If there was any doubt in a rational mind that Americans are living in an early Steven Spielberg film (you know, the one about the shark) then that doubt was laid to rest when President Donald Trump told cheering MAGA crowds last week that “doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID”.
The former reality TV star and self-described “stable genius” has also said, much like the mayor of a small beach town being terrorised by a rogue great white, that this creates a perverse “incentive” to count deaths caused by “cancer” and other illnesses as COVID-19 deaths.
So, not unlike mayor Larry Vaughn from the 1975 film Jaws, Trump is holding rally after rally, saying America’s more than nine million COVID-19 cases and over 230,000 deaths – far more than any other nation – are inflated, due, at least in part, to those greedy US doctors on the frontlines trying to “get more money”.
With just a few days left before the November 3 election, and his Democratic challenger, former vice president Joe Biden holding on to his lead, Trump’s blaming not just the victims but the doctors who treat them is a clear sign of desperation – a transparent attempt to deflect attention from his administration’s tragically inept handling of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, in statements that take his administration’s penchant for “alternative facts” to new lows, Trump tells his rally attendees that the US is “rounding the turn” on the COVID-19 pandemic; ridicules mask wearing as “politically correct,” and says the pandemic that’s claimed more US lives than World War I, Korea, Vietnam and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is “nothing” to worry about.
Like the fictional mayor Vaughn, who sees keeping the beaches of Amity open and the tourist money rolling in as his highest priority, Trump’s message to reporters and supporters alike is this: “I’m pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. But, as you see, it’s a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time. Amity, as you know, means ‘friendship.’”
Spielberg’s Jaws is based on the 1974 novel of the same name by American writer Peter Benchley, who delved deeper into the mayor’s mafia ties and seedy business dealings. But clearly, Benchley based his novel, at least in part, on Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, the Norwegian dramatist’s 1882 five-act play that tells the story of a small town in Norway that’s trying to turn its local springs into a lucrative tourist attraction called the Baths.
When it’s discovered by Dr Thomas Stockmann, the chief medical doctor at the Baths, that the so-called “healing” waters are replete with “stinking filth” that will make bathers sick and will almost certainly kill many, he is labelled an “enemy of the community” and stifled by local businessmen and, eventually, even the local newspaper that at first praised his scientific discovery and saw him as a hero.
As an added twist, Ibsen makes Dr Stockmann’s greatest rival – and most fervent opponent of shutting down the Baths due to public health concerns – his older brother, Peter Stockmann, mayor of the town, its chief constable, and chairman of “the Baths’ Committee”.
Also Read: Sound and Fury: Seeing the Trump-Biden Contest Through the Eyes of Macbeth
In an exchange between Dr Stockmann and his brother Peter that can easily be imagined occurring in cities and townships across the US, and indeed around the world, the politician tells his brother, the scientist, to think of his family and the entire community before dooming them to financial ruin with the truth:
Dr Stockmann: It is I who have the real good of the town at heart! I want to lay bare the defects that sooner or later must come to the light of day. I will show whether I love my native town.
Peter Stockmann: You, who in your blind obstinacy want to cut off the most important source of the town’s welfare?
Dr. Stockmann: The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We are making our living by retailing filth and corruption! The whole of our flourishing municipal life derives its sustenance from a lie!
Peter Stockmann: All imagination—or something even worse. The man who can throw out such offensive insinuations about his native town must be an enemy to our community.
Retailing filth and corruption… blind obstinacy… an enemy to our community… sounds quite a bit like the recent exchanges, albeit indirect, between Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s leading infection disease expert, and the nation’s 45th president.
With little of the eloquence of Ibsen’s Peter Stockmann, Trump said last month that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.” By “wrong” the president was implying that if his administration had followed the stricter guidelines and broader lockdowns called for by Fauci that many thousands more Americans would now be dead. But Fauci’s real sin, it seems, is his willingness to publicly contradict the president. “Every time he goes on television,” Trump said, “there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci is a disaster.”
For his part, perhaps smelling presidential blood in the water, Fauci has grown more willing to speak out, saying last week that Americans are “in for a whole lot of hurt” as the winter months approach, when more people will want to gather indoors without the social distancing and masks that are proven to lower infection rates. “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season,” he said, “with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Photo: Reuters
Meanwhile, like mayor Stockmann and mayor Vaughn madly condemning the scientists for telling the truth, Trump continues to malign Dr Fauci at rallies attended by thousands where few wear masks and social distancing is impossible.
In the film version of Jaws, at least, the local sheriff sides with the scientist and eventually teams up with him and an Ahab-like captain of a local fishing boat to kill the great white. In Ibsen’s more subtle play, however, the threat by both the bacteria and commerce is not so easily defeated. Even the liberal press sides against the scientific truth when it fears it may go out of business if the town’s economy fails. Hovstad, editor of the People’s Messenger, speaks for many business owners and those struggling to make ends meet during COVID-19 when, in Act 5, he says bluntly: “It is a natural law; every animal must fight for its own livelihood.”
I read recently that Ibsen couldn’t decide whether to call his play a drama or a comedy, due to the excessive moralising, hypocrisy, and self-interest of the characters. Like Samuel Beckett’s plays, An Enemy of the People is maybe best described as absurdist, revealing the eternal conflicts in the heart – and minds – of men. Whoever wins the US presidency on November 3, one thing is certain, to turn back the tide of COVID-19 this winter, with or without a reliable vaccine, we’re going to have to trust our leading scientists, follow the guidance of our public-health experts, and use government as wisely and effectively as we can to ease the pain of lockdowns and keep our economies afloat.
In other words, We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
Michael Judge, a former deputy features editor at the Wall Street Journal, is a US-based poet and freelance journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Columbia Journalism Review and Smithsonian magazine, among other publications.