The Isolation Diaries No. 9

"I haven't heard about testing in weeks," the president said. "We've tested more now than any nation in the world. We've got these great tests and we come out with another one tomorrow that's, you know, almost instantaneous testing. But I haven't heard about testing being a problem." Donald J. Trump, March 30, 2020

Some days ago, I wrote that Donald Trump’s statements about the Coronavirus pandemic would become more unhinged and batshit as time goes on and the Trump Gang’s incompetence becomes glaringly clear. In the past two days Trump has boasted about ratings for his daily press briefings, comparing them to Monday Night Football, claimed that if only 100,000 Americans die from Covid-19, it should be considered a success for his administration, and, as noted in the quote above from March 30, repeated his dubious claim that the US has tested more people than any nation in the world.  

Let’s talk a bit about testing, one of the most important elements of a containment strategy. In the county where I live this is what’s happening, as reported by Tyler Hayden of the Santa Barbara Independent: “Of the 88 known COVID-19 cases in Santa Barbara on Monday ― a dramatic jump from 47 just three days earlier ― 14 people are hospitalized, with 10 in the Intensive Care Unit. Nationwide testing shortages continue to minimize the true scope of the regional outbreak, as only 726 Santa Barbara residents ― or just over 0.15 percent of the county’s population ― have been screened.” 

In the midst of a devastating pandemic, the President of the United States uses a daily briefing -- not to reassure or comfort the nation -- but to brag about his TV ratings. Viewers tune in to the briefings because they want information about the virus and the federal government’s response, not because they love Trump or believe his bullshit. Human beings are fascinated by trainwrecks, car accidents, magicians and carnival barkers. Most of us would stop and watch if we happened across a Great Dane fornicating with a chihuahua simply because that’s not something one sees everyday. As always, Trump draws the conclusion that makes him feel good about his pathetic self.

Sweet Jesus. 

Is the choice between saving lives or saving the economy? Is it that black and white? Can the country have a functioning economy with millions of sick citizens? For business as usual to return isn’t the first order of business to control the virus? 

We walk to Ralphs on Carrillo Street. Traffic is light. An MTD bus rolls down Figueroa Street carrying one passenger. Today we don’t have to wait in line. The shelves are well-stocked, the meat section looks like it would on a normal day, almond milk is available, and we even score a 9-pack of toilet paper. It’s sitting right there for the taking. I almost can’t believe it. Up by the check-out counters the blue tape on the floor has been replaced with real signs that say, “Wait here,” and now between the customers and the checker there’s a sheet of plexiglass. Goes to show how the abnormal becomes a whole lot less strange in just a few weeks. 

What will the new normal be when we come out the other side of this pandemic? When the danger passes and we emerge from our homes (if we’re fortunate enough to have a home), will we be like residents in a neighborhood or city that has been under aerial bombardment, curious to see what’s destroyed and gone forever, what can be salvaged, rebuilt, dusted off and restarted? 

On the walk home I call my brother in Tillamook, Oregon. He tells me its windy and damp, temperature in the mid-40’s at three in the afternoon. Eight weeks ago my brother stopped watching all TV news and tells me the effect on his nerves has been dramatic, like shedding a water-logged coat. Is Trump still in power, he asks. Yes, I say, but this virus has him by the balls and every last one of his deficiencies is exposed. Will that matter in November? asks my brother. I’m not sure, I say. It’s all upside down. In the end I suppose it depends on the good judgment and commonsense of the American people, and by that I mean the decent people who voted for Trump in 2016 out of desperation and disgust, who felt abandoned and neglected by both political parties. These people don’t attend Trump’s creepy rallies, wear MAGA caps, or believe everything Trump says. They tossed Molotov cocktail votes in 2016 because they were fed up with being run over and left for dead by the economic wheels. They rolled the dice once with Trump, but I’m betting they will not be fooled again. I hope you’re right my brother says. Hey, do you have enough TP?

My family remains healthy. My daughter had two online classes today. My son is experimenting with Julia Child recipes and claims to have added a pound to his 127 pound frame. Gabriel is surviving forced isolation much better than we thought he would. 

100,000 dead Americans is acceptable to Donald Trump. The projected figure of as many as 2.2 million dead was that high because the Trump Gang dithered for nearly six weeks, ignoring advice from inside the administration that Covid-19 was coming. Trump brushed aside the warning, said we were ready, that Covid-19 would pass the great and powerful and exceptional USA by. Trump was blase until the cases multiplied and the stock market nosedived. 

