Tag: Coronovirus

Trump’s Ineptitude is on Full Display

How can the people who are supposed to be leading the fight against Covid-19 make the ridiculous statements about how wonderful Trump has been during this crisis out loud and in public?  Have these idiots really gotten so far into the cult of Trump that they think that their bullshit won’t be called out as this virus does what viruses do – spreads to as many human hosts as it can no matter how many lies this administration disseminates to the contrary?  Trump is so fixated on keeping the number of reported cases as low as possible as a means of protecting his re-election that the truth of what is going on is being kept from the rest of us.  The inability of anyone within the executive branch to make Trump understand the reality of the situation as it is right now is stunning, yet there is no interest from the Republicans to do anything that could prevent the unmitigated catastrophe that is looming over the country because of the unprecedented incompetence of the Trump administration from top to bottom. 

If there was anyone in the Republican Party that hasn’t drunk the Kool aid, they’re too intimidated by Trump’s bullying to do the right thing during a real crisis that will have lasting repercussions for a significant portion of our population.  Trump lacks any ability to acknowledge that his refusal to listen to the experts about Covid-19 prevented us from preparing for this pandemic, and he never interests himself in learning anything.  Somehow, he has been allowed to think that knows all he needs to know about everything there is, period.  This may be acceptable behavior when you own your own company, but it really sucks for the rest of us when it’s our president who is never able to admit his ignorance about any subject.

“Who knew healthcare could be so complicated?”

“Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

Seriously??? 

The frightening thing is that I’m afraid he believes it when he says things like that, which is what makes him so much more dangerous, especially with the Republicans choosing Dear Leader Trump over their oath to uphold the constitution.  We have never had an entire political party make the decision that supporting their president no matter what he does was their number one priority, and the founders never even considered this a possibility.  I suspect, however, they would have been vehemently opposed to the power that the office has accumulated since WWII in no small part by the legislative branch’s acquiescence to having its powers eroded by presidents of both parties.  Now, the federal government is under the direction of the most incompetent person ever to win the presidency and we are being put at significant risk by the lack of anyone capable of knowing the right action right now.  Trump’s fragile ego has somehow become the most important thing to Trump’s appointees in charge of our federal government. 

It is of no benefit to the country for us to have to hear these lackeys while they sing their obligatory praise of the Donald.  Unfortunately for all of them, we will not forget these repeated scenes of their fealty to this idiot in chief they continue to protect.  I can only hope that the Republican Party as a politically influential organization ceases to exist. 

We expect our federal government to step in to protect us in times of crisis like the current Covid-19 pandemic, but Trump and his administration have so severely gutted our preparedness out of a mistaken belief that the experts fired earlier in his term would be happy to return immediately in the event of a problem.  There is no reasonable expectation that this lack of foresight will ever be acknowledged, as Trump has already said he “has no responsibility” for any of the failures of his administration’s handling of the coronavirus.  Trump is clearly incapable of empathy because he fails at it every time he’s been called on to offer comfort to the country.  He keeps giving speeches that include multiple easily-verifiable errors because his insistence on placing total loyalty at the top of the job requirements for every position in his administration could not have resulted in anything else.

But none of this has caused anyone in the Republican Party to stand up and say the quiet part out loud – that Trump’s refusal to employ experts in numerous vital areas in the federal government has resulted in the most bungled response to a highly contagious disease since 1918.  Their continued silence will be directly responsible for many of their own followers contracting the disease because they think it’s a “democrat hoax”.  The thing is that the virus is apolitical, and it’s going to infect people regardless of whether or not they ‘believe’ it’s really a problem.  This is where the Fox ‘News’ bubble becomes downright dangerous.  It’s time for all the right-wing media, particularly Rupert Murdoch, to insist that that all their media outlets immediately cease spreading disinformation and outright lies about the pandemic while simultaneously providing actionable facts to their viewers.  The viewers who think they are being informed actual facts by these and similar outlets believe these fools, and are the people most likely to discount the facts and ignore recommendations to limit public interactions that can ‘flatten the curve’ & keep our healthcare system from being overloaded by the very sick.

I’ve never seen my local Wegmans or Whole Foods stores with empty shelves and produce bins.  Apparently people in Cherry Hill buy tons of root vegetables during a crisis, and I wonder if there’s an underground spinach thing I haven’t heard about yet???  I don’t understand the stocking up of fresh dairy products, either, since by virtue of its freshness it has a limited shelf life.  I have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday before I head to a different Whole Foods and Wegmans to locate the rest of my weekly groceries.  That’s the problem when people are uncertain about what to do – they do what they can think of to do instead of doing what would be most useful for the times.

We must agree to unite under the nominee….

I’ve been busy living life the last week or so, watching while the Trump administration shows the world further proof of its ineptitude as it faces a crisis of monumental proportions – the coronavirus and the pandemic now in progress. 

