In my post this past weekend about the COVID-19 crisis, I tried to cover the proverbial waterfront in writing about it. There is a lot to discuss, obviously. And, as it has become topics A through Z in the media, I realize that, along with all of us, I'll be re-visiting the subject on a regular basis, even if that means I'll be largely adding to or updating my discussion of different aspects of the crisis. But there's one aspect of it that can't be discussed enough, even if the repetition becomes overwhelming. That aspect isn't the virus' threat to our lives. It's the virus' threat to our political freedom--to our democracy itself.
I'm not talking about social mobility or economic opportunity when I say this. I'm talking about the powers our government is willing to assume, without our consent (or, worse yet, with it), over our day-to-day lives, or even over our election system--our ability to choose who governs us. Within this century, we have already had a taste of how this works. The 9/11 tragedy led to, among other things, the enactment of the PATRIOT Act, which has been re-enacted despite concerns on both sides of the ideological fence about the extent to which it amounts to a unilateral surrender of our most basic constitutional rights. Now, in the face of a very different and perhaps more dangerous threat to our safety, further surrender of those rights may be on the table.
Bill Barr is a name that should be written or uttered with the utmost contempt. From the moment he became the T**** Administration's Attorney General, he has done everything in his power to act as though his "client" is not the country, but the man who appointed him. After all, that's how T**** treats everyone who works for him: not as professionals with the independent knowledge and experience to do their jobs, but as indentured servants with no responsibility except to obey, even if obedience requires them to rebel against every inch of what they know.
Barr, however, doesn't seem to object to this expectation. Far from it. Indeed, he has gone out of his way, against formidable competition from other toadies working for T**** (here's looking at you, Secretary of State Pompeo) to be Number One when it comes to waiting hand and foot on Dear Leader. First, there was the gamesmanship with the Mueller report This was followed up with the even worse gamesmanship with the impeachment investigation and the subsequent trial. Now, however, he's really poised to top himself.
Take a look.
You'll notice, if you look at the article, that no rationale is provided for this blatantly unconstitutional power grab, other than the fact of the pandemic itself. This is T**** 101: if you can fill people with enough fear, and then manipulate that fear with rhetoric (whether factual or not), you can get them to practically beg you to be as big a bastard as you want to be. Or, if you please, to hand that role off to a willing sycophant. Enter Bill Barr, stage extreme right, carrying a copy of the Constitution in one grimy paw, and a sharp pair of scissors in the other.
It offers a measure of comfort, however small it may be right now, to know that not all Republicans are willing to torch our most basic rights for the sake of short-term political gain. Tale a few minutes to read this piece from the Atlantic, written by a deputy attorney general for George H.W. Bush. He says everything that needs in this moment to tell you what Bill Barr really is, culminating in an utterly justified call for his resignation. That call hasn't been heeded, of course, and won't be. But it does tell all of us what we should think about Barr's latest proposal, and how little heed should be given to it.
In fact, as terrifying as the virus itself can be, we should be no less terrified by how that fear can easily be manipulated to do damage not just to our lives, but to our entire way of life, to what we hope we can leave one day (hopefully, far in the future) to our children and grandchildren). As a lawyer, I know how easy it is to abuse the "slippery slope" concept in making an argument But the truth is that it need only take a few small, easily-digestible steps to reach a point at which freedom is little more than a slogan.
It has already happened in Hungary, a nation with an admitted history of despotism, but which in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War had been one of the new democracies that emerged from the rubble of the Warsaw Pact. T**** and his cronies aren't worried about this, of course. But you should be. We can only hope that we will have an election this fall that will allow us to elect a real President, one who will have to deal with this and an thousand other catastrophes.
When (and, G-d willing, if) that happens, one of the first things that should be taken up is this. Or, even better, a Constitutional amendment that allows voters in federal elections to do what they can do in state elections: elect an independent Attorney General whose allegiance will be directly to the voters, and not to a President who expects him or her to be a toady.
And in the meantime, Barr's "proposal,' and anything else like it, should get the same response from the rest of us: give it a long walk off a short pier.
Monday, March 30, 2020
Saturday, March 28, 2020
COVID-19: One Plague Leads To Another
Where do I start?
That's how I felt when I sat down after the 2016 election. Now I feel the same way again, and fundamentally for the same reason: D***** T****. Yes, I know he's not the COVID-19 virus. But he is, and always has been, a plague. And, for the reasons that make him a plague in the first place, he has helped to unleash another one on the entire country, and perhaps beyond it as well.
I'll take a few steps back from our own awful moment, on a day when both the number of COVID-19 cases and new unemployment claims both exploded, and focus on two aspects of the crisis that, had they been handled differently would have made all the difference in the world. Handling them differently would not have kept the virus out of the U.S.. But doing so would have saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. And, to focus for a moment on the economic impact of the virus, the only aspect that seems of real interest to T**** and his followers (more on that later), it might have saved both the labor and financial markets.
First and foremost, don't be deceived by the question of whether we had any advance warning: we did, and enough to have gotten far ahead of where we are in trying to flatten the proverbial curve. We have known for decades that a pandemic on the scale (or worse) of the 1918 flu could easily stop our lives and societies in their tracks. The Obama Administration learned this lesson the hard way, with the H1N1 crisis, and responded to that crisis by putting in place resources and personnel to get ahead of the next one. As a result, when the next one came along in the form of Ebola, we were ahead. And Obama's people did what they could to educate T****'s incoming team about the dangers, the need to be prepared, and how to do it. And, even though many members of that team are no longer on it, T**** still had intelligence reports about what was happening in China this past winter to put him on notice that there was a danger, and he had a duty to respond immediately in order to stop it.
We, of course, now know that T**** is consistently derelict when it comes to his duty. He's never seen the Presidency as anything but another trophy property, something to promote his self-image, not an opportunity to reach outside of himself to serve a greater good. For T****, there is no greater good beyond himself. And, thanks to that spiritual failure, he is a personal plague that has enabled a medical plague, one that, regardless of what is done going forward, will be with us for a long time, and will require quarantine practices that will have to be extensive, both in physical scope and duration.
I have said all along, even before the 2016 election, that anyone who studied T****'s track record over four decades would not elect him to the presidency of a washroom. Time and again, I have thought about his open, public mockery of the mannerisms of a disabled reporter, and thought that it told people, or should have told them, everything you needed to know about keeping him out of public office. His campaign was not much different from his business career: self-serving to the point of not merely getting himself ahead, but finding ways to push others further behind him in the process.
As one person who knew about his New York real estate career once said, with T****, it was never enough to merely make money off of a deal. There also had to be a kind of "moral larceny" involved in the transaction; otherwise, there would be no "thrill" involved. You can read more about this here. It's entirely safe to say that, by "moral larceny," the person quoted was refering to T****'s propensity for screwing people over. His conduct over the past three-plus years shows that age has not withered nor custom staled that propensity.
As described in detail here, as well as here, T**** is fundamentally a narcissist. He is quite literally in love with himself, to the point at which he thinks he is destined for greatness, and the rest of us should either get out of his way, or sign on to support his crusade of self-magnification. This explains the fact that no one who works for him displays any sort of independent thinking about anything--and, should they make the mistake of doing so, it explains why their association with T**** swiftly ends.
Narcissism explains why T**** accepts praise often for things he has not done or even addressed, and why he delegates blame even when every arrow of evidence points to him as the source of failure. It also goes some distance toward explaining his chronic laziness. Why work at all, when you are destined for greatness, and can persuade others to believe it as well and thereby be willing to do all of your dirty work? Finally, it explains why he was so willing to take credit for the economic recovery that began under Barack Obama's White House tenure. And, as we have seen recently, narcissism explains why he was willing to shift blame for the stock market crash that clearly reflected his own failure to heed the early COVID-19 warnings. It would be poetic justice for Democrats to repay T****'s hijacking of Obama's work with commercials that set the record straight.
