Day 1201 The One Reality

Day 1201 The One Reality

Sunday May 3, 2020 

182 Days until the election on November 3^rd

262 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

The president says he wants to open the country back up again. Some governors are starting to do that. Some never shut down.

The one thing that people agree on is that the first step to stopping a pandemic is to test. Yet, this administration has done little to bring that about. Why? What is Trump scared of? I think it’s three things that cause his lack of action: 1) he’s never had to really do anything, 2) he’s always been able to wiggle out of it, or someone has come and bailed him out, 3) he’s doing what he’s always done (see 1 & 2) and it’s always worked; he therefore does not know how to do anything else, and he’s lazy and doesn’t want to learn how to do anything else. 

To restate what I said above in more highbrow terms: Trump is incurious, lazy and apathetic.

We are now seeing the Republican conservative right wing playbook play out. If you like what has happened to our country then you are no doubt happy with the state of the nation and the world. If you are one who calls themself a Republican, or a conservative and you aren’t happy with the state of the nation or the world then I suggest you take a deep breath and a serious look around and see what your party’s ideology and actions have wrought. (Please don’t preach “this isn’t what I stand for”, “this is what true blah blah blah is”… No MFer this is exactly what it is.) The funny thing about conservatives is that they say they don’t like socialism and they don’t like folks getting hand outs, yet they are the ones taking the biggest handouts and wrangling for the best socialist policies for themselves possible. (Oh, I’m sorry. We’ve given Steve Mnuchin, the foreclosure king of California, $500,000,000,000.00 to spend anyway he wants without any oversight and YOU want to say what?)

Don’t try and blame this on Hillary or Obama or Nancy or Chuck or anyone else.

Your president said he’s done a spectacular job. Has he?

The fact that he is using: the FBI to investigate whether hospital workers are stealing masks to sell on the black market, FEMA to seize orders of PPE from states, the AG to argue that god knows, I forget, all I read is that Barr is taking the wrong side on whatever case is coming up. The fact that Trump fired or reassigned ( take your pick ): the guy who was heading up the development of vaccines for the government,  the inspector generals who make sure money is being spent the way it is supposed to be, and the list goes on and on. The fact that when people have been begging at him, screaming at him, arguing with him, pleading with him, to invoke the War Powers Act to galvanize this nation to produce the stuff we need to fight this pandemic and he hasn’t, but instead used it to force meat packers back into infected work conditions, says something. I’m not sure what, but it’s not good. 

The fact that he was given intelligence briefings in early January and repeatedly through every month of this year and did nothing has been called: a failure of leadership, dereliction of duty, and other things far worse.

What Trump’s inactions and actions have shown us is how fragile our experiment in democracy really is. He and the virus have exposed deep flaws and problems in our systems. We are left with fundamental questions to examine and choose.

Do we like the way he and his advisors and political appointees and sycophants are running things? Do we like the way he and the gang are handling the economy? What about our health care system? Do we like having hospitals that aren’t really equipped or set up to take care of the sick?

So what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen. Do I have a crystal ball? No. You don’t need one. You don’t need common sense. You don’t need nothing, because it will happen right before your eyes.

Some governors will open up their states. More people will get sick and die. There will be spikes in those places and those governors will say, “Huh.” Trump will say, “I disagreed with them doing it.” The economy will get worse. More people will lose their jobs. More businesses will go bankrupt and out of business, and the president will say, “Not my fault.”

Any questions?

PS The Pyramid of Kinich Kakmo, Izamal, Mexico