The rent’s paid, the power’s on, the water runs clear from the tap, and we have enough food and drink. We have enough money -- for now. We’re fortunate, incredibly fortunate. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 8

“The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: ‘We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine.’” Ed Pilkington and Tom McCarthy, The Guardian

The sun is shining here in Santa Barbara, shining on the shutdown American Riviera, on the white stucco and red tile, on the vineyards and the beaches, on the palm and eucalyptus trees. A mild breeze stirs the gum trees in my backyard. If I didn’t know about the Covid-19 pandemic, the day would appear full of promise. 

According to an MSNBC report I saw earlier, there are now 121,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US, and the death toll has topped 2,000.  By the time I post this, those numbers will be outdated. 

I had this frightening thought yesterday: What if Trump is the last elected (by the un-democratic Electoral College, let’s not forget) president? What if this pandemic deepens, overwhelms the healthcare system, snaps the spine of the economy, and Trump declares martial law, or cancels the 2020 election? 

As self-isolation continues, I am struggling with patience and focus, with staying in the present moment. In my head I create all manner of doomsday scenarios. I think of The Road by Cormac McCarthy and my mood darkens and Fear leaps on my back. How bad will this get? Where will we be a month from now? My daughter blames her mother and me for keeping her from seeing her friends. “I hate you!” she screams when we forbid her, for the fiftieth time, from visiting her boyfriend. She doesn’t understand the risks because she’s young and feels invincible. She doesn’t see that she can place our health in jeopardy if she fails to practice social distancing. 

Trump has the state mouthpiece (FOX News) to help him launch his propaganda missiles at the American people, but the corporate media is doing Trump a big favor with live coverage of his daily “briefings”. Carpet-bombing with lies is a better description of these affairs. As lie after lie tumbles from Trump’s lips, blood splatters on Trump’s small hands, the direct result of his incredible incompetence and ineptitude, his reliance on what he believes is an infallible gut instinct, and his running professional people out of government agencies; political hacks, sycophants, grifters, and weasels are no help in a pandemic. 

But here we are. No coordinated federal response. States, cities, counties and hamlets are on their own, forced to fill the leadership vacuum as best they can while Trump tries to rewrite history, from a tale of abject failure to  the greatest triumph in American history. Trump is Patton, Eisenhower and MacArthur rolled into one bloated, bloviating package. With the help of FOX News, Trump stuffs his past statements down the Memory Hole, sends them spinning into oblivion, but with every death that might have been prevented had Trump’s dysfunctional administration acted in January, when it was told a pandemic was coming, the statements return, the lies return. The dead do not. 

I need a haircut. I haven’t shaved in three days. I am fascinated by the fragility of human existence, and how quickly life changes. The apparent solidity and predictability of our lives has been upended by this pandemic. Nothing is ever as it seems. The stories we tell ourselves are often misleading, false, incomplete. The one aspect of human life we know with certainty is that it will end, but we are not allowed to know when or how. The ground is always shifting beneath our feet; only the mystics, sages, and artists can hope to maintain their balance. They know that death is our nature. 

I wonder what happened to Donald Trump, what physical or psychological trauma bent his soul and left a scar on his heart? How did he become indifferent to suffering? Why must Trump make the pandemic about himself? Who told young Donald that the universe revolves around him, that only his needs and desires are valid? How did Donald Trump become a failed human being? Why is he so insecure? 

Cradle hope like a newborn child. In my reading I come across this bit from Maria Popova: “We hope precisely because we are aware that terrible outcomes are always possible and often probable, but that the choices we make can impact the outcomes.”

Finally, a thought: elections will not produce the necessary structural changes that the United States needs; only mass protest and acts of civil disobedience can tackle that daunting task. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 7

“Are they a symptom or a new social illness? Are they the mirror of our fate or the hammer that will shatter mirror and fate together?” Roberto Bolano, 2666

March 26, 2020: "I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals, sometimes they'll have two ventilators," Trump said. "And now, all of a sudden they're saying can we order 30,000 ventilators. So, look, it's a very bad situation, we haven't seen anything like it, but the end result is we gotta get back to work, and I think we can start by opening up certain parts of the country."

Around midmorning today (March 27), I read that the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US was 86,158. 

Five hours later, the number had surpassed 100,000. 

This morning the Santa Barbara Independent reported 32 cases in Santa Barbara County. 

As we go through this public health crisis, it’s important to keep reality in view and not let our thinking or emotions be swayed by propaganda. I try to read reliable news sources, meaning more independent than corporate sources, and watch or listen as widely as I can to as many sensible voices as possible. I want critique of the system, analysis, a search for root causes. OK, I’m weird, but this stuff matters, the truth matters, and in the midst of a pandemic, competence matters most of all.

This is what Donald J. Trump said on February 19, 2020: “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”

Here’s a thought: when we emerge on the other side of this pandemic, and we will, don’t be surprised if America soon thereafter has three, and only three, retailers: Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Costco. 

The complete dysfunction of the American political system has been on display all week, leading to Trump earlier today signing a gargantuan economic stimulus package. Let’s think about this for a moment. As I wrote a day ago (or is it two days, three?), the country is only in the early stages of the pandemic, but look how quickly Congress -- which in routine times cannot accomplish much of anything except increasing defense spending or cutting taxes for the wealthiest citizens and corporations or making life more precarious for the working class -- found the energy to write a massive economic stimulus bill that heavily favors the wealthy and corporations. 

Note that the bill passed with bipartisan support; corporate welfare always passes with bipartisan support. Financial assistance for working people, the suddenly unemployed, those without medical insurance, is dwarfed by the giveaway to the financial and political elite. And how much assistance was earmarked for states like New York, California, Washington and Illinois, to name just a few, that will blow massive holes in their budgets as they battle this pandemic? Some, probably, but not enough. 

And speaking of governors. If you want help from the federal government, you first must kiss Donald Trump’s ass. You must bow and say, “My King, you are great and merciful, and your leadership in this time of darkness is like a klieg light. May I please have 30,000 ventilators?”

Please don’t ignore this, dear reader. In the midst of a pandemic, the President of the United States has time -- makes time -- to verbally attack governors who fail to display requisite subservience to him, calling Jay Inslee of Washington a complainer and failed presidential candidate, and asking if the governor of Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer), whose name he couldn’t recall, if she knows what’s going on. In a pandemic, Donald Trump demands flattery. 

Stable genius, huh? The only stable thing about Trump is his sociopathy. 

Congress has screwed the people again, just as it did in 2008-2009. Debate on the bill was limited. Public input was unnecessary. The political elites decided what was best for the lower classes. The size of the package didn’t cause endless hand-wringing about deficits and frenzied calls for the nation to live within its means. That only happens when the proposal on the table is Medicare-for-All, student loan forgiveness, or the Green New Deal. 

Will the stimulus bill mark the beginning of the corporate coup? Or has the corporate coup already happened?

When Donald Trump says, “the real people want to go back to work”, who is he talking about? Who are the “real” people? Where do they reside? 

When Trump says he wants to reopen parts of the country, does he mean places like West Virginia and Wyoming? 

Trump and his gang of looters has treated a humanitarian crisis as an economic crisis. Trump’s entire frame of reference is Money. He starts with money and ends with money, and his primary concern is his money. 

Trump urged GM to convert its Lordstown, Ohio plant to manufacture ventilators. GM sold Lordstown in 2019. Trump also made this bizarre claim: “I’m bringing back many, many car factories to Michigan…” Did anyone tell the United Auto Workers about these factories? Are they like the phantom steel mills Trump brought back to Pennsylvania? 

Donald Trump’s theory of governance: “I have a feeling.”

People in America are dying and Donald J. Trump is running from his failure, backtracking, zigzagging, dodging, blaming, boasting, deflecting, making bogus comparisons between a pandemic and automobile fatalities, lying, flat out lying. Even in a pandemic, Trump cannot put his pettiness aside. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 6

“Nobody can know the full consequences of their actions, and history is full of small acts that changed the world in surprising ways.” Rebecca Solnit

I think fourteen days have passed since the World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus a pandemic. The death toll in the United States passed 1,000 yesterday. A month ago, Donald J. Trump said the number of cases was going down.

According to the Santa Barbara Independent, there are 26 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Santa Barbara County. 

My thoughts ricochet around like a .45 caliber bullet in a metal drum, from personal concerns like our TP supply, to thoughts about my job, money, staying healthy ourselves and hoping our friends and relatives remain healthy, to larger concerns about the long-term effects of this pandemic, and, because I can’t restrain myself, obsessively tracking the dismal response by the ruling class in general and the Trump Gang in particular. 