Does that sound overly partisan to you? Perhaps it is. I'm having a hard time calibrating the level at which it's acceptable to be political about a crisis that has already enveloped all of us, and that will require the highest degree of national unity if we're to get through it. But T****'s own actions have made that calibration all the harder to perform. Let's start by discussing the second aspect of this crisis that should have been handled differently, something that is absolutely fundamental in a pandemic: testing that is freely and easily available to the entire population. Testing reveals the scope and direction of the problem, and points toward the cheapest and fastest way of turning the corner on fighting the virus. Testing in a situation like this, put simply (and crudely, which I do without apologies) is a fucking obvious course of action.
But not to a world-class narcissist like T****. If you only care about your image, you do what you have to do to polish it, even if that means multiplying and extending the suffering of others, which is why he was willing to keep a cruise ship full of inflected people at sea indefinitely, for the sake of keeping the numbers down. It is, in fact, why he has done everything he possibly can to avoid widespread testing. He doesn't care about ending the crisis. He cares about managing the public information that can either make him look like the hero he thinks he is, or the fraud that those who have looked at his record know that he really is.
The problem with his attempts at doing this, of course, is that it doesn't take very long for him to stumble over his past statements. Of late, T**** has been saying, over and over again, that no one could have anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a baldfaced lie; the truth is that the U.S. would have been far better positioned to combat COVID-19, with hundreds (if not thousands) of lives saved in the process, had T**** not gone out of his way to unilaterally disarm the nation's public health system in the name of saving short-term money. As Obama's Vice-President, Joe Biden, describes in detail here, T**** inherited a system that was designed to fight the domestic spread of international illnesses, and systematically destroyed it. In fact, T**** openly bragged about doing so, again and again.
And that's only the beginning of his pattern of deception. Here is a step-by-step outline of T****'s efforts to lie his way out of having to deal with a looming catastrophe. Here is an example of how he has actively gone out of his way to hide information about the catastrophe. Bad enough? Well, stick around; it gets even worse. T**** has actually attempted to profiteer off of COVID-19, and, in the process, has done so in the name of patriotism. Here's a sub-cellar beyond even that: he's using the virus to settle political scores. On top of all of this, he's put out misinformation about possible "cures" for COVID-19 that has already jeopardized lives.
If you're one of those people who thinks, or used to think, that T****'s corruption could be stopped or at least tamed by the strength of the nation's' political and governmental institutions, you should think again, if you've not already done so. COVID-19 has provided even more reason to do so. Republicans have shown no hesitation to exploit the moment for its own unrelated political purposes, and even to put their own response to the crisis on hold to celebrate those purposes. In fact, their response has revealed the party's only true philosophical calling: everyone for themselves. This is why some of them have focused on profiteering illegally from the suffering, or, in the case of Rand Paul, protect themselves, even while jeopardizing others. And no amount of criticism from within their own party, even from someone who has iconic status within it, can dissuade them from acting out in the most blatantly corrupt ways possible.
Speaking of institutions, what about the so-called Fourth Estate, the media? Well, I gave up on their ability to call out this President on anything. Media outlets in Washington and across the country have known for decades what T**** really is. Despite that fact, they give him unlimited coverage at the expense of far worthier stories for one crudely simple reason: he prints money for them. The COVID-19 pandemic has only magnified that ability, even when he puts on daily news conferences that are meant to offer reassurance but only add to the pyramid of his previous lies.
I said a few paragraphs ago that that testing is absolutely fundamental in successfully fighting a pandemic. Even T**** knows that, which is why he has elected to minimize testing in the hopes of concealing his failure to get ahead of the virus. Has the media called him out on it? Hell, no. Not even when provoked. And, then, there's Fox, which is in a class all by itself when it comes to disinformation in the name of conservatism. Here's a guided tour of how completely and systematically the right-wing equivalent of Pravda has, of late, eaten its words without even admitting to chewing.
In this climate, you would expect even the best efforts of Democrats to provide counter-programing and better policy to be systematically squashed or ignored by the media. And, sadly, you would be absolutely right.
And all of this creates raw material that T**** uses for his own benefit I've already described what he fundamentally is: a narcissist. How does he advance his narcissism? Through the creation and subsequent manipulation of chaos Chaos allows him to create an environment that historically has allowed him, most of the time, to at least get away with massive mistakes, and even achieve some sort of accomplishment--for himself, not anyone else. How else do you explain the fact that he went through multiple bankruptcies, while operating in an industry--casino gambling--where success is rigged in favor of ownership? T**** loves bankruptcy. He loves debt. He loves anything that will allow him to shaft anyone who stands in his way. As a consequence, he is, at least in my mind, a two-legged example showing that electing a "businessperson" is not a cure-all for all of our political problems.
T**** is, in fact, systematically generating chaos by slow-walking the response of federal agencies to the pandemic. Take a look. This is precisely why, when it comes to the afore-mentioned press briefings, and the lies contained therein, it would be better if none of us watched them--or, if the need to watch some or parts of them was needed, to ignore anything T**** says during them. It would, of course, help if the press was less willing to broadcast them from start to finish, and/or to do so with more critical commentary than they currently provide. But, as I suggested above, that does not seem likely to happen.
Perhaps it would be better to hope that the media would at least be effective in communicating the brazen willingness of the right wing to root for the deaths of the infected, in the hope that the virus will thereby wear itself out, and allow Wall Street to get back to bring America the great, big, beautiful tomorrow that only Big Business, and its favorite political party. Once again, take a look.
And another. For that matter, one more wouldn't hurt.
If that advocacy seems brazenly self-centered to you, consider the conduct of conservatism's faith wing, the evangelical Christian church and its leadership. To that leadership, there is spiritual, financial, and political gold in our current misery, and they are mining that gold through appeals to the two emotions they love to exploit the most: fear, and guilt. Watching this going on, as a recovering evangelical, is pain on top of pain right now. I'll spare all of you the details of what I went through, beyond what I've already put into this blog. I need to save something for my memoirs. I will add this much: I have always believed that G-d gave us brains because he expects us to think as well as believe, and that G-d guides us in ways that are down to earth as well as miraculous ones. Perhaps this expresses what I'm saying as well as anything does.
Apologies for the digression, and back to the political consequences of the pandemic. They may include efforts at delaying, suspending, or otherwise manipulating the holding and conducting of the primary and general elections this year. In the case of primary elections, this process has already begun, in Louisiana and Ohio, for example. The general election? T**** can't cancel or postpone that--not unless he decides to go full authoritarian, and, while I'm not convinced yet that this will happen, I can easily understand why some people are worried about it. And, while I'm not completely sure that T**** is beyond establishing martial law, I'm also not convinced that it would be his first choice. Basically, he's a lot sneakier than that, and prides himself on sneakiness. Something along the lines of this is more his style. In any case, no one should take anything for granted about our elections, especially after 2016.
If you've made it this far, and I forgive you if you haven't, I admit that this has been a bit of a verbal ramble. It's a complicated subject, one that has multiple angles, reflecting the multiple ways in which the pandemic has affected all of us, and will continue to do so for a long time.
So, where does that leave us?
From the bigger-picture perspective, it may very well be the case that COVID-19 has exposed the extent to which 40 years of conservative ideology grinding down the New Deal and the administrative state it established has left conservatism with a hollow victory, one in which the now-neutered State is no longer able to fulfill its most basic obligation: securing the safety of its people. Indeed, what that grinding process may have done instead is turn us into a nation of mini-T****s, self-centered opportunists with no goal except coming out ahead of everyone else. In its own way, the pandemic has provided opportunities to do just that.
I say these things, however, not to be negative, but to be honest. Being honest, however, also means acknowledging the many ways in which this crisis is providing opportunities to showcase the very best of what we can be as individuals, and as a people. That is especially the case with regard to all of the first responders, both civil servants and private health care professionals. What they are expected to do now is truly (forgive the cliche) a high-wire act without much of a net.
As Americans, and as taxpayers, we should be doing much more for them than we currently are; a corrupt central government is largely responsible for that fact. But look around you There are lots of ways and means by which each of you can contribute to the process of getting all of us through this and getting to better days. If you can do nothing else, please donate to your local hospital, to health care organizations, or any charity whose work is focused on combating COVID-19. And no donation or effort is too small, as long as all of us make some sort of effort.
Perhaps that's the most important point I want to make here. If any good is going to come out of this at all, it's going to be a national realization that we are, as Hillary Clinton tried to tell us three eternal years ago, stronger when we stand together than when we stand alone. She wanted to embrace that ethos in incremental ways. Perhaps that approach is no longer enough, if it ever was. Perhaps this is an opportunity, after 40 years of marching steadfastly and sometimes stupidly in the other direction, to not merely turn around, but to do so in a big way.
I have come to suspect that T****'s reluctance to fully engage the powers of the federal government in combating the pandemic stems from certain advisors whispering in his ear that doing so would be the first step toward creeping socialism and a dictatorship of the proletariat run by Bernie Sanders and AOC. (And yes, Lawrence Kudlow, I'm thinking very specifically about you here.) If that's the case, we're in a lot more danger than we realize, with or without testing. Viruses don't respect borders or ideology. They're just viruses. And they infect whoever they want. And this one, in a matter of months, has already circled the globe. The truth is that COVID-19 has created the second greatest need, after global warming, for international cooperation.
The United States, however, can only contribute to that if it first has national cooperation. And T****, the President of the Red States of America, is as of the moment the single biggest obstacle to making that happen, along with the Republican Party and conservative moment that he has almost entirely co-opted. I don't exaggerate when I say that replacing all of them with a Democratic President and Congress is absolutely essential to the survival not only of the Republic, but the world as well.
And that Democratic President and Congress must not be afraid to address the pandemic with steps as large and as powerful as the virus itself. No "Third Way" politics. No reaching across the aisle just to find out that the other side has come up with new ways to cut off their opponents' hands. No trying to be all things to all people Time instead, at last, to be the right things to every American. If nationalization of industries, short-term or long-term, is what is needed for the literal and physical survival of the Republic and the American people, so be it. Nationalize, and damn the consequences.
This may be the only way by which we can become the nation that we have been promised to become, throughout the centuries. If I can grind my own professional ax for a moment, it may be the means by which we re-discover our most fundamental and salient virtue, as a nation of immigrants.
If we can end the plague of T****, we can end the plague of COVID-19. We can not only once again become a healthy people, but a free and secure one as well.
That's how I felt when I sat down after the 2016 election. Now I feel the same way again, and fundamentally for the same reason: D***** T****. Yes, I know he's not the COVID-19 virus. But he is, and always has been, a plague. And, for the reasons that make him a plague in the first place, he has helped to unleash another one on the entire country, and perhaps beyond it as well.
I'll take a few steps back from our own awful moment, on a day when both the number of COVID-19 cases and new unemployment claims both exploded, and focus on two aspects of the crisis that, had they been handled differently would have made all the difference in the world. Handling them differently would not have kept the virus out of the U.S.. But doing so would have saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. And, to focus for a moment on the economic impact of the virus, the only aspect that seems of real interest to T**** and his followers (more on that later), it might have saved both the labor and financial markets.
First and foremost, don't be deceived by the question of whether we had any advance warning: we did, and enough to have gotten far ahead of where we are in trying to flatten the proverbial curve. We have known for decades that a pandemic on the scale (or worse) of the 1918 flu could easily stop our lives and societies in their tracks. The Obama Administration learned this lesson the hard way, with the H1N1 crisis, and responded to that crisis by putting in place resources and personnel to get ahead of the next one. As a result, when the next one came along in the form of Ebola, we were ahead. And Obama's people did what they could to educate T****'s incoming team about the dangers, the need to be prepared, and how to do it. And, even though many members of that team are no longer on it, T**** still had intelligence reports about what was happening in China this past winter to put him on notice that there was a danger, and he had a duty to respond immediately in order to stop it.
We, of course, now know that T**** is consistently derelict when it comes to his duty. He's never seen the Presidency as anything but another trophy property, something to promote his self-image, not an opportunity to reach outside of himself to serve a greater good. For T****, there is no greater good beyond himself. And, thanks to that spiritual failure, he is a personal plague that has enabled a medical plague, one that, regardless of what is done going forward, will be with us for a long time, and will require quarantine practices that will have to be extensive, both in physical scope and duration.
I have said all along, even before the 2016 election, that anyone who studied T****'s track record over four decades would not elect him to the presidency of a washroom. Time and again, I have thought about his open, public mockery of the mannerisms of a disabled reporter, and thought that it told people, or should have told them, everything you needed to know about keeping him out of public office. His campaign was not much different from his business career: self-serving to the point of not merely getting himself ahead, but finding ways to push others further behind him in the process.
As one person who knew about his New York real estate career once said, with T****, it was never enough to merely make money off of a deal. There also had to be a kind of "moral larceny" involved in the transaction; otherwise, there would be no "thrill" involved. You can read more about this here. It's entirely safe to say that, by "moral larceny," the person quoted was refering to T****'s propensity for screwing people over. His conduct over the past three-plus years shows that age has not withered nor custom staled that propensity.
As described in detail here, as well as here, T**** is fundamentally a narcissist. He is quite literally in love with himself, to the point at which he thinks he is destined for greatness, and the rest of us should either get out of his way, or sign on to support his crusade of self-magnification. This explains the fact that no one who works for him displays any sort of independent thinking about anything--and, should they make the mistake of doing so, it explains why their association with T**** swiftly ends.
Narcissism explains why T**** accepts praise often for things he has not done or even addressed, and why he delegates blame even when every arrow of evidence points to him as the source of failure. It also goes some distance toward explaining his chronic laziness. Why work at all, when you are destined for greatness, and can persuade others to believe it as well and thereby be willing to do all of your dirty work? Finally, it explains why he was so willing to take credit for the economic recovery that began under Barack Obama's White House tenure. And, as we have seen recently, narcissism explains why he was willing to shift blame for the stock market crash that clearly reflected his own failure to heed the early COVID-19 warnings. It would be poetic justice for Democrats to repay T****'s hijacking of Obama's work with commercials that set the record straight.
Does that sound overly partisan to you? Perhaps it is. I'm having a hard time calibrating the level at which it's acceptable to be political about a crisis that has already enveloped all of us, and that will require the highest degree of national unity if we're to get through it. But T****'s own actions have made that calibration all the harder to perform. Let's start by discussing the second aspect of this crisis that should have been handled differently, something that is absolutely fundamental in a pandemic: testing that is freely and easily available to the entire population. Testing reveals the scope and direction of the problem, and points toward the cheapest and fastest way of turning the corner on fighting the virus. Testing in a situation like this, put simply (and crudely, which I do without apologies) is a fucking obvious course of action.
But not to a world-class narcissist like T****. If you only care about your image, you do what you have to do to polish it, even if that means multiplying and extending the suffering of others, which is why he was willing to keep a cruise ship full of inflected people at sea indefinitely, for the sake of keeping the numbers down. It is, in fact, why he has done everything he possibly can to avoid widespread testing. He doesn't care about ending the crisis. He cares about managing the public information that can either make him look like the hero he thinks he is, or the fraud that those who have looked at his record know that he really is.
The problem with his attempts at doing this, of course, is that it doesn't take very long for him to stumble over his past statements. Of late, T**** has been saying, over and over again, that no one could have anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a baldfaced lie; the truth is that the U.S. would have been far better positioned to combat COVID-19, with hundreds (if not thousands) of lives saved in the process, had T**** not gone out of his way to unilaterally disarm the nation's public health system in the name of saving short-term money. As Obama's Vice-President, Joe Biden, describes in detail here, T**** inherited a system that was designed to fight the domestic spread of international illnesses, and systematically destroyed it. In fact, T**** openly bragged about doing so, again and again.
And that's only the beginning of his pattern of deception. Here is a step-by-step outline of T****'s efforts to lie his way out of having to deal with a looming catastrophe. Here is an example of how he has actively gone out of his way to hide information about the catastrophe. Bad enough? Well, stick around; it gets even worse. T**** has actually attempted to profiteer off of COVID-19, and, in the process, has done so in the name of patriotism. Here's a sub-cellar beyond even that: he's using the virus to settle political scores. On top of all of this, he's put out misinformation about possible "cures" for COVID-19 that has already jeopardized lives.
