THE COVID PANDEMIC AND THE RACE-HATE PHARMAKON

Liberals have attempted to paint the events of the past two weeks as a vindication of their emancipation ethic. However, said events have several differences from the entirely rational quest for the civil rights of colored persons in the 1950s and 1960s. The death of George Floyd on May 25 was more akin to the sowing of a dangerous and unpredictable wind, resulting in the reaping of an even greater whirlwind (Hosea 8:7, if your’re curious). As I listened to funeral eulogies attempting to confer positive political meaning upon the death of Floyd by such luminaries as Al Sharpton and Shelia Jackson Lee, I had no sense that any of the speakers had examined either the political or philosophical aspects of emancipation as thoroughly as did Martin Luther King. George Floyd was just more grist for their political mills, and their message was, as it has been with so many modern progressives, “give us what we want or there will be trouble.”

The specific injustice of George Floyd’s death need not be questioned, even were it demonstrable that Floyd in some way provoked or assaulted the arresting officers. There is reason, though, to question whether or not Floyd’s murder was racially motivated. Though the specific cop guilty of Floyd’s murder was white, his three accomplices break down as white, black, and Asian. As hard as Kamala Harris may try, she can’t quite make this incident equivalent to an entirely racially motivated killing, as with the example of Emmett Till. Indeed, the base image caught by the phone of a Minneapolis resident—that of a white cop forcefully kneeling on the neck of a black man—has such visceral appeal that it transcends the racial divide. For blacks, the image may well connote “what all whites would really like to do to all blacks.” However, no matter how often pea-brained pundits claim that whites never get killed in police incidents, many if not all whites are likely to imagine themselves being similarly victimized by the police.

But the Floyd image, horrific as it is, may not be the main source of the current social upheaval. On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a young med-tech resident of Louisville, Kentucky, was shot by police who invaded, without warning, the apartment she shared with her boyfriend. Taylor was far more of a model citizen than Floyd, who had served five years in prison for robbery with a deadly weapon. Yet while the litigation arising from her death continues, Taylor’s tragic death did not galvanize both blacks and whites across the U.S., to say nothing of having impact upon foreign countries.

The most immediate difference is that no image was captured of Taylor’s suffering, while every moment of Floyd’s final struggles for life was committed to video. Chauvin’s actions, whatever their intent, bring to life the memorable phrase Orwell puts in the mouths of his tyrants: “a boot stomping on a human face, forever.”

Yet I think a more pertinent difference is the timing of Floyd’s death with respect to the tensions of the Covid pandemic.

By the power of strange coincidence, the date of Breonna Taylor’s death is the same day President Trump declared a national emergency. Throughout the remainder of March and all of April, the majority of American states locked down to some extent, as did the majority of countries afflicted with Covid. The lockdown, whatever its merits in terms of curbing the spread of the highly infectious disease, wrought almost unprecedented havoc upon the American economy. The psychological devastation stemming from the rigors of lockdown may have been even greater, though, requiring huge adjustments in customary behavior to counteract the disease.

Both Left and Right were not slow to politicize the disease. Joe Biden accused Trump of racism when the president shut down borders. Later, when some states failed to follow Trump’s advice on re-opening, the president’s intemperate rants did little to calm troubled waters.

The notion that Covid victims of color were more adversely affected than whites seems to have gained ground in early April. On April 10, Surgeon General Jerome Adams responded to the assertion by stressing that Covid had its most deleterious effects upon victims with pre-existing conditions, and urged the communities of colored persons to take better care of themselves. This did not sit well with liberals who wanted to blame systemic racism. To my knowledge no one ever produced a study proving that poor whites were being given better health care than poor persons of color, which might have given the lie to the political mendacity. Instead, Trump’s regime found it expedient to sideline Adams as a spokesperson, which unfortunately allowed the Far Left to claim their political assertion to be proven fact.

May was marked by tremendous conflicts regarding the termination of the lockdown. Some states re-opened with relatively little trauma, but others prolonged the safety measures, sometimes with commandments as irrational as those of a Roman emperor, as with Michigan governor Kathryn Witmer’s injunction against people planting gardens. The prolongation may or may not have slowed the pandemic, but it certainly inculcated a variety of reactions about the nature of authority. For once, the liberals were championing the authority of the states regarding the lockdown—a marked change from earlier attitudes toward issues like slavery and abortion.

Nevertheless, by May 23 most of the country had re-opened to some degree. But for many, the pandemic was like a curse upon the land after the fashion of old Greek plays. On the conscious level, everyone knew that there could be no reason; it was all just the rampage of a nasty little virus; something beyond human control.

But when there arose a new spectre of white-on-black race-hatred—that was something that the society could seek to control. To be sure, though, the “control” was less a rational act than a ritual of expiation. The ancient Greeks used such rituals in festivals like the Thargelia, wherein the authorities would sacrifice one or more citizens to the gods. The sacrifice was termed a ^pharmakon,* a cure designed to cast out the evil infecting their society.

Liberals have been attacking the systemic racism of police departments for many years, and unfortunately, policemen have committed enough acts to give the Left fodder for the fire—even if some events, like that of Ferguson, generated more heat than light. But none of the earlier attacks or the fulminations about them led to widespread calls to “defund the police.”

I’m not particularly worried that any major city will make any major changes. The people on top know that they need cops to defend them against the sort of yahoos who rioted all week following Floyd’s death. All the dutiful admissions of systemic racism are no more than the usual virtue signaling, designed, like the shield of the aegis, to ward off the spears and arrows of outraged pundits. Some specific good works may proceed from this tsunami of aggrieved sentiments, but again, there are no Doctor Kings here, attempting to foster a new understanding between the haves and the have-nots. There are merely people who claim to be have-nots, attempting to get more slices of the pie for themselves. The of of the have-nots will not be appreciably improved, and the racial divide will be ruthlessly exploited throughout the coming presidential election.

In other words, a second wave of Covid will be the least of our problems.