Danielle McLaughlin:
Pandemic fears collide with politics in search for truth
Global economy infected as cases top 83,000
The president has told falsehood after inexplicable falsehood about the virus and the US response.
This week the Trump administration banned all federal health officials from making statements about the coronavirus unless their comments are approved by the office of the vice-president. In less chaotic administrations, Republican or Democratic, the move would seem pretty pedestrian. After all, a single voice of government on a potential pandemic makes sense. But this is no ordinary administration, and the response to the virus has been inconsistent.
White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney claimed that the media is covering coronavirus to ‘‘take down’’ President Donald Trump. But in the same week when Mulvaney acknowledged that transportation and school closures might be necessary to control the spread of the virus, the president has told falsehood after inexplicable falsehood about the virus and the US response. He stands in direct contradiction with the federal government’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Trump has said that the number of cases is going ‘‘substantially down’’. It is not. He has said that a vaccine will be developed ‘‘rapidly’’. It is anticipated to take 12 to 18 months.
He has acknowledged 15 cases in the US, which will soon be ‘‘zero’’. There were 60 US cases as of Friday.
Presidential economic adviser Larry Kudlow announced on Wednesday that ‘‘we have contained this’’. Trump also appointed Kudlow to the Covid-19 response team – perhaps because he bought into the story the president preferred to tell.
It is axiomatic that the stories we are told, the stories we tell others, and the stories we tell ourselves shape the contours of our reality.
Canadian author Amanda Ludec challenged many of the most famous and entrenched stories in her new book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and
Making Space, published last month.
Taking on a swath of fairytales from the Grimm Brothers to Disney and beyond, and challenging their characterisations of disabled characters, Ludec revealed the stalwarts of Western childhood as vehicles of discrimination. The author has a mild form of cerebral palsy, and never saw herself reflected in the stories she read while growing up.
Ludec points out, for example, that the prince in Beauty and the Beast is punished and made ‘‘ugly’’, and is then made the subject of ridicule and isolation until he is ‘‘cured’’ of his beastly looks. She wonders how such treatment shapes the lived experiences of people who look or walk or sound ‘‘different’’.
Ludec’s ideas struck a chord with me, as a parent struggling to find stories for my young girls that don’t propagate negative themes. Stories that don’t involve a scary, wicked stepmother. Stories that don’t involve a helpless (but beautiful!) princess waiting to be rescued by a knight in shining armour. Stories where the main characters don’t lose one or both parents early in horrifically tragic circumstances (I’m looking at you, Frozen and The Lion King).
This week it was not just the president and a Canadian author who forced me to reflect on the power of stories.
The eight remaining Democratic presidential candidates have for weeks and months been telling voters that they can win the primary and beat Trump in the general. Their messages take on some urgency this weekend. Today, Democrats vote in the South Carolina primary.
Super Tuesday on March 3 will see 14 states plus
American Samoa cast their votes. It comprises more than 30 per cent of the total delegates up for grabs. An early lead out of Super Tuesday might be insurmountable.
What will the candidates (likely to include Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Steyer, and perhaps Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bloomberg) who don’t do well tell the Democratic base?
They can’t tell voters that they are hanging in to be named vice-president or secretary of state, or to force a brokered convention, where multiple candidates vie for a final-round vote. They will have to tell voters that they still have a chance – a good chance – whether it is true or not.
And that’s the thing with the stories the president told this week about the coronavirus. Confronted with facts that are probably bad for his presidency, he swept them under the rug of his preferred narrative.
Mulvaney would probably consider this column – in a Sunday newspaper based on the other side of the world – part of the attempt to ‘‘take down’’ the president.
It is not. It is a musing on the power of storytelling. And a simple request for the truth.
Danielle McLaughlin is the Sunday Star-Times’ US correspondent. She is a lawyer, author, and political and legal commentator, appearing frequently on US and New Zealand TV and radio. She is also an ambassador for #ChampionWomen, which aims to encourage respectful, diverse, and thoughtful conversations. Follow Danielle on Twitter at @MsDMcLaughlin.