If you're one of those people who thinks, or used to think, that T****'s corruption could be stopped or at least tamed by the strength of the nation's' political and governmental institutions, you should think again, if you've not already done so. COVID-19 has provided even more reason to do so. Republicans have shown no hesitation to exploit the moment for its own unrelated political purposes, and even to put their own response to the crisis on hold to celebrate those purposes. In fact, their response has revealed the party's only true philosophical calling: everyone for themselves. This is why some of them have focused on profiteering illegally from the suffering, or, in the case of Rand Paul, protect themselves, even while jeopardizing others. And no amount of criticism from within their own party, even from someone who has iconic status within it, can dissuade them from acting out in the most blatantly corrupt ways possible.
Speaking of institutions, what about the so-called Fourth Estate, the media? Well, I gave up on their ability to call out this President on anything. Media outlets in Washington and across the country have known for decades what T**** really is. Despite that fact, they give him unlimited coverage at the expense of far worthier stories for one crudely simple reason: he prints money for them. The COVID-19 pandemic has only magnified that ability, even when he puts on daily news conferences that are meant to offer reassurance but only add to the pyramid of his previous lies.
I said a few paragraphs ago that that testing is absolutely fundamental in successfully fighting a pandemic. Even T**** knows that, which is why he has elected to minimize testing in the hopes of concealing his failure to get ahead of the virus. Has the media called him out on it? Hell, no. Not even when provoked. And, then, there's Fox, which is in a class all by itself when it comes to disinformation in the name of conservatism. Here's a guided tour of how completely and systematically the right-wing equivalent of Pravda has, of late, eaten its words without even admitting to chewing.
In this climate, you would expect even the best efforts of Democrats to provide counter-programing and better policy to be systematically squashed or ignored by the media. And, sadly, you would be absolutely right.
And all of this creates raw material that T**** uses for his own benefit I've already described what he fundamentally is: a narcissist. How does he advance his narcissism? Through the creation and subsequent manipulation of chaos Chaos allows him to create an environment that historically has allowed him, most of the time, to at least get away with massive mistakes, and even achieve some sort of accomplishment--for himself, not anyone else. How else do you explain the fact that he went through multiple bankruptcies, while operating in an industry--casino gambling--where success is rigged in favor of ownership? T**** loves bankruptcy. He loves debt. He loves anything that will allow him to shaft anyone who stands in his way. As a consequence, he is, at least in my mind, a two-legged example showing that electing a "businessperson" is not a cure-all for all of our political problems.
T**** is, in fact, systematically generating chaos by slow-walking the response of federal agencies to the pandemic. Take a look. This is precisely why, when it comes to the afore-mentioned press briefings, and the lies contained therein, it would be better if none of us watched them--or, if the need to watch some or parts of them was needed, to ignore anything T**** says during them. It would, of course, help if the press was less willing to broadcast them from start to finish, and/or to do so with more critical commentary than they currently provide. But, as I suggested above, that does not seem likely to happen.
Perhaps it would be better to hope that the media would at least be effective in communicating the brazen willingness of the right wing to root for the deaths of the infected, in the hope that the virus will thereby wear itself out, and allow Wall Street to get back to bring America the great, big, beautiful tomorrow that only Big Business, and its favorite political party. Once again, take a look.
And another. For that matter, one more wouldn't hurt.
If that advocacy seems brazenly self-centered to you, consider the conduct of conservatism's faith wing, the evangelical Christian church and its leadership. To that leadership, there is spiritual, financial, and political gold in our current misery, and they are mining that gold through appeals to the two emotions they love to exploit the most: fear, and guilt. Watching this going on, as a recovering evangelical, is pain on top of pain right now. I'll spare all of you the details of what I went through, beyond what I've already put into this blog. I need to save something for my memoirs. I will add this much: I have always believed that G-d gave us brains because he expects us to think as well as believe, and that G-d guides us in ways that are down to earth as well as miraculous ones. Perhaps this expresses what I'm saying as well as anything does.
