2020 "NORMALCY!"

By Edwin Cooney

Exactly one hundred years ago, an articulate and handsome Republican United States Senator from Ohio, Warren Gamaliel Harding, ran for president promising to lead a war weary nation back to what he called "normalcy." Former President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, who promised to keep us out of war during his 1916 re-election campaign, regretfully found it necessary to ask the Congress for a declaration of war just 29 days following his second inauguration on March 4th, 1917. It was estimated that 116,000 plus Americans lost their lives in that war to "make the world safe for democracy" and "the war to end all wars." What with the economic social unrest Americans experienced including the "Spanish flu,” times were simply not normal. Hence, it was time to return to candidate Harding's "normalcy!"

Now it is 2020, another presidential election year, and this time, thanks to a coronavirus which originated in "Communist China" (to many Americans a nation as foreign as any nation could possibly be), the siren call to return to "normalcy" wails with an urgency unknown to the most politicly astute and optimistic GOP leaders of the Roaring Twenties. Now, forty-one days have passed since President Trump and many state governors (led by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo) have closed both public and private places of learning and business and the bottom has — at least temporarily — dropped out of the president's version of prosperity. The question, therefore, is how soon should we throw away our fears and "reopen society" to the workplace and, of course, the marketplace. Every side of a really hot topic consists of legitimate elements. However, the prevailing side of any hot topic reflects the very heart of the matter at issue. As of this writing, seventy percent of Americans fear more for their safety than they fear for their prosperity.

Recently, I received a message from a reader I'll call “Becky” who, noticing a large gathering in a neighborhood yard, called the police. Subsequently, Becky proceeded to tell some online companions of her deed. One member of the group not only expressed her outrage at what Becky had done, but her level of outrage was downright vitriolic. Thus, while Becky understands and even sympathizes with "Madam Angry’s" outrage (my designation, not Becky’s), she finds the level of this individual's outrage stunning.

I've written to Becky congratulating her for her daring courage. To me, she's an amazing lady, thoughtful, conscientious and, as I see it, patriotic! 

Almost but not quite too many years ago to possibly imagine, when I was in the third grade, my teacher Mrs. Peruzzin labeled me "the little darer" because all you had to do was "dare me" and your wish was my command. Of course, to dare for the sake of daring is exceedingly juvenile and I grew out of it. However, the history of humankind  amply demonstrates that knowledge is to a high degree dependent on the willingness of intelligent and creative people to "dare to do." All vibrant societies are bedecked with third graders like little me who dare to dare. Societies possess brave soldiers, police and fire people, inventors, fliers, questioners, and challengers. They have crossed oceans to build free societies, populated two continents, dared to win and lose wars.  They save, they heal and they even prevent. They've even been to the moon. However, although most of them can't imagine it, they can occasionally endanger others unintentionally.

Becky's call to the police wasn't a call to arrest or place any person's freedom or reputation at risk. It was a community's call for caution. People often call the police to quell loud parties or to report someone's car blocking a driveway. Unfortunately, history is full of instances of panic during uncertain times.

Just as those who lived in 1920, almost all of us in 2020 are more than anxious to get back to normalcy. America resisted the new responsibility that our participation in both war and peacemaking thrust upon it. Thus, in 1920, normalcy prevailed, but the scourge of war, which was the "normal" way to settle international disputes, returned in 1939. It cost upward of sixty million people worldwide their freedom, then their safety, and finally their lives. By resisting that new responsibility and returning to "normalcy," we failed to take the advice of one of history's greatest historians, Edward Gibbon, the author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” who suggested that he who asks for freedom from responsibility is not free!

Becky has no monopoly on courage, conscientiousness, or patriotism nor does she claim to. Since it's unlikely that she (as is the case with me) has only read observations by and quotes from Gibbon, she probably until this very day only instinctively knows the truth of Gibbon's wisdom. However, she's demonstrated to this observer a degree of courage, temperament, and intellect that more and more of us ought to emulate! She gets it that a twenty-first century return to “normalcy” may well be as deadly as it was a century ago!

As for that little darer of long, long ago, these days he mostly presumes!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY