Good Peggy Noonan article
Peggy Noonan drives me pretty crazy with her on-again-off-again insights. When she’s good, she’s very very good. But when she’s bad, she’s foggy.
This is very good:
A third component of public anxiety has to do with what normal people can see and imagine, which they have a sense the government isn’t capable of seeing and imagining.
What normal people can see and imagine is that three Ebola cases have severely stressed the system. Washington is scrambling, the Centers for Disease Control is embarrassed, local hospitals are rushing to learn protocols and get in all necessary equipment. Nurses groups and unions have been enraged, the public alarmed””and all this after only three cases.
What would it look like if there were 300? That is not a big number in a nation of over 300 million. Yet it would leave the system hyperstressed, and hyperstressed things break down.
How many people and professionals have been involved in the treatment, transport, tracking, monitoring, isolation and public-information aspects of the three people who became sick? Again, what if it were 300””could we fully track, treat and handle all those cases? If scores of people begin over the next few weeks going to hospital emergency rooms with Ebola, how many of their doctors, nurses, orderlies, office staffers, communications workers and technicians would continue to report to their jobs? All of them at first, then most of them. But as things became more ragged, pressured and dangerous, would they continue?
This is why people are concerned. They can imagine how all this could turn south so fast, with only a few hundred cases. This is why the White House claims that we will not have a widespread breakout is fatuous: Even a limited breakout would take us into uncharted territory.
The only thing that will calm the public is competence. Until they see it, warnings about hysteria will be experienced as patronizing and deeply self-serving.
Noonan has put her finger on something many may have thought, but few have articulated so clearly.
What’s more, she clearly explains another thing I’ve said several times, that the Democratic party line on the travel ban is absurd and sets up a strawman:
The question is whether the U.S. should, for now, ban the issuance of visas to citizens of the three West African nations where the illness is known to exist. That is what a travel ban would be.
Those opposed to it have taken to noting that there are no or very few direct flights from the affected nations to the U.S., and that citizens from the affected states can fly to other nations first, and then connect to the U.S.
That has nothing to do with the question of a ban. Direct versus indirect flights don’t matter because airplanes don’t catch and die of Ebola, people do. No matter how you get to the U.S. from the affected regions, to get in legally you need a visa.
There is the charge that a travel ban would isolate the three nations. But why “isolate”? First, we are only talking about U.S. travel; we are talking about keeping citizens of the affected nations from entering the US. Help can and would continue to go into those nations. Charter planes certainly could and would go in. Other airlines might too. Health workers would continue to go in, as would supplies of all sorts.
On returning from the nations in question, U.S. citizens and others would presumably have to go through a quarantine. But health-care volunteers, of all people, wouldn’t let that stop them.
The president, in his Saturday address, argued against a ban: “Trying to seal off an entire region of the world””if that were even possible””could actually make the situation worse.”
Well, no one has called for trying to “seal off” anything, not to mention “an entire region of the world.” This is just the president trying to paint those who oppose him as frightened and delusional.
You go, girl! Exactly and precisely. But setting up strawmen and knocking them down is one of Obama’s favorite occupations.
Noonan does hit the right chord on this. She could take it a step further, and comment on the proclivity for organizations to go beyond their mandate, and dilute the efforts directed at their essential functions. The news of NIH’s and CDC’s various initiatives that have nothing to do with public health–while complaining of inadequate funding– are maddening because they are seen as wasteful; but, they border on criminal negligence when they divert resources from vital tasks. The public trusted the CDC. That trust has been undermined.
On another subject, which ties in tangentially in my mind, I read in Powerline this morning about how the U.S. Justice Department’s unethical, and possibly criminal behavior in a suit against Sierra Pacific Corporation in California had backfired because of whistle blowers and one Judge who stood up for integrity. (Lest folks think that it only the Federal government run amok, California state government was also complicit.)
Example after example of bureaucracy that has lost its focus and moral imperative; and betrayed the public trust (well, in truth, bureaucracy seldom has moral imperative, despite what some may believe.)
It is all symptomatic of bloated government, subjected to too little control and oversight. Cage the beast, and harness it to its minimal, basic functions.
The policy on flights from the affected countries in Africa is 100% consistent with the policy on the southern border. The prospect of pandemic Ebola outbreaks doesn’t seem to enter into the equation much.
