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| Lamont and the side-lined General Assembly |
Gore Vidal – deceased, but not from Coronavirus
complications – was once asked whether he thought the Kennedy brood had
exercised extraordinary sway over Massachusetts. He did. And what did he think
of the seemingly unending reign of “lion of the Senate” Edward Kennedy, who had
spent almost 43 years in office?
Vidal said he didn’t mind, because every state should have
in it at least one Caligula.
The half-mad Roman emperor Caligula considered himself a god,
and the senators of Rome generally deferred, on pain of displeasure, to His
Royal Deity. Caligula certainly acted like a god. The tribunes of the people
deferred to his borderless power, which he wielded like a whip. They deferred, and
deferred, and deferred… Over time, their republic slipped through their fingers
like water. Scholars think Caligula may have been murdered by a palace guard he
had insulted.
Here in the United States, we do not dispose of our godlike
saviors in a like manner. At worse, we may promote them to a judgeship, or they may be recruited after public service by
deep-pocket lobbyists or legal firms, or they may remain in office until, as in Edward Kennedy’s
case, they have shucked off their mortal coil and trouble us no longer.
Coronavirus has produced a slew of Vidal Caligulas, all of
them governors. In emergencies, when chief executives are festooned with
extraordinary powers, the legislature is expected to defer to the executive,
and the judiciary remains quiescent. This deference to an all-powerful
executive department is not uncommon in war, but even in war, the legislative
and judiciary departments remain active and viral concerning their oversight constitutional
responsibilities.
The war on Coronavirus, however, is a war like no other.
Here in Connecticut, the General Assembly remains in a state of suspended
animation. Every so often, an annoying constitutional Cassandra will pop up to
remind us that we are a constitutional republic, but constitutional antibodies in Connecticut are lacking. Our constitutions, federal and
state, are still the law of the land, and even our homegrown Caligulas are not
“above the law,” because we are “a nation of laws, not of men.” These
expressions are more than antiquated apothegms; they are flags of liberty that,
most recently, have been waved under President Donald Trump’s nose. However, in our present Coronavirus circumstances, no one pays much attention to constitutional
Cassandras because --- do you want to die? Really, DO YOU WANT TO DIE?
Every soldier who has ever entered the service of his
country in a war has asked himself the very same question. And we are in a
Coronavirus War, are we not? Pray it may not last as long as “The War on Drugs.”
Drug dealers won that one, and the state of Connecticut has long since entered into the gambling racket; the marijuana racket looms in our future. Then too, in the long run, we are all dead. Even “lions
of the Senate” die. The whole point of life is to live honorably. And this
rather high-falutin notion of honor means what your mama said it meant: don’t
cheat; don’t lie; treat others as you expect them to treat you. Bathe every day
and night in modesty, and remember – as astonishing as it may seem -- sometimes
your moral enemy may be right. Put on your best manners in company. “The
problem with bad manners,” Bill Buckley once said, “is that they sometimes lead
to murder.” Caligula forgot that admonition.
Once Coronavirus has passed, we will be able honestly and
forthrightly to examine closely the following propositions, many of which seem
to be supported by what little, obscure data we now have at our disposal: that
death projections have been wildly
exaggerated; that reports of overwhelmed hospitals were exaggerated; that death
counts were likely inflated; that the real death rate is magnitudes lower than
it appears; that there have been under-serviced at-risk groups affected by Coronavirus;
that it is not entirely clear how well
isolation works; that ventilators in some cases could be causing deaths. These are open questions because insufficient
data at our disposal at the moment does not permit a “scientific” answer to the
questions that torment all of us.
At some point, a vaccine will be produced that will help to quiet our sometimes irrational fears, but vaccine production lies months ahead. The question before us now is: what is more dangerous, the wolf or the lion? New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and allied governors in his Northeast compact, cannot pinpoint a date to end their destructive business shutdown because of insufficient data. According to some reports, Cuomo has hired China-connected McKinsey & Company to produce “models on testing, infections and other key data points that will underpin decisions on how and when to reopen the region’s economy.”
If the economy in
Connecticut collapses because Lamont accedes to the demands of those in his
newly formed consortium of Northeast governors that business destroying restrictions should remain in place for months until a vaccine is widely distributed, the effects
of the resulting economic implosion will certainly be more severe than a waning Coronavirus infestation. After Connecticut has reached the apex of the
Coronavirus bell curve, it is altogether possible that a continuation of the
cure – a severe business shutdown occasioned by policies rooted in insufficient
data – will be far worse than the
disease it purports to cure.
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