As I
write this it's another gloomy, gray day here on the N. California
coast. The news as always is also equally gloomy. The pandemic rages
on. And Trump-driven new cycles, too, rage on. We are all sick of
masks, precautions, hand washing and most of all the loss of
normality. But the worst part of this collective misfortune is having
the worst President in history during this unprecedented crisis.
The data below are from the today's NY Times on how things
now stand. Not good!
US
GLOBAL
Note sharp descent in hard hit countries (except Iran).
As is
obvious the pandemic is not letting up one iota. Worse the USA, with
the most cases in the world and the most deaths, is
seeing its caseload not
trending sharply down from the peak as has occurred almost
every other country that got hit about the time we did. Instead we have leveled off at a high number of
new cases coming every day - and now that's increasing.
Instead
of going precipitously down after hitting a peak in April, our graph
has flattened into an ugly plateau with a stubbornly large number of
new cases still coming in each day. The
US, which never ceases to brag about its wealth and power, has
only 4.2% of the world's population but has 25.7% of Covid-19 fatalities.
How
could we have blown it so bad? How can Donald Trump even dare to show
his face in public? Where are the mobs with pitchforks?
Of
course Trump's fumble re: this emergency is just the latest in a
litany of monumentally bad moves. In just three and a half years his
damage is immeasurable. A partial list includes withdrawal from the
Paris climate accords, abandonment of the Iran nuclear
deal, walking away from the World Health Organization,
eviscerating the EPA and commandeering the Justice Department
and Department of Homeland Security for his own nefarious
purposes both personal and political. His ineptitude geopolitically
has fully undermined our credibility on the international stage. Our
State Department has been gutted and perverted and is no longer a
force of diplomatic soft power to counterbalance our historical and
often tragic over reliance on our massive over-built military machine.
And a most alarming is his reckless cancellation a whole host
of arms treaties painfully negotiated by both
Democrats and Republican Administrations.
And then
there is his sick admiration for the world’s most brutal dictators.
Does he have ambitions in that direction? Alarmingly many fear that
his support from heavily armed conspiracy-crazed right wing militia
groups along with many rank and file cops across country could
encourage him to refuse to leave office if defeated in November.
Now that
our Blacks citizenry have had enough of routine police encounters
becoming an excuse for summary executions, they are now robustly
politically engaged. With a backdrop of a raging pandemic they are
daily massing on the streets backed by a new generation of young
white, Asian and Latino progressives. Trump and his supporters are
being pushed into a dangerous defensive posture. The facilitating GOP
overlords who benefited financially from the Trump Administration's
cavalcade of corruption are running scared as two sides of a divided
America face off. As Jim Morrison, poet, revolutionary, rabble
rousing and self destructive madman said in the rebellious Sixties,
“They got the guns we got the numbers”.
We also have the votes!
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