Category Archives: Politics

A Man Without Qualities

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Well, I’ve had the virus, been hospitalized and am now very, very happy to be back home, seeing sunshine again.

In a hospital bed, you have a lot of free time. Hanging around; waiting for your next meal (Saint Barnabas’s simple offering of a plain, almost juiceless cheeseburger, a side of macaroni and cheese, steamed broccoli and a brownie was almost sublime); being visited every so often by hospital staff, well-guarded and unrecognizable deep inside their personal protective gear; them giving you “just a little pinch”, checking your vital signs or asking about your current state of affairs; being given that anti-malaria drug for a while apparently for no good reason; “wearing” that silly “gown” that won’t stay on; dozing off; occasionally losing an electrode; wondering when the hell you will get out of there.

I didn’t turn on the TV in the eight days I was there. (Nor, after they moved me to a double room, did my roommate, who was in worse shape than I was.)

I did look at news on my phone. It wasn’t good.

Aside from the obvious, the thing that got me the most was how people who have power or cultural significance are being so nice and respectful to the monster child.

Of course, they do point out his deficiencies. Larry David quoted in The New York Times:

You know, it’s an amazing thing. The man has not one redeeming quality. You could take some of the worst dictators in history and I’m sure that all of them, you could find one decent quality. Stalin could have had one decent quality, we don’t know!

Fran Lebowitz in The New Yorker:

Every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with him.

Tom Nichols in The Atlantic:

[He] is a spiritual black hole.

But have you ever seen a quote in which someone demanded that he resign? The acting Secretary of the Navy said something very bad and was quickly hit with demands to go. He left. Why not call on the worst president in our history to go too? If someone is so totally and dangerously unfit for a job, shouldn’t our political and cultural leaders have demanded his resignation, over and over again?

I know, the Electoral College put him there and (of course) odds are he wouldn’t go. Nevertheless, it’s remarkable how his resignation never comes up in our national conversation.

Another aspect of his benign treatment that especially bothered me (from my prone position) was (and still is) the daily “briefings” he’s been doing. I don’t know which organizations are part of it, but he’s allowed to spew and blather, unfiltered, to America whenever he chooses. It is truly outrageous. They broadcast his rallies from beginning to end during the 2016 campaign. Now they’re repeating the offense with these mini-rallies. He promotes himself, attacks and attacks, lies, spreads nonsense and they’re allowing him to do it. He is the president, but that makes it worse, since he speaks to some of us with authority. It is amazingly reckless that they’re letting him do it.

It’s a beautiful spring day here in New Jersey from an aesthetic perspective. Governor Murphy reports we’re at 58,000 cases, with 7,600 hospitalized, 1,700 in critical condition and 2,200 dead.

Please be safe and be kind.

The Bestest Words of All, the Strongest Perfect Words

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Today, from the actual mouth of our actual president:

I’ve always known this is a real — this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.

Yes, and when the first cases were reported in China, our president began working very strongly on a vaccine in his White House laboratory that will be available to everyone, in a very short time, the greatest vaccine ever, fantastic. If only the do-nothing Democrats and the fake media hadn’t underestimated the problem and fought him every step of the way. Thank you, thank you, Mr. President!

But perhaps a review of the president’s statements reveals a less heroic approach to the problem?

Elsewhere in the reality-based world, Politico has a tracker showing the number of tests being performed in the US state by state, including the results.

For another dose of reality, The New York Times offers “Inside the Coronavirus Response: A Case Study in the White House Under T—-“. 

Senior aides battling one another for turf, and advisers protecting their own standing. A president who is racked by indecision and quick to blame others and who views events through the lens of how the news media covers them. A pervasive distrust of career government professionals, and disregard for their recommendations. And a powerful son-in-law whom aides fear crossing, but who is among the few people the president trusts.

The culture that President T—- has fostered and abided by for more than three years in the White House has shaped his administration’s response to a deadly pandemic that is upending his presidency and the rest of the country, with dramatic changes to how Americans live their daily lives.

It explains how Mr. T—- could announce he was dismissing his acting chief of staff as the crisis grew more severe, creating even less clarity in an already fractured chain of command. And it was a major factor in the president’s reluctance to even acknowledge a looming crisis, for fear of rattling the financial markets that serve as his political weather vane…. [More here.]

But the pivot has certainly begun. (We have always been at war with Oceania.)

So Many Best Words

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David Leonhardt of The New York Times has provided “A Complete List of T—-’s Attempts to Play Down Coronavirus”. But it’s not really a list. It’s an article about the past eight weeks that documents how the president “could have taken action … but didn’t” (it’s actually worse than that, since he stopped other people from taking action). 

I couldn’t stand to read it straight through. However, a researcher at Yale named Gregg Gonsalves read it and then kindly created a list of the president’s commentary. Here it is with a few additions:

January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

January 30: “We have it very well under control.”

February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

February 10:  “A lot of people think that goes away with the heat…. We’re in great shape though.”

February 19: “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”

February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

February 26: “The 15 [cases in the US] within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

February 26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”

February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

February 28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

February 29: “My administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to confront the spread of this disease.  We moved very early.” [Both total lies.]

March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”

March 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”

March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”

March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test [of course, that was a lie and still isn’t true]. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”

March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… 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.”

March 6: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault” [so let’s keep them off shore].

March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus” [they didn’t].

March 9: “This blindsided the world” [it didn’t].

March 13: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

Mr. Gonzalves’s conclusion:

When this is all over there should be televised Congressional hearings [on this absolute collapse of leadership].

[The president and Republicans in Congress] have imperiled the lives of millions of Americans with their incompetence & narcissism, lust for power and cult-like groupthink.

Mr. Leonhardt’s conclusion:

At every point, experts have emphasized that the country could reduce those terrible numbers by taking action. And at almost every point, the president has ignored their advice and insisted, “It’s going to be just fine.”

Earlier today, as the stock market collapsed, the president admitted that “it’s bad”.

Still the Best Words

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A few minutes ago, the president finally acknowledged the seriousness of our situation.

When asked to rate his own performance, however, he said “10 out of 10”.

When asked if the buck stops with him, he said: “Yeah, normally, but I think when you hear the — this has never been done before in this country”.

The Best Words

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“Four score and seven years ago….”

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

“The world must be made safe for democracy.”

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“The buck stops here.”

“Ask not what you’re country can do for you….”

“Tear down this wall…”

“We are the change that we seek.”

A few words can define a presidency.

Thus, when asked if he took responsibility for America’s inability to test enough of us for COVID-19, the president said:

I don’t take responsibility at all.