Though long out of fashion in academia, the Great Man Theory remains alive and well, and it may be key to understanding why the popular press has covered the COVID-19 pandemic with an unrelenting focus on the actions (and inaction) of national figures. This particular style of history writing held sway from the Victorian era through WWII, and it sought to capture the spirit of an era through the actions and influence of Great Men (and its subjects almost always were men). Hence, noted military leaders (Napoleon), prophets (Muhammad), and statesmen (Rousseau) were enlisted by historians as the lodestars of historical perspective. In this respect, there is an understandable temptation to view the failure of the U.S.’s COVID-19 response through the lens of Donald Trump’s daily press conferences-cum-rallies. Yet this is wrong for exactly the same reasons it is wrong in the historian’s toolkit. 

Currently, the president and the opportunists, failsons, sycophants, anti-intellectuals, and ideologues who are his closest advisers have failed spectacularly in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Their failure endangers the lives of millions of Americans, and it is a fountainhead of deep personal insecurity for us all. As a result, it should be little surprise that the national press has looked outside the White House for Great Men to serve as totems of a competent and efficient national response to the COVID-19 emergency. The sober analysis of Dr. Anthony Fauci has been a source of comfort to many Americans. Many state governors have acquitted themselves admirably, and some have been lavished with praise for it. Even George W. Bush has been rehabilitated as a model of sober foresight in pandemic preparedness. To date, however, no Great Man has enjoyed more universal praise than Capt. Brett Crozier, the discharged former commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. 

Crozier was relieved of his command after a tussle with the Navy over his request to disembark most of the Roosevelt’s 5,000 crew members in Guam. While sailing the blue waters of the Pacific, the vessel witnessed the opening stages of a coronavirus outbreak among its sailors. By the time the vessel docked at Guam, at least 100 cases of COVID-19 had been recorded, and it was clear that the virus would spread unchecked through the tightly packed aircraft carrier unless something could be done to get crew members off the ship. After some delay, Crozier raised the alarm over the issue in an unclassified internal email. The Navy relented and allowed the crew to disembark, but not before stripping Crozier of his command.

Crozier’s decision to challenge the naval high command over the wellbeing of his crew has made him one of the most widely celebrated public figures of the COVID-19 response. Crozier has been called “a hero.” He has been compared to Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider. His actions have earned him instant celebrity as a profile in courage. He has been anointed a Great Man — #CrozierForPresident has trended on Twitter.

This is not surprising. Crozier may well have sacrificed his naval career to safeguard the best interests of his sailors, and for that reason his actions are a comforting reassurance that competent, well-meaning individuals are taking the right decisions for our well-being. This is especially clear when they are set against the whims of a president whose attention amid a global crisis has been fixed on the movements of the stock market. It is a contrast with bipartisan congressional leadership who have failed to secure fundamental safeguards for hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars now being jettisoned in an unaccountable corporate bailout that will largely be shaped by private equity. National leaders are failing to execute their offices with even a basic level of competence, and the malfeasance of the federal government’s health response raises questions of criminal culpability. 

America’s colonial present

Yet the Great Man coverage of the Roosevelt saga ignores a deep historical injustice. The coverage ignores the fact that Crozier’s actions endanger the lives of more than 160,000 Guam islanders who are, for all intents and purposes, U.S. colonial subjects. Guam remains on a list of what the UN euphemistically refers to as “Non-Self-Governing Territories”. In the parlance of the U.S. government, Guam is an “unincorporated territory”. The CIA World Factbook observes that the people of Guam enjoy “universal” suffrage, before making a head-scratching qualification: “Guamanians are U.S. citizens but do not vote in U.S. presidential elections”. 

Guam is a U.S. colony. Guamanians do not have meaningful congressional representation. The Pentagon occupies approximately one-third of the island, and its military presence is a source of real danger to the island’s inhabitants. This reality is central to the Roosevelt saga. It is a stark reminder of the colonial blind spot[1] that is the product of deliberate obfuscation by the political elite, and it is among the greatest failings of the Great Man Theory as a way to understand the world: it ignores most of us, most of the time. Americans showed malign neglect toward fellow citizens in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Now, we exhibit a similar indifference as the COVID-19 crisis unfolds. As it turns out, U.S. colonies bear an outsize burden in times of plenty, and are subject to the worst abuses in times of emergency. 

Guam’s leaders have argued that the island cannot absorb the caseload if COVID-19 breaks out en masse. The arrival of the Roosevelt more than doubled the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on Guam. Community leaders have vehemently resisted the push to quarter on their island thousands of sailors who have been exposed to the virus. They have correctly pointed out that the U.S. military is incredibly well resourced, while their island is not. They have noted that placing approximately 3,000 crew members from the Roosevelt in local hotels risks exposing service workers, healthcare staff, and hotel employees to infection. 

These are American citizens. They suffer from the same chronic, systematic shortcomings in healthcare provision that plague American mainlanders, albeit with important qualifications. Guamanians do not have political sway over the way the federal budget is apportioned. They are also among the most economically disadvantaged of Americans. At approximately $36,000, Guam’s per capita GDP places it in a league with the poorest U.S. states. In this sense, only Idaho and Mississippi are worse off, although factoring in relative cost of living would almost certainly place Guam at the bottom of list. 

Notably, this is not the first brush with the novel coronavirus in Guam. In February local authorities did deny an Anglo-American cruise ship permission to dock to offload passengers. At the time, Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero expressed sympathy, but cited an “obligation to protect the people of Guam” as justification for turning the ship away. Despite a request from the State Department, Guam’s leaders made a difficult choice about public health. It was not possible to resist a similar demand from the Pentagon. 

In this respect, the problem facing Guam is not necessarily the harm inflicted by the events — although harm isinflicted. Rather, as Michael Lujan Bevacqua, an activist and assistant professor of Chamorro studies at the University of Guam notes, the problem is “the nature of the relationship that makes such exploitation possible.” 

Solidarity now

The coronavirus crisis will surely intensify the pressure on individuals, states, and nations to turn inward. This must be resisted. Solidarity is now desperately needed. After all, hyper-competitive market forces are among the ugliest consequences (and causes) of the botched COVID-19 response in the U.S. Already, medical professionals are seeing their wages slashed by staffing agencies as hospitals are forced to turn away lucrative non-COVID cases to deal instead with the urgent global health crisis. State departments of health are fighting each other over medical supplies, to the degree that states are making multimillion dollar wildcat deals for N95 masks in McDonald’s parking lots. 

Without doubt, solidarity will be crucial to surviving this pandemic. Solidarity with the crew of the Roosevelt is important — solidarity with Guamanians equally so. To succeed in this, we must first recognize the U.S.’s colonial present. 

Beyond that, we must also distinguish between the military’s rank-and-file and the U.S. military itself. The rank-and-file are often working-class, and in many cases are not even U.S. citizens. The military itself is a political institution of enormous power and financial influence, that is foremost concerned with self-preservation. The Roosevelt sage gives good evidence of this already. 

In a leaked audio recording of his remarks to sailors aboard the Roosevelt, Navy Secretary Thomas Modly chastised crew members for cheering for Crozier as he departed the ship. Modly attempted to blame both Crozier and China for the crisis aboard the vessel. While seeking to drive a wedge between the crew and their captain, Modly told the sailors their duty is: “Not to complain. Everyone is scared about this thing. And let me tell ya something, if this ship was in combat and there were hypersonic missiles coming in at it, you'd be pretty fucking scared too. But you do your jobs. And that's what I expect you to. And that's what I expect every officer on this ship to do, is to do your jobs.”

Seldom is the need for working-class solidarity so clear.

There is hope. As the Great Man theory lost its appeal to historians, new historiographical methods took its place. Among them were microhistory and ‘history from below’, both of which deal with the lives and experiences of ordinary people. By dispensing with the notion that great individuals are historical prime movers, it became possible to recognize — and to dignify — the experiences of the large portions of society that were no longer ignored. We face precisely the same challenge in the present. To rise to the challenge will require undoing harmful austerity policies to build a society that provides the working class with vehicles of social mobility that exist outside the military. So too will it require decolonization, and the recognition of all citizens’ rights. And it will also require building a robust healthcare system capable of handling such crises as well as the everyday health emergencies facing the American working class. 

 [1] This concept is explored in fascinating detail in Daniel Immerwahr’s recent book How to Hide an Empire.