Sighting a Familiar Face of America

11/17/2013

Americans Off the Coast of the Philippines

The pose looked familiar – Americans unloading water from an aircraft carrier to the stricken islands of the Philippines.

It brought me back to the United States of my early childhood, toward the end of World War Two: not so much the fighting, but the recovery. When I was five, this was one face of America – G.I. Joe passing out chewing gum to the children of Normandy. Later we saw photos of Americans liberating concentration camps.

Perhaps it was a simplistic image, maybe even manipulated, but it was what we thought of the country, of ourselves.

The Marshall Plan, the GI Bill, the post-war hopefulness, only reinforced that image. We took care of others; we took care of our own.

The news that the United States was dispatching the carrier George Washington to the east coast of the Philippines struck a familiar chord. Better than chewing gum – tons of water and medical supplies, delivered by helicopter to Leyte and Samar.

It reminded me that when the nihilists struck on 9/11, I got emails from friends in Japan and Mexico and France, asking, “Are you all right?” We were all in it together.

I am reminded of that when I hear an American president remind us what soldiers know. You take care of your own. The current president comes from that American heritage when he talks about the need for a more national health care.

Even with the technical glitches – SNAFU, they called it during the war – the goal is to keep all of us away from the emergency room, to address hunger and illness in the early stages, while there is still time.

The American president reminds me of G.I. Joe.

The people who sabotage him do not.

Normandy, 1944. Courtesy of: www.wwiiarchivesfoundation.net. Please support.

Altenir Silva

11/17/2013 10:48:46 am

Dear George,
The world needs more and more of these heroes. America was built with the ideals of the Enlightenment, which was banned in Europe. I love my country and I love your country.
Have a nice week!
Best - Altenir Silva (from Brazil)

ColoComment

11/17/2013 10:51:04 am

"I am reminded of that when I hear an American president remind us what soldiers know. You take care of your own."

Yeah, he did such a good job taking care of the Benghazi four. And Brian Terry. And the millions of individuals who are presently losing health insurance policies THAT THEY LIKE, and the millions who will lose theirs when the employer mandate is implemented.

'Way to go, Barry.

Peterk

11/17/2013 10:54:12 am

"The people who sabotage him do not." ain't no one sabotage him, but hisself. The Democrats and the President own this mess, can't blame it on the Rs because not a one voted for it.

'The American president reminds me of G.I. Joe. " usually people will put this emoticon behind statements like this one ;-)
you dishonor all the GI Joes by comparing the President to them

Dave Hilsheimer

11/17/2013 01:49:02 pm

Why is it that we have transformed from the "greatest" generation to the "gimme" generation?

Ed Martin

11/17/2013 03:05:02 pm

George, I am privileged to read your thoughts. There are a special breed of haters who comment on public policy and those of us who delve in it, know them all too well. Vinnie from Brooklyn is a saint by comparison. A voux sante.

CG-23 Sailor

11/17/2013 04:30:32 pm

You take a shining example of American can-do... the relief aid to the Philippines by our military, and you use it as a club to support a very Anti-American president and his socialist American - ruining policies like Obama care.

GI Joes throughout all our National Cemeteries are rolling in their graves at your comparing him to them. By far the vast majority of Veterans past and present are very Non-Liberal.

How dare you sir.

George Vecsey

11/18/2013 12:37:50 am

Dear CG-23 Sailor: When did taking care of others become a bad word like socialism? In a complicated world, something like a national health plan would seem to qualify as sharing and caring for brothers and sisters.
Having said that, I thank you for finding my little site and for giving your opinion. Regards, GV

ColoComment

11/18/2013 05:35:37 am

"...become a bad word like socialism?"
In brief? When it's compelled, coerced, by government fiat.

It used to be (and it worked very well, as de Tocqueville noted) that communities, churches, and voluntary charitable organizations and associations took care of the needy in their locations. They personally knew who fell on hard times, became ill, or were experiencing difficult circumstances, and quietly provided appropriate assistance, in cash or in kind.
No program, no matter how well-intentioned, administered by a power- and influence-loving civilian bureaucracy in Washington can lend assistance (or manage a health care/health insurance program for 300 million diverse & differently-situated Americans), as efficiently and as targeted as can local organizations or institutions.

I deliberately, however, exclude an action like the Marines delivering assistance to the Philippines, because our global U.S. military forces are usually the most efficient forward-provider of emergency assistance. Anywhere. Anytime.

George Vecsey

11/18/2013 05:41:38 am

With all due respect, "it used to be" implies a very long time ago, before corporations ran health care and food delivery and many other parts of life. I'm not advocating quote-socialism-unquote. But communal action takes different form. I would submit that general access to health care is one of them -- with everybody who can paying something. On this very day, (I am in the middle of Old Person Medicare-Drug Company-Doctor-Hospital Bureaucracy Hell) I find the govt more efficient and transparent than the drug companies. I'd hate to be poor, or underskilled. But worse, I would hate to rely on the potential charity of strangers.
GV

tom charles

11/18/2013 02:12:09 pm

Hi George

I knew I agreed with you on a favorite sport (soccer), the beautiful game ... but I did not know that I shared your political and social views. I should not have been surprised. Also glad that you're still writing on a regular basis.

Tom

P.S. Watched last week's Portugal-Sweden WC qualifying match at BXL in NYC ... the sports bar you recommended to me a while back. Thx again.

George Vecsey

11/18/2013 02:48:53 pm

Tom, thanks. I don't want to make this a one-party or one-viewpoint site -- too much of that around, and I value the generally civil tone from people who disagree -- but sometimes I need to say what I think.

I'm going to try to watch part of Portugal-Sweden tomorrow, somewhere. I haven't been at BXL in a while...I'm glad you like it.
Best, GV

laura vecsey link

11/19/2013 05:17:57 am

When all the money in this country is in the hands of the 87 billionaires that this unprecedented transfer of wealth has created, I, too, like my father, would not want to have to rely on the Koch brothers or Halliburton to give me well-care checkups or a colonoscopy. Oh, wait. They are already doing that.

Alan Rubin link

11/24/2013 11:26:52 am

My wife and most of my friends claim that they need a cup of coffee to start their day. As a life-long, non-coffee drinker, I kick start each day by logging on to George’s blog.

After a quick look at “Sighting a Familiar Face of America”, I left for my daily early morning swim.

Checking in later, I expected to read other examples and stories of good deeds. However, I was surprised and dismayed to be greeted with unwarranted political dialog.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Several recent surveys have indicated that the public is in favor of “The Affordable Care Act” but against “Obamacare”, which are one and the same.

Presidents of both political parties have advocated health care for all Americans since Harry Truman. About 20-25 years ago, the Republicans were pushing many of the health care reform programs that they are demonizing today.

Good government is what matters, not its size. Almost all major programs have had startup problems that became corrected over time. This was true for Social Security and Medicare, to name a few.

Companies like Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, etc. continually correct and upgrade their products.

The Affordable Care Act was the political alternative to “universal health care”, which is currently available to seniors as Medicare. It is cost efficient and very successful.

The ACA is extremely complicated because it had to placate so many diverse interest groups, including many in government who did not want it at all.

As pointed out in Joe Nocea’s November 23, 2013 NY Times Op-Ed, “Obama’s Bay of Pigs”, “Jonathan Gruber, the M.I.T. economist who helped devise the Massachusetts health plan upon which Obamacare is modeled, says the deadline that matters is March 31, 2014, when people must be signed up."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/opinion/nocera-obamas-bay-of-pigs.html?hp&rref=opinion

The health of all Americans should be the overriding issue and all efforts should focus on making the ACA work. People who have read and understand the law, and those already benefiting from the provisions already in effect, know this.

George Vecsey

11/25/2013 07:50:26 am

Alan, thanks, but I didn't mind the political point of view of a few respondents. It's a touchy subject. I'm pleased they found my little site, and cared to object. best, GV

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

Sighting a Familiar Face of America

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