Storywise-The Center for Narrative Studies

Irish Aunties and Funerals

My Dad was the proud son of Irish immigrants to Australia and so, growing up, we had our encounters with our maiden Irish Aunties, Great Aunties actually, Tessie and Lilly. I remember my sister Jenny and myself visiting them in darkened, stale smelling rooms in dilapidated Ipswich mansions, and being encouraged to perform. “Sing for your Auntie Tess.” “Play piano for your Auntie Lilly.” It struck terror in us so stark that it defined the darkness. Why were they always dressed in black? Someone had died, and that is how they remembered their role as mourners, to not smile for a year.

It stays in my then “6 year old memory” as something out of Miss Havisham and “Great Expectations.” But funerals of that generation were as legendary, in the way only Irish funerals can be. One story was Tessie at a cousin’s funeral saying after the viewing, ” I know that Mary’s dead, but can I say, I never have seen her look so alive!” Or at Lilly’s funeral, another of the tribe roving the mourning crowd asking, “Where is Lilly? Not like her to not show up for such a great turn out like this, the buffet and the bar.”  My sister Sue, if I recall, had to quietly point to the coffin, where she told them that this was Lilly’s Last Supper.

It always made me smile and made me proud that I was mad Irish too, and having attending so many funerals in my years of ministry, I sort of understood what death does to the living. Madness and death go together, in strengths dependent on the love that is lost. But little did I know?

This week, my dear, dear, friend Bob died. A brain tumor and a catastrophic fall all in the space of a week and instead of planning the next program schedule for the AmeriCorps program I run and that he founded, we are planning a funeral. It is all happening too quickly for me and Wanda and his family to get their head around. And Bob himself, ever the optimist, hangs on believing till the bitter end that he is recovering, until he wants to know why are all the distant  relatives here? Who are these nurses? At one point, he even asks accusingly, “What is this? A wake?”

The funeral at the local church happened on Monday. Funerals in COVID times are usually remote. Zoom, Zoom, and you are gone. Thankfully, we could meet in person on a snowy Monday morning, and have a requiem mass that for ages has seen off generations of Bobs family, from the old country Italy to the new world of Frederick MD. The consoling thought was that his great grandparents would recognize this ritual of faith that bridges the generations. But it was exhausting. I cried, but some of Bob’s grandkids cried like I never knew humans could cry. Their bones were washed in the deluge of their grief, what the psalmist would have called ‘inconsolable.”

I come home and try to unwind and pray for Bob and Wanda and their loving family and after dinner, I slowly move back into my night routine.  Normality takes over. Who do I call? Without thinking, I start to dial the usual number. 301, 385….

I am calling  Bob, to report on the day, tell him how people are doing, tell him how I am doing because he will always want to know that, tell him what I need right now to get through this, and know he will have some wise, gentle words. He will say, “I am so sorry that I could not make it. I really wanted to be there, but I will be there next time for sure. And I am so glad you went. They really would have appreciated that. And how was everyone? Anyone really upset?” And I would tell him, and he would say, “Yes, they care so much, but can you send me their emails or phone numbers. I will call them next week to offer my condolences. You know Paul, this really matters and you are doing the right thing. So, I am sorry if I let you down, and I feel so bad, but hey, next week, come out and me and Wanda can meet at the Italian place we usually meet at, and I can catch up on all the other stuff. You are doing a great job, and I appreciate all you do, even when others don’t sometimes. How are Ben and Tess and the kids.? How is Ahmed? Say Hi to Karam. Give them my love.”

The phone did not answer, and yet, as I quickly realized this habit had suddenly  outlived its use, I allowed myself to walk through the routine of 20 plus years.  If I could just call the operator for Bob’s new number, I know I would have had exactly the same call.

My telling you this story makes me feel like I am Auntie Tess or Auntie Lilly at an Irish funeral, and that there is not a lot separating  death from madness. Sometimes, it is the madness that honors the death more than the sanity. Those prescribed  5 stages of grief, letting go and moving on don’t include moments of insane comedy.

I have to add that Bob did not look the most alive I had seen him in the coffin. It was clear he had gone, except for his Micky Mouse tie. And Bob would have been disappointed that there was no buffet and bar, but rather masks and hand sanitizers and a snow road home. Come the Summer and Vaccines, we will do that party yet. But not now.