I’m watching too many segments of MSNBC on YouTube, reading too many news sources, checking Facebook too often. I feel it taking a psychic toll. In the midst of a pandemic the President of the United States doesn’t divert from his tried and true playbook: boast, brag, blame, and whine. 

Where are the Democrats? Day after day the people hear from Trump at his propaganda briefings, and naturally the word from the Malignant One is rosy, on the upswing, America is rising like the proverbial phoenix. “Nobody’s done the job we’ve done,” Trump says. Have you noticed how many times Trump describes his telephone conversations with governors and corporate CEO’s as “great“? The conversations are great if the governor or CEO first praises Trump, kisses his flabby white ass. “As we near the end of our battle,” Trump said yesterday, as if we’re at the end of the pandemic rather than the early stages of what may very well become a long siege. CEO-types and CNBC and Fox News yakkers pound the drums for a return to business-as-usual. Our fuedal lords are eager to send the serfs back to work. I fear that Trump -- by virtue of the Big Lie technique, the constant repitition of false or misleading statements -- is winning the narrative war. 

Lacking a Democratic response from Reality, many citizens -- if polling is reliable -- believe Trump is doing a fine job. In times of crisis, a sitting American president typically sees a bump in his approval rating, as George W. Bush did after 9/11. Prior to 9/11, if you remember, W was a little boy lost, wandering in circles with his pants down and snot hanging from his nose. It’s a normal response to support the president, who many people view as the embodiment of the government and nation, but how any one can watch Trump sputter, spew and lie, and believe the man gives a shit about the public welfare, is beyond my ability to comprehend. Trump is concerned about Trump, his re-election bid, his company, his resort properties, the stock market. Trump has enough functioning gray matter left (or maybe it’s feral survival instinct) to know that he will not win re-election if the country is mired in a depression, and unemployment is 25 or 30 percent. 

Trump found time to ridicule Senator Mitt Romney on Twitter, calling Romney a RINO (Republican in Name Only), after Trump learned that Romney tested negative for the Coronavirus. Even in this dire situation, Trump can’t muster an ounce of class. 

Trump lied yesterday about the extent of Coronavirus testing. While testing in the US is increasing, as it absolutely must, when viewed in proportional terms, we still lag behind the rest of the world. As the BBC reported, South Korea with a population of around 50 million has tested 1 in 150 people; the US, with a population of 330 million or so, has tested 1 in 1000.

No, Trump, we’re not winning. You’re calling the race over while the country looks for the starting line. You’re hawking the dangerous idea that the worst is behind us. The morgues are filling up in NYC, and healthcare workers there are wearing garbage bags as protective gowns.  

As I write this, unemployment claims in the US have surged to 3.3 million. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones has gained 1,158 points. Let this sink in. What does it tell you about what -- and who -- matters in America? 

Here’s a question: are you willing to risk your health, and possibly your life, not to mention the health of your family, friends and co-workers, for Donald J. Trump’s re-election? Because Trump is clearly willing to gamble our lives for his political advantage. 

Let that sink in, too. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 5

“Rum will be absolutely necessary to get through this night -- to polish these notes, this shameful diary…” Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Health care workers, doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians, all of them, must be protected at all costs, no matter the inconvenience to the Trump Junta. They are the critical first line of defense against a pandemic. Let’s pray that the all-knowing free market provides enough protective equipment, gowns, ventilators, masks, and gloves to protect our health care workers. Because if they go down, we go down. 

But what if the private sector can’t do it, or won’t do it unless the price is divine, the contract guaranteed, no matter how many might die from shoddy manufacturing, lax quality, and late deliveries? Do you trust Corporate America? Exxon-Mobil? Facebook? Goldman Sachs? General Motors? Do you really want to outsource the response to this pandemic, or any other crisis, to Corporate America? Do you really want to roll those dice? 

Public and private must find some kind of equilibrium for long-term stability. Our  40-year-trek to the dark Heart of Capitalism is nearing its inevitable end. The fabled gates where every human person has an equal shot at fortune and comfort are within sight, but for those who cannot, or will not, keep up, well, they will get what they earned. And if a few worthy souls claim all the gold and silver, silks and spices, concubines and slaves, musicians and mystics, palaces and private islands, it is simply the natural order asserting its dominance. It has always been the same, the weak do not survive. The Law of the Jungle. Fuck the Enlightenment. Fuck Humanism! Ayn Rand forever! 

