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  By the time I post this, those numbers will be outdated.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.