Sydney Williams; An Optimist’s Lament
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On August 4, 1944, the Grüne Polizi, along with the Gestapo, raided the “secret annex” of an abandoned office building complex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had been hiding for over two years. Less than three weeks earlier, on July 15, 1944, Anne wrote in her diary: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” Ultimately, peace did come. The Nazis were defeated, and Europe has been free of wars for seventy-five years – the longest period in its history – thanks to the people of the United States. But peace came too late for Anne Frank. Less than a year later, she was dead at age fifteen, probably of Typhus, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Nazi-held Germany.
One marvels at Anne Frank’s outlook, when bleakness enshrouded her environment and hoped dimmed for millions caught in the Nazi’s web and in a world gone dark. As we reflect today, in far better circumstances than were hers, is there not a lesson for us, in our pandemic, fear–filled world?
Optimism is a state of mind. Perhaps a dream over reality, or naïveté over cynicism? In retrospect, Anne Frank’s optimism appears innocent or guileless. Yet, she lives on through her Diary of a Young Girl, because in spite of everything she experienced she had the vision to see that sunlight would return and the world would move on. In her optimism, she was wise, for the two – optimism and wisdom – are linked. Optimists draw from the ancient classics, the birth of Christianity, the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the Industrial Revolution and the recent victory of democracy over socialism. All have helped man’s condition to improve. Individual freedom, democracy and free-market capitalism have lifted multitudes from poverty and early death. Optimism, it should be remembered, does not mean nostalgia for an earlier time, but the expectation of enhanced prospects for a better future.
With the exception of political divisiveness, this past year started out on a high note. GDP growth in 2019 had slowed from its pace in 2017 and 2018 but was still up 2.3% for the year – a remarkable achievement for the eleventh year of an expansion. Unemployment, including minority unemployment, was the lowest in fifty years. Incomes in 2019 for the lowest decile of workers rose at a rate higher than for those in the first decile. Interest rates had fallen, yet the Dollar remained strong. The Dow Jones Industrial Averages (DJIA), the laggard of the major indices, rose 22.3% during 2019 and was up another 3.5% through February 12. These factors favored the incumbent in the upcoming Presidential race, despite an impeachment and three years of Congressional harassment by those for whom Mr. Trump was a nemesis. As long as the economy did not fall into recession, the election would be his to lose.
Then, the novel virus COVID-19 struck. It originated in Wuhan, China and spread throughout the world, turning 2020 into an Annus Horribilis. It was politicized and became a crisis the Left chose to use to their advantage. Politicians assumed extraordinary powers, especially governors and mayors in deep-blue states. The consequences of their actions caused the economy to tank, as people responded like lemmings, obedient to the harsh directives issued from leaders more intent on power than concern for the afflicted. While “following the science” was touted as the excuse for grabbing more power, personal liberty was abandoned, and only the science that supported political preferences was allowed. Infected patients in New York and New Jersey were sent to nursing homes, killing hundreds of residents. The virus lived on surfaces until it didn’t. Masks didn’t work until they did. It became okay to protest police brutality, but not to attend school or church. Fear of liability from class action lawsuits, with no restrictions on the size of settlements, caused universities, colleges and schools to shut down campuses. Governments refused to treat people like adults, preferring the signaling of virtue to an “infantile” public. Lockdowns and shelter-in-place mandates were issued. The reaction to the virus was a gift to the Chinese and other enemies of the West, in that it showed how easily they can, without firing a shot, subvert a free people into an Orwellian populace. It was also a gift to Democrats, who never let crises go to waste.
The economy went into freefall when lockdowns were implemented. First quarter GDP declined 4.8%, with second quarter falling 31.4%. By March 23rd, the DJIA had fallen 37% from its February 12th high. The cloud of despondency that enveloped the nation provided a silver lining for the Democratic Party, as Mr. Trump’s seeming invincible economy had been fractured. Once President Trump called for re-opening the economy, the response was quick – too fast for the Democratic Party that had nominated the cognitively-challenged (and corrupt, as we have since learned) Joe Biden. Third quarter GDP was up 33.1%, with the DJIA up 7.6%, with tech stocks doing even better. Colluding with the Democratic Party as fall neared, mainstream media focused on bad news about the virus; they suppressed news of Hunter Biden’s financial dealings with foreign governments, downplayed progress of the vaccine (whose approval was announced a week after the election), and they ignored the fact that House Intelligence Committee member Eric Swalwell (D-CA) had had an intimate relationship with Chinese spy Christine Fang.
It was imperative to far-left Democrats and the Washington establishment that Trump go, as it was for their minions in the media, and those in universities who believe capitalism is evil and that speech, when not “Woke,” should be shuttered. Efforts to stifle the Administration had fizzled: the Mueller investigation found no Russian collusion; Tweets to his 88 million followers were often banned, and impeachment failed. His successes were overlooked – the rise in employment and wages for minority workers; prospects for peace in the Middle East, with the Abraham Accords; making our European partners pay more for their own defense; rolling out the vaccine in record time; confronting China for interning Uyghurs, disbanding democracy in Hong Kong, stealing technology and building military bases on man-made islands in the South China Sea. Ignored as well was the State Department’s Clean Network Initiative, which has been joined by 50 countries representing two-thirds of the global economy, to offset China’s Huawei 5G network. The election was Democrats last chance. But it wasn’t just Trump that Washington and the nation’s elite were after. It was a return to a way of life disrupted by Mr. Trump, which had been rewarding to politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and globalists, especially those in finance and technology. He was, as he once told an audience, “just in the way.” Any means used were justified by ends demanded.
There is no question, in my opinion, that the election was rampant with fraud. There are too many “coincidences.” The question is, was fraud sufficient to overturn the election? Sadly, we will never know. Mr. Biden will be sworn in as President and Mr. Trump will leave office. The President was not beaten by an individual, but by a system he had wounded but not destroyed. Keep in mind, however, election fraud is not the disease; it is a manifestation. The disease that infects America has many fathers: a decline in religion and in in the nuclear family, schools that teach to the lowest common denominator, universities that segregate by identity. It is a consequence of an emphasis on self-identity and victimization, and the trivialization of moral values. It is a result of hypocritical politicians who see public service as a path to private gain. It is a disease that has been abetted by a media more interested in advocacy than truth. President Trump was demonized, not because of his character. He was demonized because, like Hercules who fought the Hydra that dwelt in the murky swamps of Lerna, he confronted Washington’s arrogant bureaucracy, whose swamp denizens outnumber the heads the Hydra was able to grow. While the swamp persists, it has been damaged. Mr. Trump’s legacy will be his battle for justice and liberty for forgotten Americans.
With Progressives in control of much of Washington and with their plans to impose more regulations, raise taxes, use identity politics, manage the teaching of history, and curtail conservative speech, it is difficult to be optimistic, which is why the story of Anne Frank is so prescient. What she faced was far more frightening than what we confront. Every generation has its summonses, ones we must obey but do not choose. We cannot control our parents, or the time and place of when and where we were born. Toward the end of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the hobbit Frodo says to the wizard Gandalf: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf replies: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” For those of us who value free expression, who believe in the sanctity of the rule of law and in free markets, we thank God we were born in this Country. For all its faults, it is the freest and most successful nation on Earth, which is why so many want to come here. But we must never lose sight of the fact that freedom, so hard to obtain and so difficult to maintain, can be so easily lost.
As to what the New Year will bring, I have no crystal ball. But I worry. In nominating and then electing a corrupt, cognitively impaired 78-year-old white man, Democrats may be hoisted on a petard of their own making. Will the press question Mr. Biden’s mental faculties? Will they investigate his family’s corruption? Will they place Kamala Harris on the throne before 2024? Will China’s sins in terms of human rights be exposed, or will they be given a pass by those who see China as a place to mine for dollars? Will the new Administration abandon Israel for a nuclear pact with Iran? Will England go to the back of the line? What about the economy? How many closed small businesses will never re-open? The economy does not need more government stimulus. It needs to open. Neither stocks nor bonds appear attractive, with the market selling at record highs and interest rates at record lows. Federal debt is at record levels, and most “blue” states have retirement liabilities they cannot meet. The Federal Reserve’s purchase of the federal government’s debt suggests a lack of buyers; thus, the value of the Dollar may decline, bringing inflation with it, in a stagnating economy. Even with an economic rebound, it seems unlikely we will return to the record employment and income numbers of a year ago. Regulations and taxes impede, not enhance, economic growth, and we will have more of both. With Trump gone, hate-filled media will recede, so temperatures will moderate, but will campuses become open to diversity of thought and opinions? Will city schools and corporate boardrooms search for excellence, or for racial and gender diversity? Will the flawed 1619 project replace the history of our founding? Will decency, respect and tolerance make their way into the public square?
These are questions without answers. But I am drawn back to the optimism expressed by a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl in a cramped, hidden apartment in Nazi-run Europe seventy-six years ago. While my optimism for the immediate future wavers, I am filled with hope that the American people will rise to the challenges they face, that common sense will overcome the foolishness of today’s “woke” (and ephemeral) culture, and that 245 years of liberty will not easily collapse. “Hope,” as E.B. White wrote in a letter to a Mr. Nadeau on March 30, 1973, “is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time.” Amen, and Happy New Year!
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