So yes, when I got back from Bob’s funeral, the first thing I wanted to do was call Bob. And to me, that underlines how profound the loss. Bob had become the Listener that we all need, someone who though not family, is privy to the inside because his love and trust invites your honesty in ways that you hardly experience with your own kith and kin. Bob invited intimacy from so many different folks that I wonder if sometimes he felt overwhelmed with the role people asked of him. But he never complained. Just supply the right pasta and the proper Vino and he could turn any catastrophe into a party.

I know that some religions are wary of Catholics praying to the saints and lighting candles before the Madonna and they think that it is idolatry. But maybe they have never known the sort of grief that springs from such a depth of love that the conversation never ends, and that death is just a bad connection.

My futile phone call to Bob Monday night are transformed tonight into my prayers. My T-Mobile account does not have a strong enough 5G signal yet to get him on the line but I know this- He is listening. And that is where Bob will never die, for his family, for Wanda and Tony, for Karen and Lisa, for Connor and Jake and Katie and Francis, for all the extended family, for my Alpha community.

Love is being on call, even if you are dead, and sometimes, as weird as it sounds, it is the memory of our beloved who are dead that will keep us alive. Bob remembered the mother he lost as a little kid and he made her stay alive.  And so he must continue to make us come alive. His departure does not mean he has quit from doing that.

Let me find his new number. If no one picks up,  leave a voice mail and wait for him to answer in the new day you step into. The best way to celebrate those who have died is to live. How insane is that?

Dear Friends,

“We made it through!”

As 2020 comes to an end, we can at least tell ourselves that much. Hidden inside the sentiment are too many losses and so many challenges, but sometimes, “making it through”  signals the quiet triumph of the human spirit. Other than that, there is not a lot to shout about. An unknown virus brought us down. Disruption is now our new normal. Masks are our new uniform. Love at 6 feet is our new intimacy.

Recently I went to grab a morning coffee at my local Starbucks-CLOSED, have a pint at 2 of my favorite Irish Pubs, -both closed PERMANENTLY; have dinner at my favorite diner-CLOSED. Some industries like restaurants and travel have been decimated. For too many families, loss will overshadow their Christmas. Will we ever recover? We must believe we will, in order for us to keep going. People speak of hope as if it needs evidence, but real hope is an inside job. We arm our desire to shape the future we most long for.

That inner hope has driven scientists to develop vaccines in record time. And the change that will come to Washington DC 2021 has many in my circle breathing a little easier.  But we must feed that hope, like a mighty river needs the gentle streams that flow into it. May we all find the gentle streams of hope this Christmas, and claim the courage that got us all through. We will surely need that for the recovery task ahead.

If I am writing to you, it’s because I want to thank you for not giving up, for being one of those gentle streams of hope that have refreshed my life and our shared work. Yes, we made it through, because we made it through- TOGETHER.

Blessings and Peace be upon your family and friends. Lastly, can I ask your help for our brothers and sisters suffering in Gaza- Palestine, especially the young scholars at Gaza University who cannot finish their education unless they find scholarships. We have launched our Friends of Gaza U appeal here. Thanks to many of you who have already given.

Sincerely,

Paul A Costello

At the very least, we can tell ourselves, “We are still here, still breathing, still with a pulse.” That might sum up a minimalist’s Thanksgiving. “Mask and 6 feet distant” is better than “Last Gasp and 6 feet under.” Though this is hardly a heart melting sentiment, this might be the year to shelve the gospel of abundance that we are prone to tell ourselves on this day. Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and Influence People”  delusion of ‘tattooing success on our asses’ even when we fail or lose elections has a lot to answer for.

Counting our blessings might be best done by counting what we have lost, like an authority that tells the truth, like leaders who serve the common good, like the sense of safety and blessed assurance that comes from being together.  2020 is the year when most of us are not wishing “to make America Great again”, but rather, making America Grateful Again. All the usual pieties of grace, what the preachers deliver today that we are so lucky, we are so rich with the gifts of freedom and faith, we might politely tell them to ‘shove it!’ If anyone is celebrating today as if life was a party, we would have to ask them, ” Where have you been? Have you not been paying attention?’ Gratitude today verges on blasphemy.

11 million infected with COVID, millions out of work, schools shuttered, a quarter of a million dead, and the threat of double that ahead is surely a somber prospect. My AmeriCorps members have been busy delivering food to local families who have no jobs, no money for rent, no documents and live in daily fear of being deported. Oh yes, let us “Give Thanks.” For what?

