My last commentary marked the one-week anniversary of our nation’s coronavirus crash with a description of how it had affected me thus far. Here, I want to expand the lens to some of the national implications of this crisis.
PRESIDENT FLIP-FLOP
By now you’ve probably seen the list of fatuous statements the President made over the past two months regarding the supposedly minimal threat posed by the novel coronavirus and how his team had the situation well in hand—from “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control” on Jan. 21 to “Anybody who wants to get a test can get a test” on March 6 and “I’m not concerned at all” the following day.
Among the moronic comments he made along the way were “Looks like by April … it miraculously goes away” (Feb. 10 rally), “We’re very close to a vaccine” (Feb. 25 news conference), “the 15 [cases in the U.S.] within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero” (Feb. 26 news conference), “You take a solid flu vaccine—you don’t think that would have an impact or much of an impact on corona?” (March 2), and “I didn’t know people died from flu” (March 6).
It was also on March 6, during a tour of the CDC, that the president bragged about his grasp of science, saying, “People are surprised that I understand it. … Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
On March 11, the final morning my cast and I got to perform “The Journal of Ben Uchida” and I went to my book group meeting in the evening, the president finally started to concede to reality. His address to the nation that day announced restrictions on travel from Europe, which he characteristically blamed for the spread of the virus . . . although he exempted England and the rest of the UK, which made no scientific sense, but that happened to be where the president owns several hotels and golf courses.
Once events caught up with him and his team managed to convince him he couldn’t just talk his way out of this one, he not only changed his tune but tried to alter history, as he has done so many times in the past. On Tuesday, he asserted, “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
TOTAL LACK OF LEADERSHIP
Sure, fella. This doesn’t make him look any better. The implication is that the president chose to keep the impending pandemic a secret from the nation just to surprise us later. It’s a shame thousands of U.S. citizens will die after this little mind game.
More insidious news broke a day later: several Congresspersons, having received secret briefings about the potential threat in late January, sold off millions of dollars in stock, which appears to have been an especially selfish and deadly version of insider trading. Officials not only profited from privileged information, but did not care to warn their fellow citizens or spring into action to protect their lives. Short of going to war over a natural resource like oil, this looks like putting profits over the lives of fellow citizens.
Most of us who could see, long before be miraculously survived the November 2016 election, that the Incumbent was a con artist, a flagrant narcissist, a liar, and a serial sexual abuser. Even he hadn’t expected to win it, and didn’t even start out wanting to. (He even promised his wife he would NOT be president, aware that she didn’t want that.) We have repeatedly been astonished by how much his supporters were willing to forgive, write off, and overlook.
THIS time, we tell ourselves, they’ll finally give up on him. THIS time, they’ll admit he wasn’t up to the job and he never thinks of us but only himself. THIS time, they’ll accept it was a mistake to let him anywhere near the Oval Office, where he has been stealing millions from the taxpayers—well over $100 million for his golf trips, and hundreds of thousands just to house Secret Service agents (at inflated charges) on vacations to properties the President owns.
Unfortunately, the pattern appears to have been set in stone and remains unalterable. Thousands of Americans will die from this pandemic—perhaps tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands—and the Incumbent’s 35 to 40 percent base may still not decline. The stakes for the November election have undoubtedly shifted, but it’s probably too early—all but impossible, really—to say how.
WHAT NOW?
In fact, it’s far too soon to predict much of anything. Before I turn to some of the underlying and long-term issues in my next blog piece, I’d like to pose some questions that may become increasingly pertinent:
1. As residents in the urban centers hold on by arranging to have prepared food and groceries home delivered, how will citizens in the rural areas survive? Will they start to flock to the cities? Or might they turn on one another?
2. As we all dip into whatever savings we have or/then increasingly incur debt to pay our bills, will the banks eventually cut us some slack, or will they insist on holding all their customers to the word of their contracts, so we all become even MORE dependent on the corporations and whatever scraps they allow government officials to compensate us with?
3. Will those of us who assiduously stayed home for weeks or months to ascertain that we and our loved ones are apparently okay, come out only to find the heedless ones have infected all public places and surfaces, sucked up all resources, and collapsed the transportation and medical infrastructure so our good behavior has availed us nothing?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment