12 4.5.
It was as
though Trump
considered
the pandemic
to be a
creature of mass
psychology,
like a run on a
bank.Illustration by R. O. Blechmanbegan holding news conferences, with
Trump himself appearing daily before the
press. He did what he could to whip up
good news, even as the numbers that mat-
tered — deaths and infections — rose on an
exponential track. It was as though Trump
considered the pandemic to be a creature
of mass psychology, like a run on a bank,
when it was more like a burning theater.
Even if you persuade the audience to stay
calm and remain seated — even if you con-
vince them that the theater’s management
has taken the vigorous and decisive step of
calling 911 — the theater will still be on fi re.
Of course, it is certainly possible that
the Dow will soon give in to Trump’s
supplications. That seems marginally
more likely now that Trump has opened
a second front in his rhetorical fi ght. The
allegedly priceless sanctity of human life,
he seemed to suggest, had to be aggre-
gated, quantifi ed and balanced against
the Dow. ‘‘The whole concept of death
is terrible,’’ is how he put it, ‘‘but there’s
a tremendous diff erence between some-
thing under 1 percent and 4 or 5 or even 3
percent.’’ According to this logic, the small
number of people who burn to death in
their seats are the tragic price paid by the
collective so that the show can go on.
Some of the players, meanwhile, had
already sneaked out of the wings. Start-
ing in January, the senators Richard Burr,
Dianne Feinstein and Kelly Loeff ler each
sold stock valued in the mid-six fi gures or
more. (Feinstein indicated that the deci-
sion to sell was her husband’s. Loeff ler
attributed it to fi nancial advisers. Burr
said his sales were based ‘‘solely on public
news reports,’’ not the offi cial briefi ngs that
he, Loeff ler and other senators received
about the virus’s rapid spread.) But getting
ahead of the market’s downturn proved
easier for Capitol Hill than outrunning the
illness causing it. By late March, at least
three members of Congress had tested
positive for the corona virus; another fi ve,
at least, were quarantining themselves
after learning they’d been in contact
with someone who was ill. On March 20,
a week after Dobbs touted the Dow’s big
rise, Fox Business announced that one of
its employees had tested positive. By that
time, Dobbs, who recently called out ‘‘the
national left-wing media, playing up fears
of the coronavirus,’’ was one week into
his own self-quarantine. ‘‘Lou feels well,’’
another Fox host assured the audience.
‘‘He has no symptoms.’’
We were all sons and daughters who ostensibly learned simple ethical codes: Th ou shalt
not tell a lie. Th ou shalt not beat your child. What mirrors, then, held up to whom?
In his captivating new book, ‘‘Th e Painted Bunting’s Last Molt,’’ Virgil Suárez examines
the mixed brew of childhood memory, exile, ornithology , contrasts and confl icts that
build a life. His eye remains tuned to details, turning them over like shining geodes.
Th e darkly humorous twists of ‘‘Bad Sons Anonymous’’ remind us that it’s never just
one clear story.Screenland
Poem Selected by Naomi Shihab NyeBad Sons Anonymous
By Virgil SuárezAt this year’s convention
we gather to pay homage
to our fathers, responsible
men who worked hard:laborers, stone cutters, welders,
carpenters — blue collar all,
men who raged, stormed
their anger through the house,our mothers couldn’t manage,
swept with brooms the debris
of broken things, in silence
they took it out on us, beltsin hand, we stood there, cried,
long days turned to long nights,
our fathers, mothers, damages
done, we, as their only sons,remember. We, as bad sons,
pay them back, one mirror held
up to another, an infi nity
of their gnarled faces, red-blue-fi rewhat has become lost in all of us.
Naomi Shihab Nye is the 2019-21 Young People’s Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Her
new book is ‘‘Cast Away’’ (Greenwillow Books). Virgil Suárez was born in Cuba and educated in the United
States from age 12. A writer of novels, stories and memoirs, Suárez lives in Florida and is author of ‘‘Th e Painted
Bunting’s Last Molt,’’ which was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in March.