Apologies for the digression, and back to the political consequences of the pandemic. They may include efforts at delaying, suspending, or otherwise manipulating the holding and conducting of the primary and general elections this year. In the case of primary elections, this process has already begun, in Louisiana and Ohio, for example. The general election? T**** can't cancel or postpone that--not unless he decides to go full authoritarian, and, while I'm not convinced yet that this will happen, I can easily understand why some people are worried about it. And, while I'm not completely sure that T**** is beyond establishing martial law, I'm also not convinced that it would be his first choice. Basically, he's a lot sneakier than that, and prides himself on sneakiness. Something along the lines of this is more his style. In any case, no one should take anything for granted about our elections, especially after 2016.
If you've made it this far, and I forgive you if you haven't, I admit that this has been a bit of a verbal ramble. It's a complicated subject, one that has multiple angles, reflecting the multiple ways in which the pandemic has affected all of us, and will continue to do so for a long time.
So, where does that leave us?
From the bigger-picture perspective, it may very well be the case that COVID-19 has exposed the extent to which 40 years of conservative ideology grinding down the New Deal and the administrative state it established has left conservatism with a hollow victory, one in which the now-neutered State is no longer able to fulfill its most basic obligation: securing the safety of its people. Indeed, what that grinding process may have done instead is turn us into a nation of mini-T****s, self-centered opportunists with no goal except coming out ahead of everyone else. In its own way, the pandemic has provided opportunities to do just that.
I say these things, however, not to be negative, but to be honest. Being honest, however, also means acknowledging the many ways in which this crisis is providing opportunities to showcase the very best of what we can be as individuals, and as a people. That is especially the case with regard to all of the first responders, both civil servants and private health care professionals. What they are expected to do now is truly (forgive the cliche) a high-wire act without much of a net.
As Americans, and as taxpayers, we should be doing much more for them than we currently are; a corrupt central government is largely responsible for that fact. But look around you There are lots of ways and means by which each of you can contribute to the process of getting all of us through this and getting to better days. If you can do nothing else, please donate to your local hospital, to health care organizations, or any charity whose work is focused on combating COVID-19. And no donation or effort is too small, as long as all of us make some sort of effort.
Perhaps that's the most important point I want to make here. If any good is going to come out of this at all, it's going to be a national realization that we are, as Hillary Clinton tried to tell us three eternal years ago, stronger when we stand together than when we stand alone. She wanted to embrace that ethos in incremental ways. Perhaps that approach is no longer enough, if it ever was. Perhaps this is an opportunity, after 40 years of marching steadfastly and sometimes stupidly in the other direction, to not merely turn around, but to do so in a big way.
I have come to suspect that T****'s reluctance to fully engage the powers of the federal government in combating the pandemic stems from certain advisors whispering in his ear that doing so would be the first step toward creeping socialism and a dictatorship of the proletariat run by Bernie Sanders and AOC. (And yes, Lawrence Kudlow, I'm thinking very specifically about you here.) If that's the case, we're in a lot more danger than we realize, with or without testing. Viruses don't respect borders or ideology. They're just viruses. And they infect whoever they want. And this one, in a matter of months, has already circled the globe. The truth is that COVID-19 has created the second greatest need, after global warming, for international cooperation.
The United States, however, can only contribute to that if it first has national cooperation. And T****, the President of the Red States of America, is as of the moment the single biggest obstacle to making that happen, along with the Republican Party and conservative moment that he has almost entirely co-opted. I don't exaggerate when I say that replacing all of them with a Democratic President and Congress is absolutely essential to the survival not only of the Republic, but the world as well.
And that Democratic President and Congress must not be afraid to address the pandemic with steps as large and as powerful as the virus itself. No "Third Way" politics. No reaching across the aisle just to find out that the other side has come up with new ways to cut off their opponents' hands. No trying to be all things to all people Time instead, at last, to be the right things to every American. If nationalization of industries, short-term or long-term, is what is needed for the literal and physical survival of the Republic and the American people, so be it. Nationalize, and damn the consequences.
This may be the only way by which we can become the nation that we have been promised to become, throughout the centuries. If I can grind my own professional ax for a moment, it may be the means by which we re-discover our most fundamental and salient virtue, as a nation of immigrants.
If we can end the plague of T****, we can end the plague of COVID-19. We can not only once again become a healthy people, but a free and secure one as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)