What do “normal” people see?
Normal people “like” Peggy?
Peggy ain’t normal people.
Peggy is a coward.
Is it our fault we are “normal people” and can’t see what Peggy sees?
We’ll just wait around like the man on the hang noose and see what happens: maybe we’ll get a break or not. We are all on the hang noose and Peggy went over to the other side to get off the hand noose and can you say she is someone worth listening too?
I don’t think so. Peggy Noonan isn’t a good mind or a good person. She’s a shill and a sell out for a media ticket. That is what she is and don’t forget it: a sell out, a horrible sell out.
She cannot be trusted. She makes her living, ie, her value, in the media, which media does not allow individual voice. When she was faced with the loss of her income and the loss of truth, she compromised. I don’t read anything she says because she cannot be trusted.
She will ultimately reap her betrayal and cowardice.
I’ve been driven half out of my mind by the transparently illogical arguments I’ve heard against a travel ban. They ARE all about the border, just the way that the baffling insistence on letting Terry Schiavo die was all about abortion.
Here’s the problem – which may infuriate right and left.
It’s only a “problem” (3 or 300) because people already presume that the “government” (aka our leaders, aka smart people, aka some the heck else!) is going to take care of me me me and mine mine mine.
In other words, we have been mass-juvenalized, and we take orders like kids and wait on our parents like kids.
Except we don’t take orders; we give them; and they aren’t our parents they are evil government bast^&ds and Bi^&%es; and we are not kids.
When that sinks in; really sinks in; we will have been cured and we will know exactly what to do about borders and planes and quarantines and vaccines and experiments and compassion and the whole nine yards.
In short, we will take our place in the long line of history as responsible adults.
If only if only if only there were 300 cases, and they were exclusively reserved for a few square blocks of Washington….
Then they would know too; and they would damn sure stop behaving like the 100% pri*&ks they are.
After the next very obvious lie, or the next kind of shit Obama & Co. pulls, I’m always disappointed when the U.S. population in general fails to react with fury, in fact, generally fails to react much at all.
I’m hoping that things will be very different in this very particular case, when it’s very obvious that, from Obama on down, they’ve really and so obviously and serially “screwed the pooch.”
The appointment of the obviously totally unqualified political hack Klane–Klane without even the hint of medical training, experience, or expertise, and no experience at all in handling such an epidemiological emergency as “Ebola Czar”–merely just the latest in your face farkup in a long line of farkups.
However, this an instance in which many people can very easily imagine that Obama & Co.’s arrogance, stupidity, leftist ideological focus, carelessness, and dereliction of duty could get them or their family members exposed, and very unnecessarily so, to a virulent hemorrhagic virus with no cure and a 70% death rate; so clearly envision this that the negative reaction will finally be widespread and very substantial, particularly at the polls come November.
One can only hope.
P.S. Pardon the French in the post above, but sometimes…
One can hear a ten year old asking this question of the CDC: So you will keep ebola out of this country by letting in to the country those who have been exposed to it? “That’s some catch” Yossarian whistled.
Likely we can’t keep it out … but what is necessary is to slow down the spread of Ebola from Africa long enough to have some kind of effective response for when it does hit.
I have Gina Kolata’s book about the 1918 influenza epidemic on my shelf of books – likely I’ll get it out and re-read it again, except that likely I’ll be too freaked out to sleep at night, wondering if Obama and his administration really do want to see Ebola ravage this country. Yep, he’s doing his damnedest to turn this country into a third world sh*t hole, either through incompetence or as a matter of deliberate policy.
I hold onto the hope that local and state officials – and even individuals – can recover a modicum of sense, and route around the fed-gov. Push for effective quarantines, set up dedicated hospital facilities and transportation for those afflicted.
According to Kolata’s book, by the time the influenza epidemic hit in the southwest, the various civic authorities were well-primed and effective, having had sufficient warning and a bad example from those cities where it had struck first.
At least so far, Ebola seems to be transmissable through contact with the bodily fluids of those affected; vomit, sweat, etc – and through breaks in the skin, through nose and eyes. If we emerge with low casualty rates, likely that happy outcome will not have had anything to do with the Obama administration.
How does crippling Americans make Liberians walk?