The nation has taken grace for granted and turned it into graft. Privilege has become the first principle of power. While the nation choked with a virus,  our  heartless Nero played golf.  The shameless display of inverted justice, where the rich inherit the earth, the guilty are set free, and the innocent are summarily dismissed and exiled. That is a national disgrace. Oh yes, let us give thanks.

George Washington, our first President, was acutely aware that the birth of a new nation was as much a result of divine providence as it was of human perseverance. God blessed the 13 colonies in their unlikely revolt against the greatest empire the world had seen. It was a fluke. But Washington knew blessings are never forever.

When a nation’s luck runs out, prophets like to scream “God has cursed us.” Whether that still speaks to anyone other than crazy Rev. Pat Robertson is moot, but what it might mean for the rest of us is- we are a nation of fools if we take our freedom and our rights for granted. We are a nation at risk if we think that public office is meant for private gain. We are a people unworthy of our constitution when we let our cabinet become a mafia, people flagrantly swapping principle for profit. We are a nation lost and heading over the cliff if  “divide and conquer” is the  preferred 2-party ‘scorched earth’ strategy to win at all costs.

The nation this Thanksgiving is at grave moral risk. An election does not necessarily change that. 70 plus million voters appear to be willing to want the nation to spiral down into more chaos, on the way to being “great again!” Something is gravely wrong here that we ignore at our peril.

There is the “Thanks ” that comes at the end of harvest, of effort and toil. It honors human endeavor. And there is the “Thanks’ that comes when we have lost our child in the Mall and a friendly policeman helps us find her, or when our ailing father comes out of the triple bypass operation and is slowly recovering. Today, that is the “Thanks” I feel. There is nothing gratuitous about it. On November 3, we dodged a bullet. But the nation is still in triage.

Just as “Thanks for not dying” is hardly a rousing affirmation of life, so our “Thanks” today, in our shrunken family circle, is an invitation to deeper soul searching. Americans are used to all the stressing and striving, all in the interest of thriving. And today is usually a time out, to say “Well Done.” But there is little to congratulate ourselves about in 2020.  All we can say is, “At least we are still here.” We are not used to that feeling of being grateful that we survived. But we better get used to it. That is as good a place to start today, to make America grateful again.

Happy Thanksgiving.

“When we are lost, what we need is not a negotiator but a Navigator.”

Reunion with long time friend Svend-Erik Enge

“-the empty classrooms and play grounds-the story of what got you through……my fathers watch-the understanding that stories are about power and some have become so powerful that they have all but replaced reality and truth-that as story practitioners, we need to find and teach narrative critical tools to empower people to be less susceptible to manipulation and to being conned – beware of the breathless insurance salesman-I called for the revival of skepticism, and the narrative ethical rules that do not rely on true/false but in whose interests are these stories being told?-what we give meaning to we give power to, -if the audience refuse to listen, the story will not stand up-we said at the end, that life in its sequences is cumulative and that one hard time gets us ready for the next and that when we ask- what got you through, we honor our lives to believe that we can endure, if not overcome, and that getting through is more important than getting it, or getting over it, or getting past it, that so long as we keep moving, progress and not success, -I urged people to ask each other, what got you through? and hear what they say”

We are all saying- How come we are so divided? On the surface, that seems a fact. But then in other situations, when it comes to a fire, or a hurricane, the opposite question is a better fit-How come we are all so united?

Rebecca Solnit  explores that question in her brilliant book on what disasters do to communities Paradise Built in Hell. People seem to rise to the occasion and self organize networks of care and cøncern. People feel significant and connected in ways that are built around shared pain and need. Religion or politics do not seem to matter.

When we watch a tug of war, we don’t ask, Why are they so against each other? That is the point of the game. When we attend a football game, and our team is 3 points down with 2 minutes left on the clock, and we are amongst fans screaming for blood, we don’t appear shocked that people are “so divided amongst each other,” some wearing blue and some wearing red and yelling comments for their team and against their opponents. That is the point of the game. What unites us all in the stadium is the contest. With the game over, someone has won and someone has lost, and for that week, if we won we have boasting rights and if we lost, we have to regroup and not talk football. But success does not unite us. No way. Both teams cannot win. If you won, I lost. They are the rules of the game.

Elections might resemble contests but the winner must govern for all.  That is the difference.

It was on display last night in the debate in the masterful last question- “On Inauguration Day, what will you say to those who voted against you?” President Trump said “Success will unite us.” VP Biden said “I will represent all of you…making sure everyone has an even chance.”

Success in the economy like success on the football field looks more and more like winners and losers.  Success in the health care system is again a battlefield, those with insurance and those without. For those people without the money or the opportunity, “Success’ is the American dream gone awry.  Not everyone can succeed at wealth, or talent, or employment or health, but everyone has to feel they have an equal chance. And the role of leaders is to unite, not win.

Where else do we come together to create a sense of togetherness? Traditionally, that was Church. In my Catholic tradition, Sunday mass began with everyone confessing- “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” ‘Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grevious fault.” and we offer peace to all our neighbors, no matter who. Church feeds our understanding that it is not winning that unites us but sinning. We all fall short of the glory of God. The hymns, the communion, the sermon from the Holy Book were all to build the “Beloved Community.”

But perhaps even that too is slowly becoming a pipe dream. Recent Catholic priests have been featured on social media declaring the  mortal sin of “Voting for Democrats” and espousing blatant political positions disguised as Church teaching. When shepherds divide the flock, they forget its Sunday mass, not Sunday football. Jesus did not come to preach morality but faith. When did clergy become  such scolds? Jeremiah thunders at them from the Old Testament

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!

“The choice is stark. We are divided when we are playing only to win. We are united when leaders look out for all, especially those who are losing in their lot of life.

We have substituted Church for Football and Politics for Winning Performance. Trump likes to win. It is almost the only thing. The soldiers who died in the war or those that served in Vietnam (unlike him)  make no sense to him. His world is win-lose. Success is the only goal. His Dad brought him up to have a “killer instinct.” And his time at ‘the Apprentice’ or the ‘Miss America Beauty Pageant’ or in running casinos is all about winning and losing. He wins by making others lose. “You are hired” is much less fun than “You are fired” a game he has played with his staff over and over again.  This man is incapable of uniting the nation because he has never played that game. His family never played it, so why should he know that this is what leadership means,  to bring us together.  Biden has a track record of doing that, and at the debate, it was clear that shared pain  and shame and owned mistakes allow him to have empathy. He goes to Church too.

We are not divided as a nation at a deeper level. We have been played by the Newt Gingrich and Karl Roves of the ‘Win Washington at all costs’ political game who have made winning everything. If a Supreme Court justice who is meant to judge for all us can win a place by 2-3 votes, they will do it, because they are not interested in uniting, they are interested in winning. It is Mitch McConnells mantra.

November 3rd, there will be a winner and loser, but let us just hope we have a leader who can take us back to that feeling of being at church, with a shared faith in the nation and in each other, and not continue this bloody Friday Night Football of win-lose. Success does not unite us, Mister President, because the system works against so many from having a chance to succeed.  Most of us did not inherit 400 million as our starting stake in life. Most of us do not have to fear police harassment and violence. Most of us do not have to struggle for our daily bread but enough of us do, and “Success” for them means something quite different from your seeing Wall Street as the measure of success or  your 401Ks.

Your job is, once you win, make sure we all feel, connected, and heard. If you win and we lose, you lose. This is not football.

This is what SCOTUS nominee, Judge Amy Barrett. said summing up “originalism” which is her legal approach.

“In English that means that I interpret the Constitution as a law,” she said, “and that I interpret its text as text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. So that meaning doesn’t change over time and it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it.”

Here is what Wikipedia describes as a fundamentalist approach to Scriptures as ruled by a Chicago statement of belief.

‘WE AFFIRM the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal, or normal, sense. The literal sense is the grammatical-historical sense, that is, the meaning which the writer expressed. Interpretation according to the literal sense will take account of all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text.WE DENY the legitimacy of any approach to Scripture that attributes to it meaning which the literal sense does not support.”

If anyone had caught up with the language revolution and the philosophy of textual readings introduced by Saussure and Wittgenstein, you would have been long disabused of the claim that a text says what it means for all times, and hardly can guarantee what it means even in its own time. Wittgenstein taught the use of the word is what it means and over time, that use shifts. Even the word “Originalist” used to mean “From the origins” whereas to call someone today an original, we mean “One and only.” Elvis was an Original. Mohammad Ali was an original.  So even the word they use to label themselves keeps shifting in the sands of time.