Trump has made it clear that his number one concern, as always, is himself.  He’s so worried about how this will affect his re-election that he cannot see past himself.  The fact that he’s spent more time worrying about the status of the stock market than about how many people already in the country are carrying and transmitting the virus should be all the proof needed for all citizens to rise up and demand his removal from office. 

Trump’s inability to absorb basic facts about anything not directly affecting him personally are on stark display when he repeatedly insists that vaccines will be available “rapidly”, that there won’t be more cases of the virus here over time, or that belatedly trying to restrict travel to and from countries that have reported the highest number of Covid-19 can make a difference in the worsening spread already happening here.  Anonymous sources within his administration have been quoted saying they can’t figure out “what the fuck is going on.”   

Trump has designated his lackey Mike Pence, who as governor of Indiana refused to consider needle-exchange programs to reduce the spread of HIV, to head the government’s charge to address the pandemic instead of choosing a healthcare professional because, after all, Pence will keep the election uppermost in his mind.  This is a recipe for disaster, and Pence’s requirement that all information released to the public by the CDC and NIH must be funneled through him only serves to further delegitimize anything that the administration says about the pandemic. 

The public needs to be able to believe the things that officials say regarding this crisis, and no one who has paid attention to the Trump administration has any reason to expect that they will provide us with real, actionable information or even basic facts.  Why would anyone believe they have the ability to put steps in place that will lead to a resolution before thousands have sickened or died as a result?  Both Trump and Mick Mulvaney have claimed that there is nothing to worry about, blaming the media for inciting panic or trying to say that it’s a “Democrat hoax”, that Democrats want millions to die to damage Trump’s re-election.  Somehow, this is now acceptable political speech in America, at least for Republicans, and it reveals yet again that, for Trump and his minions, nothing matters if it helps keep them in power.

Trump has put Richard Grenell, an unqualified political sycophant in place as his “acting” DNI while nominating another incompetent and (hard to fathom) even less qualified fool, Representative John Ratcliffe again as the official DNI.  This is likely a ploy by Trump exploit a loophole in the law governing Cabinet vacancies that would have required Grenell to leave as acting DNI by March 11th, allowing him to keep Grenell as acting DNI for up to seven extra months while Ratcliffe’s nomination flounders in the Senate.  Trump’s previous attempt in 2019 to put this clown in the position was opposed by Senate Democrats and Republicans because he’s not only unqualified for the position, he’s also lied about his prior record.  Trump doesn’t find him unqualified, because the only qualification that matters is loyalty to Trump on Fox.  That law governing Cabinet vacancies now forces the Senate to choose between two idiots for a position that was created to keep us safe.  There is nothing about either of these men that should make any of us feel safe.

I do not know how we as a democracy are going to survive the Trump presidency.  The damage done in the first three years of his time in the White House has been so overwhelming that it’s been impossible to keep up with it all.  He’s put bad actors in positions of power to successfully roll back wide-ranging regulations to benefit corporate benefactors going back fifty years.  His administration’s corruption is truly unprecedented, and the Republican Party is all in on the continued abuse of a system never designed to have someone so totally unethical in the seat of power. 

The primaries now underway are concerning, too.  Senator Sanders, an Independent who is now running for the second time for the Democratic nomination, has garnered massive numbers of supporters who seem willing once again to throw the presidential election to Trump if Bernie doesn’t win the nomination.  If ever there were a time for all of us who recognize the existential threat to both our democracy and the planet of a second Trump term that time is now.  Vote with your heart in the primary, but for the sake of the future of all of us and our children and grandchildren, once a nominee has been named, it is imperative that we all get behind whoever that nominee is and vote the ticket. 

If we cannot hold the house while taking both the presidency and the Senate to send Mitch McConnell back to Kentucky, the country we will be left with will be unrecognizable.  Continuing to leave the Republicans in any position of power will ensure that a generation will be adversely affected by their racist, misogynistic and reprehensible policies designed to keep them in charge while preventing the rest of us from moving forward with policies that the majority of citizens believe should be enacted.  No one who really wants things to change for the better should be willing to do anything except vote for the Democratic nominee for president, because the changes that will occur during another four years of Trump include the very real possibility of autocratic rule overtaking democracy completely.  The likelihood of the positive changes we all hope for would be none, at least for our lifetimes.  That’s something I cannot bear to consider.

So talk to your friends and family, and tell them how important it is for them to do what’s best for our democracy for the long-term.  I don’t plan to vote for Bernie in the primary, but I will throw my support behind him one hundred percent if he wins the nomination, because that is what we have to do to take our country back from the Republicans who have gerrymandered and voter suppressed their way into power.  We must vote for Democrats up and down the ticket in order to undo their minority grip on the system; only by doing that do we stand a chance at implementing the fundamental changes that we all want to truly make our democracy live up to the “One person, one vote” standard we all want it to be.  Minority control was baked into the Constitution to manage the slave population on whose suffering our country was built, the original sin of America.  It is past time to make foundational changes that ensure we are no longer forced by that minority to be held down by their repressive and backwards policies.