A Tale of Two Contagions

By JAMIE STIEHM

Real life froze four Marches ago. Clocks stood still. Memory turned into before and after.

The COVID pandemic claimed more than a million American lives.

We don’t speak of it much, but we carry a deep sense of loss for all we missed. The trips we didn’t take. The friends or lovers we never met. The school or college experience. The parties, holidays or funerals we could not attend.

The conversations we didn’t plan in advance with colleagues or passersby. Only pure introverts could enjoy a lonesome Zoom era.

COVID contagion dwelled in our midst for a good couple of years.

But we suffered a second contagion spreading just as rapidly: the Trumpian virus that led to the armed mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The pandemic gave Donald Trump the perfect chance to build a raging ragtag band and (almost) overturn the 2020 election by violence.

Extremist groups like the Proud Boys had too much time hanging out at home to plan an insurrection. Few were going to work the next day, with everything closed down.

Same goes for the militaristic Oath Keepers, whose leader was convicted of sedition. Thirty thousand angry White supremacists showed up in Washington, organized on the internet, spoiling for a fight with the rule of law.

For the first time in history, a president violated the peaceful transfer of power. Democracy depends upon good sports and losers.

The sight was shocking, and inside the Capitol (where I was), the sounds were surreal. The mob’s howls mixed with shattering glass in the marble halls. The siege left lasting scars.

But a ray of light peeped through the dark days. Kudos to the drug companies for quickly developing a COVID vaccine. Thank you for the amazing public service.

I can’t say the same about leadership in crisis. More pointedly, Trump knew — and told author Bob Woodward he knew — how catching the coronavirus was. My heart sank when he showed up at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with a MAGA cap.

His contradictory character is such that he refused to give a clear and consistent message to the American people about the public health danger we faced. Masks, distancing and vaccines were the ways to go, proven effective. Isolation was not rocket science.

But Trump by nature cannot do the right thing, even after his near-fatal case of COVID. The United States came in last among developed nations, with the most COVID deaths, but you’d never hear it from him.

Rather, Trump presided over conflict on masks and vaccines, with deadly consequences. He loves festering fury and inciting lawlessness, tweet by tweet. Jan. 6 “will be wild,” he promised followers.

From morning ’til night for years in the White House, Trump engaged in gutter talk, spoken or virtual. He exhausted the press corps but never tired of himself.

I might add, the pandemic did not bring out the best in us. Some started fights with strangers on planes; others threatened scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Speeding drivers hit the roads.

Compare that to President Franklin D. Roosevelt leading the nation in World War II. We were all on the same side, rationing at home or serving overseas. The government ramped up penicillin production for wounded soldiers.

True spirit filled the air. The 1945 victory brought shared joy.

Historians agree, Roosevelt was the best of presidents; Trump was the worst. One sowed seeds of optimism; the other created chasms of bitter division. He vows a vengeful “blood bath.”

“I feel very alone,” I remember saying to my parents on a call across the country after the riot.

A saving grace: Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept the lights on in the Capitol and never missed a day meeting reporters in person. An 80-year-old woman inspired me to be braver.

There are holes in post-pandemic life. My coffee place in Union Station is empty. The bakery with a garden on the avenue is gone. The little boutique went out of business.

On March 3, 2020, I gave a history talk on woman suffrage. Five of us crossed the street to Sababa, an Israeli cafe, and joked nervously about the Last Supper.

Little did we know, we parted for years.

Jamie Stiehm is a former assignment editor at CBS News in London, reporter at The Hill, metro reporter at the Baltimore Sun and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is author of a new play, “Across the River,” on Aaron Burr. See JamieStiehm.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2024

Populist.com