The claim that originalists make is to pretend that their approach is not an interpretation. They say that their view is the original, and that the text is consistently transparent through time.  That is an interpretation clothed in the lie that they are not interpreting at all.  But of course they are. That is what the law is and what judges do-interpret the law. Even in how we use language in everyday use, we know their claim is patently absurd.

In the 1930’s songs, you could sing about someone being young and gay. “Gay” meant happy. It was a state of emotion, not sexual identity. The word changed. So can we get back to what the song originally meant, when our ears now hear it is something quite different? Hardly possible.

Or take the word “Happiness” in the Declaration of Independence’s “Pursuit of happiness.” That word has come to mean a state of well being usually measured by how you feel. In 1776, the word was more closely related to the “the pursuit of Property” and had much more to do with what you owned.

So, when words are so slippery because they change with use, and history vacates some words and inflates others, the claim that the Judges can discern what the Constitutional Fathers- (not Mothers) meant when the Constitution was signed in 1787, that they can textually time  travel 233 years back, is something out of a “Back to the Future” movie, not legally credible, no longer philosophically defensible.

We defend rights using words that were never used in the Constitution. We claim freedom of expression but “Expression” is not in the first Amendment. We are always claiming God in our patriotism  “God Bless America” but God does not feature in the Constitution. Political parties never appear and the Supreme Court can have 9 or 99 justices. The Constitution does not specify nor does any Judge have to be a lawyer or even be an American. The Constitution did not say.

So where do the originalists go when there is an absence. And then, the pursuit of happiness did not make it either. And the fact that the Air Force and the Space Force and TVs and cars are not in the Constitution but it does not matter. Somehow the Founders must have intended them to be OK. Reminds me of what Jesus said about Fox News.

Now is the time for the Justices claiming “Originalism” to own that they are kin of scriptural fundamentalists and that they treat the Constitution as if it were a sacred text which it was never written to be. It was meant to be the opposite of Holy Writ because the Bible was used to defend the Divine Right of Kings. This was the people’s rights to choose who governs them. And as they were bringing about dramatic change from the unchanging,  inherited monarchy, the homage they expected was that the leaders would keep the Constitution relevant and contemporary, that it would change to meet the times. They did not want the unchanging power of the monarch to be wrongly displaced on to the  “Sacred Constitution.” Originalists sound like Royalists who have snuck back in to the Republic.

 Google this and you get_

“Radical Empathy is actively striving to better understand and share the feelings of others. To fundamentally change our perspectives from judgmental to accepting, in an attempt to more authentically connect with ourselves and others.”

It used to be important and appropriate to offer SYMPATHY and then, we moved to COMPASSION and these two were deemed too demeaning, too distant, too empty. The new regime is demanding EMPATHY, that we feel on the inside what the victim, the oppressed, the forgotten, are feeling. That is supposed to bring us to a place of recognition and action. And it can’t be ordinary empathy or supercharged empathy. No, it has to be RADICAL.

Sympathy, Compassion, and Empathy are feelings that move us from the outside to the inside, and this method presumes that this direction is the means to becoming WOKE. It seems self-evident and not as radical as it claims to be. But there is a huge problem.

First of all, there is the hidden presumption that I as a white person can ever get inside the feelings of a black person with the burden of history of racism and Jim Crow. I could say in solidarity, “Now I know what you have been going through” but while the intention is noble, the assertion is another claim of my White Supremacy- I am God, I am omniscient, and of course, I can feel what you feel. Why not? I am still acting inside my privileged power.

I as a man can claim that I understand the struggles of women to be equal and free, understand that from the inside, but that is the problem all along- men asserting they know what a woman wants- no need to ask them. Abortion, Employment, Voting Rights. Presumed Radical empathy of men for women has destroyed more women than has saved them.

And if I am straight, I get all you gays in a radical act of empathy or I am an Israeli and I get you Gazans ‘suffering through our three wars against you because my empathy is radical. I feel your pain. I might have a hint that it is a pain I am  directly causing, but no matter, I share your feelings. That absolves me from much else.  My claim ends up being another claim of my supremacy.

Marx  and later sociologists focused less on the feeling inside and more on the system outside that makes those inner feelings our best adaptation to being treated as “less than.” Inside is the end of the game-and how we feel and what we endure,  not the start which begins with power, and what people chose to inflict.

