Friday

October 11th, 2024

Reality Check

The pandemic is a time for prayer as well as action

Jonathan Tobin

By Jonathan Tobin JNS.org

Published March 20, 2020

 The pandemic is a time for prayer as well as action
There have been a lot of low points in the discussion about the coronavirus pandemic in the last few weeks. The Trump administration has supplied some of them as the president spoke about the issue at times with his characteristic lack of caution and obsessive need to counter-attack against political foes.

Fortunately, in the last week as the seriousness of the crisis has become apparent, his tone has changed. Indeed, he has started to sound and act more like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has gotten high marks for his serious and effective response to the virus.

But among the most discouraging moments during the emergency was the reaction to a widely shared photo that showed Vice President Mike Pence and the coronavirus taskforce that he was charged with leading bowed in prayer before the start of one of their meetings. The response from many on the left was to pour scorn on Pence and to use it as an excuse to bash the administration. The reaction was summed up by a New York Times Magazine writer, whose tweet about the photo implied that America was "screwed" since its leaders were trying to pray their way out of a problem for which they were unprepared.

The same thing happened this past Sunday, when the president's declaration of a National Day of Prayer in response to the pandemic also generated a sadly predictable wave of abuse. Others were repulsed by the appeal to prayer because they thought it an insult to atheists or merely a case of the irreligious Trump pandering to the Christian right.

Trump has certainly helped coarsen our public discourse, though at this point the same can be said of many of his critics. It's also true that both he and Pence are fair game for criticism. But at what point do even the fiercest of partisans stop trying to "own" their opponents on social media and start understanding that there are some things that transcend politics?

Columnists

Toons