappointment to Spielberg’s studio and to those who invested in his new vision of an American classic especially as it received uniformly great reviews.

Spider-Man: No Way Home cleared $253 million on its opening weekend. This is a record for pandemic movie theater openings.

What do these two facts say about the future of American cinema? In my opinion, everything.

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 has been with us now for over two years. It is likely that it will be with us forever. The Flu Pandemic of 1918 ended, but flu was not gone after the pandemic subsided. It became an endemic disease that we face every winter and for which we try to immunize ourselves if we are smart. Even so, many people get flu every year and many die of it although this is mostly the elderly and infirm.

It is likely that Covid-19 will become like the flu.

The country is suffering. The airlines are melting down before our eyes as they cannot keep staff on the job due to outages from Covid infections. Pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and desk staff are all calling in sick. The lines to get tested are long IF you can actually get an appointment to get tested. I had one with my doctor’s office. It was canceled the night before because they did not have personnel to administer the tests and 20% of the clinic staff was out on sick leave. What will happen in the schools after winter break is unclear, but several major universities are returning to distance learning which is second class learning at best. The one thing parents have learned from the pandemic is that home schooling is no substitute for the classroom. To be honest, the virus has brought us to our knees in a fashion that no terrorist attack ever could have. We are a shadow of our former selves. We have become a nation of wounded sheep waiting illness, lining up for a test, helpless before a flight board in any airport in the country.

It is now clear that President Biden’s proposed social omnibus spending bill that passed the House along partisan lines is unlikely to be passed by the Senate even using the rules of reconciliation requiring just 50 votes. That’s because West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is not going to vote for the bill. He informed a Fox News audience of this.

In the above opinion piece from The New York Times on December 21 Nobel laureate Paul Krugman bemoans the fact that the Build Back Better Bill is likely to go down because as he says its non-passage would:

“Condemn millions of American children to poor health and low earnings in adulthood—because that’s what growing up in poverty does.”

“Condemn millions more to inadequate medical care and financial ruin if they got ill, because that’s what happens when people lack adequate health insurance.”

“Condemn hundreds of thousands…to unnecessary illness and premature death from air pollution.”

He’s right, but that’s not my point today.

I took a trip to the northeast on December 11. It was my younger sister’s 70th birthday and her husband was having a surprise party for her. I couldn’t miss that even if it meant traveling to Pittsburgh as winter approached.

As soon as I walked out the door of the air terminal toward the car rental area I remembered. I remembered the northeast in winter. The sun hangs low and the sky is grey. Of course, it was cold, but the natives thought the wind-blown forties was actually mild for this time of year. They were right. The following morning it was 32 and there were patches of ice by the side of the road, even though the sky was a painted Carolina blue. Of course, on so many levels, I froze.

These have become the four worst words in the English language.

You make a telephone call hoping for service from a real human being, preferably one not sitting in a call center in Mumbai. Instead, you have to go through a series of menus, pressing various keys on your cell phone and finally being placed on a one-hour hold, BUT, “if you would prefer not to wait, you can get excellent service and answers to all of your questions by going to our website” says the recorded message. Personally, I have had enough of this nonsense.

At least two blog readers have taken me to task about my piece on December 15 called “A Nation Divided.” In that blog post I discuss the various factions within the Democratic and Republican Parties and how they are at war with one another. The two critics pointed to a group I neglected. They both called it the Silent Majority, a term that harkens back to 1968 and the Nixon campaign for President during the turbulent years of the protests against the Vietnam War and for civil rights. Then, Nixon’s claim was that there was a huge swath of Americans who were middle of the road conservatives who were not protesting anything and thus were being ignored. He appealed to these people who he called the Silent Majority and he won. Twice.

One of the issues being batted around in the blogosphere and elsewhere is what was the truth about World War II and the American involvement therein. Books like Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation and TV shows like Band of Brothers and movies like Saving Private Ryan glorify and emphasize the righteousness of the American cause and how that patriotism was embodied in the everyday foot soldier of WW II. More revisionist historians paint a far uglier picture of a horrible war and the real sentiment of the American GI to get it over with and get home. The latter must be somewhat true given the deep reluctance Americans had about entering the European war that had begun two years before until Pearl Harbor. Then we were all in.