If the problem is outside, if the problem is the discriminatory  economic and political structures of power, structures that I as part of the majority regime pay for and sustain, then inviting me inside may be good therapy but lousy activism. It may even be a screen I erect to uphold my righteousness without having to do anything, except emote.

The whole criticism of psychology is that it converts the sickness of the system into the symptoms of the mentally ill  patients. All our energy is on curing the patient than healing the system. The best example is the “Escape Slave Sickness Syndrome” that psychologists used to diagnose for slaves who kept running away. The methods of the modern Gulag were not invented by the Russians but by how we policed the minds and bodies of slaves.

Human adaptation to abuse is paradoxically as healthy as we can make it, but we experts and liberabls turn it into the internal problem. Radical empathy makes this bogus claim- go inside because that is where the changes can occur, regardless of the fact that the system that is outside is what needs treatment. The treatment calls for the opposite of empathy. It calls for surgery or it calls for an election, or it calls for a revolution.

Friends are displaying and calling for radical empathy for the President during his COVID infection. What a nonsense. He is a product of a system that made his sickness more likely and he sits at the head of a government that oversaw 200,000 deaths, and sought to deny millions health insurance. He could not even offer enough PPEs for health workers.

So what kind of radical empathy would we offer him? To feel as he feels? How could we possibly know? Who knows how he feels given his history of not having any sense of what ordinary citizens feel.

What is it like to feel if you are used to the lifestyles of the rich and famous and who can fly to Hospital in Marine One. Oh, yes, let’s feel what he feels. Radical man, Radical.

We cannot offer radical anything. All we can do is offer sympathy- wish him well and then get back to work to defeat the system that he leads.

We have to treat his government and his disease as a cancer to be eradicated from the body politic. Radical Empathy is all fine for triage. That is when we have the patient there, suffering, in the moment. Radical Empathy makes a whole lot of sense at the bedside of the dying. But not at the bedside of the killers.

For anyone seeking to change the world, empathy is a noble distraction. “Radical” is just an adjective that covers how pathetic is might otherwise sound. Power must act with attention, less to how people feel and more to how people actually have to live their lives and how they aspire to live. Feelings are like clouds. It’s whether they bring rain is what matters.

When the Doctor at Walter Reid was asked what conditions might make the President’s infection more complicated, and he answered “None” apart from the fact that he is slightly overweight. SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT. Then I must be Twiggy, the so slim model.

That is when you suddenly realize that these doctors are spinning in the Trump style, and that none of what they are telling the concerned nation is reliable. Then, we are told that he is in great spirits and also, in different reports, that he asked the White House staff if he is going to die, just the sort of thing you would say in good spirits. Like, should I make my will and should I buy a cemetery plot, the usual mood boosters that Hospice workers always use!

And then Mark Meadows says this:

“The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”

Fake News is not protective of those infected with COVID19 and no defense for the President when he gets sick. But his staff seem to think it is and so they spin away, treating the American public as dupes, as that audience that will willingly suspend disbelief out of loyalty. They really think we are THAT stupid.  Even the doctors all decked out with their doctoring gear are in the thrall of the Trumpian universe of untruth. Remember they said he could live 200 years if he cut back on hamburgers.

One is reminded of the good old Irish funeral where the ancient aunties visit the deceased laid out in the coffin and are heard to remark, “Aunty Lil never looked so well.” So what can we imagine here? The officials might be preparing the First National Wellness Funeral where the patient was so well, so recovered, so fit that he died of an abundance of health.

Surprise-Surprise-We are being played here. Seems that the President might have been sick and tested positive before he let on, and in the in-between time, went about his schedule as normal, risking infecting everyone in his circle. We shall wait and see but history gives us some clues. The more positive and rosy and uplifting the news they give us, the more we should worry.

President Wilson was an invalid from October 1919 but the news was he is fine until Feb 1920. James Garfield was shot by an assassin and the medical reports were “fraudulently optimistic.” He died at the peak of his recovery, poisoned by his doctors treatments.

So, given the President’s philosophy revealed by Roger Woodward on theCOVID crisis to not tell the truth for fear that might panic the people, you can assume that he is telling his medical staff the same. So we might presume that none of what we are getting is the truth. Sorry folks.

But in contrast, seems like the medical staff are panicking and giving the patient every experimental cocktail and the treatments we now know help a patient in extremis. But the President they are telling us that he is not in extremis.

We hope the President recovers. We really do.

Not so sure that “Truth” ever will.