Unless you land at the top, you will be exploited in some way. Sometimes the higher you climb the less you are exploited, but the less exploited you are the more power you have to exploit others. Life is paradox, right?  

Trump deployed the National Guard to California and New York, if I’m not mistaken. What’s the Guard doing? What’s their mission? Who do they answer to? Will hospitals be cordoned off before too long?

I had trouble figuring out it was Tuesday. Only Tuesday. In her bedroom my daughter wails that she cannot take anymore. Why can’t my boyfriend come over? The 6’ rule is BS, it’s stupid. I’m losing my mind and nobody cares! At 8:30 a.m. we are in line at Trader Joe’s on Milpas, with maybe 10 people before us. I was glad to see a separate line for senior citizens. The store opens at 9:00. We got in at 9:30. Everyone in line was orderly, compliant, patient, but in the faces of many I saw fatigue, drawn expressions, stooped shoulders, an inwardness which made total sense. I watch my breathing, in and out. We’ll find everything we need, I tell myself, with the exception of TP. One must get in line very early to score TP. 

The store is orderly and well-stocked. Almond milk is back in good supply. Half/half. Butter. Two dozen eggs! Yogurt. Corn Flakes. Two cans of tuna! Two cans of vegetarian chili! Six bottles of wine. One sick pack of beer. French Roast Coffee. Cheese. Wheat bread. Tortillas. Potato chips. We load up. We’re rolling. At first I noticed I was feeling anxious, like I had to grab what we needed immediately lest we go without, that I had to move fast, as if on a timed scavenger hunt. The days of pushing the cart leisurely up and the aisles are gone. When it felt vaguely competitive I caught myself, turned around and took a panoramic look. With the exception of Coronavirus Gold (toilet paper), there was plenty of everything to go around. There was no clock above the entrance ticking the minutes away. Breathe, man, think, keep your cool, take it slow.  

The NYSE closed up 2,113 points today. Trump will misinterpret this momentary surge as a sure sign that his brilliant leadership is saving the stock market from ruin. Almost single-handedly, Trump brings the stock market back from the dead. That will be the story, repeated and repeated and repeated; like a drum in the night, and a chainsaw at dawn, you will not be able to ignore it. “I alone can fix it.”

God help us all.  

To fight a pandemic like the coronavirus, a nation needs a robust public health response. Now the bad news: the US doesn’t have a robust public health system. Ours was gutted and allowed to bleed to death. Far too costly, and not the proper role of government. The glorious free market is the best way to deliver care when it is needed, justified, cost-benefit analyzed, and paid for in advance. 

American capitalism is a virus, do you understand? It attacks society’s equilibrium. We’ve let it go untreated for decades, a failure of political will, courage, and values. Money won the day. Idealism is for suckers and fools, comfort and justice for the rich.  

It’s the Hunger Games in the USA, at least in the great State of Texas, where the Lt. Governor recently suggested the elderly should sacrifice (by dying off?) to save the economy for the younger generation. Don’t tell me this statement surprises you? You’ve been paying attention, haven’t you? It’s just business, man, just business. In late stage capitalism, human life loses value.

Trump must think America is like one of his hotels, where the gilded front doors are thrown open after an elaborately staged ribbon cutting ceremony. “I’m happy to say that we updated the plumbing, at great expense to me personally, but we did a great job and in record time, the greatest plumbing job in history, with no collusion or quid pro quo, and it’s just fantastic that we’re open for business again. And here’s the thing I’m most proud of -- we’re opening on Easter Sunday, a glorious day, a magnificent day, it’s an all-American ressurection. God’s very happy today, I can tell you that.”

Oh, Donald, you ignorant fuck, do you think we’ve been out rennovating, checking on the contractors, polishing the railings? Re-open? Are you serious? Do you think America is like the neighborhood barber shop, it opens, it closes, the proprietor shuts it down for a few days vacation in Miami, turns it back on by flipping a sign in the window when he returns? Donald, this is a nation. It’s very big. It’s complicated. There’s no on/off switch. 

