Just thinking. What if?
By Jim Coogan
We are told that the current effort to combat CORONA-19 should be likened to a war. Our current president is calling himself a war-time president. And yet from top to bottom in America we are seeing a growing resistance to efforts to fight this war. If we were to go back in time to the first six months of the Second World War with the same reluctance to take seriously the threat to the country that the virus now poses, it might look like this.
News Report. Dateline Los Angeles: With many of the California beaches closed because of the possibility of a Japanese invasion, hundreds of surfers crossed military lines yesterday to continue with their sport. “This is a free country,” one young blond man said. “I have a constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness. Surfing makes me happy.” When asked what the military might do to stem the number of beachgoers, the commander of the southern coastal defense sector told reporters, “Well, I’m considering putting in some minefields. We’ll put up a warning sign and the surfers can cross the sand at their own risk.”
News Report. Dateline Boise, Idaho: As busloads of people of Japanese ancestry entered the barbed wire compound in Minadoka, Idaho after being rounded up and moved from their homes on the west coast, many local residents of the Gem State cheered their incarceration. “Damned immigrants!” shouted one young man. “They caused this war. They should all be locked up. We need a wall.” Dozens of local residents shouted insults at the bewildered camp prisoners. As the gates of the internment camp closed, the crowd waved flags and started a chant of USA! USA! USA!
News Report. Jefferson County, New York. Dozens of skiers picketed the gates outside Fort Drum angry that their ski slopes have been commandeered for cold weather exercises conducted by the Army’s Tenth Mountain Division. “This is an outrage!” one protestor told “The war isn’t here. It’s far away. We should be able to use the slopes. It is our right!!”
News Report. Miami Florida. With German submarines using lighted Atlantic coastal cities to silhouette and sink passing ships, an order to enforce a complete black-out continues to be ignored by many sea-front businesses in Georgia and Florida. “We depend on customers coming here in the evenings. It’s our busiest time.” A restaurant owner spoke for many businesses who want to keep the lights on. “We are going to lose a lot of money if we try to operate in the dark.”
News Report. Washington, D.C.: With the draft ramping up to fill the ranks of the Army, busloads of young men came to the nation’s capital to demand an end to the Selective Service. One climbed the stairs of the Capitol building holding a sign which read, “My Body, My Choice: End Selective Service!”
There were cheers as he and several others splashed paint on a statue outside the building.
News Report. Boston, Massachusetts: As city officials warned about the possible danger of poison gas, many people raised objections to wearing gas masks. “It will mess up my hair,” said a woman in Dorchester. Another said that the government was never going to tell her what to wear. “What’s next? Will they start telling me the kind of shoes I have to wear?”
News Report. Portland, Maine: Police were called when a man left a grocery store with ten six pack rolls of toilet paper. When confronted with what he had done, he was unabashed. “I’ve got the money and they have the product. This isn’t Russia!! We have capitalism! Simple supply and demand. I don’t see that I’ve done anything wrong. I’ve broken no laws. Rationing is for those who can’t afford stuff.”
