MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
By Bill Barksdale
First published in 1842, Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Masque of the Red Death is about the wealthy and privileged Prince Prospero. As a fearsome and deadly plague ravages the country, the Prince and his wealthy friends isolate themselves in Prospero’s castle to party and wait-it-out until the plague passes. The common people will be dead, but the Prince and his friends will emerge untouched.
The Prince holds a huge masked ball one night for his guests’ entertainment. A mysterious party-goer appears in a tasteless costume dressed as a victim of the plague. The enraged Prince, determined to murder the intruder, chases it through each of the seven rooms, each decorated in a different theme, until he confronts it. Ripping off the mask he discovers there is nothing inside the costume, only the Prince’s horrible death and soon to follow, the deaths of all the party guests.
Well, as Marilyn Monroe sang “When Love goes wrong, nothin goes right”.
We’ve “sheltered in place”, as the new vocabulary says, to help slow the spread of a deadly disease. One of the good things about the Covid-19 virus pandemic is things have slowed down for a while. Filthy air and water all over the planet have started to clean up. Clean air and water are, of course, essential to life – most life that is. Some pathogens thrive in toxic conditions that most life on Earth cannot thrive or even live in.
Unfortunately, many people haven’t been able to earn a living. Some people in large cities or isolated areas have died, unnoticed and alone. Others have become frustrated and even abusive. Society has become a kind of pressure cooker, and we are seeing the contents of that pressure cooker explode as “non-white” people finally say “Enough is enough!” and rebel against centuries of abuse at the hands of people who see themselves a superior.
I watched a violent “thriller” movie last night that seemed dull compared to the nightly news.
Instead of real federal leadership in a time of tragic national need, states have been played against each other, scratching and begging for desperately needed personal protective equipment and imperative testing so the disease can be tracked as it spreads, so we can identify its trajectory and try to protect those in the path of danger.
In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed The Federal Emergency Relief Act. It read in part: “That the Congress hereby declares that the present economic depression has created a serious emergency, due to widespread unemployment and increasing inadequacy of State and local relief funds, resulting in the existing or threatened deprivation of a considerable number of families and individuals of the necessities of life, and making it imperative that the Federal Government cooperate more effectively with the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia in furnishing relief to their needy and distressed people.”
FDR also went on to establish The National Recovery Administration, whose goal was to foster fair business practices, regulate “cut throat competition”, and establish antitrust regulation so corporations couldn’t become so large and dominant that they could gouge citizens of their resources at any price, thus forcing people into poverty and insecurity.
Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, a great progressive activist herself, really cared about the people of the United States. Ancient philosopher and Roman lawyer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, said near the end of the unstable Roman Empire "The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law".
Real leaders have emerged – sometimes - in times of great need to help “We the People” find our way and thrive. That’s the highest and best function of effective government.
In 1934 a group calling itself The American Liberty League was formed, funded largely by the enormously wealthy DuPont’s and their wealthy corporate cohorts. Their goals were to roll back President Roosevelt’s creations of Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum living wages, and to advocate for an extremely “conservative” Supreme Court that would back them in rolling back the FDR reforms meant to prevent a second “Great Depression”. The members of the deceptively named “The American Liberty League” wanted to preserve and increase their vast wealth.
For some people, too much is not enough.
In actual fact, spreading the wealth through fair wages, makes our nation a wealthier country. Helping every responsible person who wants to own their own home reach that goal, makes us a more equal, just and secure country. When people feel safe in their homes, that’s a better and freer country. When a person can walk down the street and not fear being killed because of the color of their skin, that makes all of us freer.
When the super powerful and wealthy try to lock themselves away, disregarding the rest of the people, they violate the “supreme law”. They might find themselves tearing off that frightening Masque of the Red Death to an unanticipated bad outcome.
Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame. He is a referral agent for Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc. CADRE# 01106662. Read more of his articles at his blog at BBarksdale.com
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