The tempo of cure is only slowed down when America has to turn inward to control its own ebola nightmare.
What frightens Barry Soetoro is that his anti-American game plan is being throw over by nature.
Beyond the human cost, can anyone hazard a guess as to the financial losses rippling from just one infected Liberian entering the country, to the hospital, the federal government, to the city of Dallas, the state, the airlines, the cruise line, the bridal shop, the schools……..? In addition, consider the people who say that they are postponing trips and activities until it appears that things are under control. Remember the economy, post 9/11? BTW, who will be liable if it is determined that ebola was transmitted on an airplane? I think that there have been rumblings among insurers that they aren’t going to be left holding the bag. Why wasn’t this thought through? Who doesn’t understand that Americans live in a complicated intertwined world? I doubt a hapless African with ebola could impact so many people, so far apart, so quickly, as the second nurse did. The utopian globalists, of course, expect the USA to pick up the tab for Africa, while simultaneously playing Russian roulette with the economy.
The Left has their economy up and running. It’s the slave economy so they always feel safe so long as there are livestock to exploit.
Mike, I simply do not know where you are coming from? You say we should take responsibility for ourselves; is that the message? Fine. I agree.
But, in a society that is so interconnected, like it or not, we are dependent on others in ways that may irritate us, but that we cannot avoid. Become a hermit if you like. Tempting, but the internet connection would be lousy.
Government has certain essential responsibilities. As citizens our task is to hold them accountable; and by that I mean limit them to the appropriate responsibilities, and measure their performance in same. But, even here, assuming the we are lawful citizens of this Republic, we are limited in our individual prerogatives.
Our best hope in my opinion is to hold the line where we can and try to counter the damage being done to our children and grandchildren by Statist propaganda.
BTW, I am not a great admirer of Peggy Noonan, nor most of the Scribbling/babbling class of self-proclaimed conservative punditry. But, on those occasions when she gets it right, she expresses herself effectively.
Peggy is slow to catch on to the train wreck of engineer dear leader. Personally, I find her 6 years and 7 trllion dollars of debt too late. She’s gingerly walking on egg shells in order to keep open invitations to the cocktail parties of the in crowd. Even in flyover country we have heard about the tasty left-right coast in crowd cocktail party hor dourves. Stuff your face peggy, the horses have stampeded from the barn you torched in 2008 with your fawning over the ‘brilliance’ of the narcissistic boychild. You will find no forgiveness from my corner of flyover country. We know you don’t give a damn about our alligence to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, including freedom from the oppression of your in crowd jackasses.
There comes a time. Its not here yet, but it is closer than it appears in the rear view mirror.
I don’t think there is so much a conspiracy as an indifference to the effect of policies on the greater good. It is more like the Joe-six packs and regular folks are beneath notice to those who think in Beltway (corporatist & globalist) terms. Certainly, they are incapable of empathy and are utterly reliant on silly stereotypes, ergo the deep need to “talk down” to the public and the need to “scold” the public with sly accusations of racism or xenophobia.
In any case, they are playing to the “in crowd” where the importance of appearing profound, nuanced, and “compassionate”(albeit selectively), sends the gushy, gassy types over the moon, while the rest of us wonder “huh?”, there are only TWO choices, air travel completely open to anyone from the afflicted countries,…….. or a complete ban on any travel whatsoever……. Really? Apparently, the rest of us should roll over and submit to their pronouncements, because there is “NOTHIN” in between the two extremes.
“Let’s not have a travel ban because a travel ban would not be 100% effective in keeping ebola out of the US.”
By the above logic, I shouldn’t put screens on the windows of my house because the screens won’t be 100% effective in keeping flies out of my house.
The Dems “argument” against the travel ban is just so representative of just about all their policies. As with Obamacare, they make a factual statement that they know is false and just stick with it even in light of proof of its falsity.
One would have to be a complete dunce (or syncophant) to agree with the Dems on this.
The travel ban worked on for Nigeria!
Harvard has imposed a travel ban to West Africa.
Obama should listen to the experts at his alma mater!
If/when Ebola comes to NYC or DC, things will be different.
Reading Noonan’s description of what is needed in an “Ebola Czar”, all I could think was “Mitt Romney”. That would have been an impressive appointment.