Our salvation lies in the Market. We have to feed it what it needs, what it wants, what it desires. The hours and days of our lives? Our very souls? No, your cotton tops, graybeards, codgers, old biddies, the broken and infirm, grandparents. Perhaps this will be enough, but I must warn you, the market is insatiable. It’s a beast of unimaginable cunning, cruelty, and viciousness, whose hunger and thirst can never be slaked! It has three inch claws, laser vision, armor plating, razor-wire teeth, and an acute sense of smell. The elderly will go first, but more will be needed, always more will be needed. More sacrifice, more blood.  

Donald J. Trump: “After my great and unprecedented response to the evil and deadly Chinese coronavirus, I must be re-elected with the biggest margin of victory ever recorded. I, and only I, no one else, just me, saw this pandemic coming. I am king, sultan, supreme leader, generalisimo, president, Top Gun, Sage on the Stage, Grand Wizard, Pope. I am the sun and the moon. I am Midas. I am TRUMP!”

Here’s Trump’s plan in a nutshell: “Let’s just see what happens.”

The Isolation Diaries No. 4

“Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning -- that meaning being invariably a moralistic one.” Susan Sontag

It rained here overnight, steady. I listened to the sound of water running in the rain gutter above our bedroom window as I read 2666 by Roberto Bolano. My young daughter, 18-years-old, has difficulty understanding the significance of the coronavirus and the social distancing measures necessary to slow the spread of infection. She misses her friends, wants to hang out with her boyfriend. I remind myself, over and over, that I was once her age, and just as heedless of commonsense, caution, and advice. 

I fear that pandemics and other large scale disruptions due to climate change will be normal for my daughter’s generation. Unless we change direction now, politically, economically, and socially, calamity on calamity will be the future. 

Our son is in Los Angeles, staying with a friend, but may soon come home to Santa Barbara. When he arrives our small apartment will become tiny, nerves will become frayed, and tempers short. But Gabriel will be home. On this morning when I can see blue sky out the window, and the deck is still wet from last night’s rain, there’s no end in sight for this enforced isolation. But it will end at some point, the crisis will pass, and we will collect the pieces and begin anew. Epidemics and pandemics are part of the human story. The question will be: do we learn from this experience and start making fundamental change, or simply attempt to pick up where we left off? The rulers and their political servants will want the latter and will exert all their power to make it so; they will never willingly let go of a system that has rewarded them so lavishly. 

Mehdi Hasan of The Intercept called on Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Donald J. Trump from office. Here’s part of what Hasan wrote:

“This is a president who rambles, rants, and raves; who spent weeks downplaying the spread of the novel coronavirus and ignoring warnings from his own intelligence agencies; who claimed to be unaware that Americans who need tests are unable to get them; who uses press briefings not to inform the public but to regularly attack the press; who went golfing while health professionals begged for resources and equipment; who has repeatedly contradicted his own top scientists by pushing unproven drugs as a treatment for Covid-19; who tried to buy a vaccine from Germany but only for “exclusive” use in the United States; who took a break from crisis management to go on Twitter and complain about Hillary Clinton’s emails and Benghazi.”

Cometh the hour, cometh the imbecile. Trump is a clear and present danger to this country. Watch any of his press briefings and tell me the man is not mentally unfit. For political advantage Trump will gladly trade the health of American citizens. We’re in the early stages of a health crisis and Trump somehow, apropo of nothing, takes the opportunity to babble about how much money the presidency has cost him. Money and power is all Trump cares about, which is likely the reason he will fight like a wolverine to keep his tax returns secret. (The returns will probably show that Trump isn’t as wealthy as he has longed boasted.) It has never been more clear and obvious that Trump is utterly incompetent. Why can’t his cult followers see this? Why can’t the GOP see it? How many Americans must die before the blinders come off?  

The Senate stimulus bill or whatever they’re calling it, reportedly includes a $500 billion (think of this number and what it could supply for the American working-class) corporate slush fund to be controlled by Steve Mnuchin at Treasury...that alone should be a disqualification. Mnuchin is a vulture. What’s really mind-blowing about this is to consider how wealthy have-it-alls, unlike the poor, are never required to account for the government largesse they receive. No work requirements, surly case managers, time limits, amount limits, home inspections, or other intrusive scrutiny. The wealthy give themselves billions, even trillions of dollars, with no strings or questions attached, while the poor must prove, and prove again, their need for a few thousand dollars. The arrogance and hypocrisy stun the mind. 

I hope, as Patti Smith sings, we have the power to redeem the work of fools. 

The gum trees in the backyard are dripping, the ground is soaked. The sound of the wind chimes is mournful.