Dignity Is Making a Comeback

2/22/2021

Watching Biden

The President of the United States leaned forward, to speak to a nation, maybe even a world.
This much he knew, he said. We will get through this.
He was speaking at the White House Monday to honor 500,000 Americans who have died, so far, in the pandemic.

He was speaking like a parent, like a leader, like a healer.

“I know it’s hard, I promise you. I know it’s hard, I remember,” Biden said. “That’s how you heal, you have to remember. It is also important to do that as a nation. To all those who have lost loved ones, this is what I know: They’re never truly gone. They will always be part of your heart.”

Everybody knows about his losses – a first wife and a young daughter, a grown son.
And he seemed to know about their losses, all half a million.

“This seems unbelievable, but I promise you, the day will come, when the memory of the loved one you lost will bring a smile to your lips before a tear to your eyes…I pray for you that day will come sooner rather than later.”

This reassurance was unlike anything the United States, the entire world, had heard from a President in the previous four years. No need to elaborate or explain -- just that he cared.

During this speech, I had a flashback, to my earliest memories, when my parents and grandmother would turn off the lights and put up dark shades over the windows, in case of a bombing raid. And when my family was reassured by the same crackling voice on the radio that had sustained people during the Depression.

Thinking of FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it like the patrician he was. Joe Biden is a man of the working people. But nobody has quite aimed for the heart of the collective "we" as FDR did.
My mother cried the day FDR died in 1945. She had lost her father to an auto accident as she entered her teens. FDR came along a few years later.

Now Joe Biden is trying his imperfect best to be a leader to this fractured country. He says there are no Republicans, no Democrats, in this fight against the Covid virus.

Biden has been taking on stature since Rep. Jim Clyburn rescued him from the snowbanks of Iowa and New Hampshire, and presented him to the hearts of Black voters, not just in South Carolina but all over. This was more than a political move; it was a move of faith.

Now Biden speaks to everybody who will listen, not about him, but about them. He is elderly, and he speaks as an elder.
"You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay."

After presiding over a moment of silence in front of thousands of lit candles, outside the White House, Biden returned past the military guards, into his new home.
His shoulders seemed to be sagging from the pain of all those deaths, but Jill Biden would occasionally touch him, so tactile, so caring. And through the window the TV camera picked up Doug Emhoff, the big-time lawyer and husband of Vice President Harris, putting his hand on Joe Biden’s right shoulder, patting him, several times, reassuring the healer.
* * *
And speaking of dignity, Merrick Garland was interviewed by the Senate Monday, regarding his nomination for Attorney General. This is the man who was shafted – as was the entire nation – by Mitch McConnell in the final year of the Obama regime, keeping Garland from the Supreme Court.
Now Garland was speaking of the values he would bring to the Attorney General. Without mentioning the servile Bill Barr, the previous attorney general, Garland emphasized that he would be serving the country, not the President. He is clearly a man of intellect and character.

We have real people, people who feel. All of us are being liberated.
* * *
(President Biden's speech. The most wonderful part is around 6;00.)

Chris Vecsey

2/23/2021 12:23:28 am

In 1967 Robert N. Bellah published his now famous article, "Civil Religion in America. He began: "While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith, and others that church and synagogue celebrate only the generalized religion of 'the American Way of Life,' few have realized that there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America. This article argues not only that there is such a thing, but also that this religion-or perhaps better, this religious dimension-has its own seriousness and integrity and requires the same care in understanding that any other religion does."

In a later introduction to the essay written in 1991, Bellah explained further, "I conceive of the central tradition of the American civil religion not as a form of national self-worship but as the subordination of the nation to ethical principles that transcend it in terms of which it should be judged."

We are seeing our president pronounce the principles of an American civil religion according to its highest standards. May his years be long with us.
My thanks for your words,
Chris

Randolph

2/23/2021 07:48:49 am

George and Chris,
I would like to thank each of you for your thoughtful comments about civility and liberation. Qualities that are greatly needed in this big old goofy world.
Chris’s comments about “civil religion” reminded me of a liberating moment I once experienced.
Back about 10 years ago, I was able to attend a talk given by the Dalai Lama.
A key point of his talk was that our primary obligation in living was to take care of other humans. He noted with great emphasis, that religion was secondary. Our primary obligation is to humans; yes all humans.
It seems that the Dalai Lama and Chris are on the same wavelength. Humans : Yes a civil religion.
Thanks again,
RF

It’s nice to see the Vecsey family out and about.

George Vecsey

2/23/2021 08:41:26 am

Chris, the youngest of we five, is Harry Emerson Fosdick Professor of the Humanities and Native American Studies in the Department of Religion at Colgate University. Currently working on his next book. Keep typing, young feller. GV

Andrew L. Tansey

2/23/2021 10:21:10 pm

Wow! Words cannot do this justice. "the subordination of the nation to ethical principles that transcend it in terms of which it should be judged." Principles such as truth? I learned about the hierarchy of values development there in Olin Hall as a psych ("gut") major. Presented with the choice between party loyalty and such principles, I hope the new regime will continue to represent a further shift from the former in this regard. Thank you both for your inspiring wisdom.
- Andy '81

George

2/24/2021 10:14:36 am

Andy: You went to Colgate? And you didn't take a course with my brother Chris? I do run into his former students here and there -- one, a very idealistic lawyer, now a magistrate in NYC; another, a writer who helped on a prominent book. Then there is a guy in the media I know who had Chris at a previous college. I would always greet the guy by shouting: "You owe a paper to my brother!" He was always working on it...a few decades later. I'm sure you don't. Good to hear from you. GV

Andy Tansey

2/24/2021 09:34:18 pm

Yes, I attended Colgate, but no, I did not study with Chris.

George Vecsey

2/23/2021 08:46:21 am

I am thinking of Mr Khizr Khan, father of a soldier who died in Iraq, carrying a copy of the US Constitution and citing it to the office temp who was President at the time. GV

Altenir Silva

2/24/2021 10:06:12 am

Dear George,
President Joe Biden is an inspiration and a light that will shine hope on America and all the World.
Be well/Altenir

bruce

2/24/2021 10:18:04 am

george,

good thoughtful piece.....

civil religion is more preferable to what too many of what the born again trump zealots practice.

i would dare say that biden is more manly than whatshisname.

surprised at your mention of 'we five'....i had no idea the vesceys were responsible for 'you were on my mind' that #1 hit in the '60s.

you continue to surprise me.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Dignity Is Making a Comeback

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