The Isolation Diaries No. 26

“What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off.” Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

Numbers: more than 1,000,000 cases of Covid-19 in America, with the death toll pushing past 60,000 souls, and both numbers very likely underreported. In Santa Barbara County, 485 confirmed cases, with the federal prison in Lompoc functioning as an epicenter. Unemployment claims across the nation are moving toward 30 million, but again, those are new claims and don’t include people who were unemployed or out of the workforce before the pandemic hit. 

But Trump & Co. are moving on as if the pandemic has peaked. Leaving the scene of an accident as quickly as possible, as they were taught to do by their fathers. Jared Kushner pumped a gob of hand sanitizer on his delicate fingers, rubbed them together, and basically declared victory over the virus. “Back to work, everybody, back to school, children. My father-in-law needs to juice the economy and he’s willing to sacrifice your miserable lives to meet that end. Kindly move along.”

The full-throated chorus to open the economy is a cynical election year gambit. Trump is trying to wrest prosperity from the hands of an impending depression. If the gambit fails and we experience a resurgence of Covid-19, Trump & Co. will turn the page in their perverse hymnal and claim that it’s the fault of individual governors; they will sing in unison that Trump never told governors to reopen or even encouraged them to reopen. (Roll the tape of Trump pressuring governors to reopen their states.)

Trump still believes he can outrun the pandemic, remain a step ahead of a merciless beast that wants to feast on his flesh. A TV creation, a true believer in make-believe, Trump is always creating his next illusion. It’s over, we won. We’re number one in testing. We built a billion ventilators in a week. Every American who needs a Coronavirus test can have one. Hydroxychloroquine. UV light. Disinfect the lungs by injection. Fake news. It’s just a flu. It will magically disappear. We have it under total control. Nobody could have seen this coming. We inherited a broken system. It’s all China’s fault. 

It’s government by spectacle, by stunt, by lie. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama sliced the truth with the skill of a top surgeon; Trump dynamites the truth as it suits him, heedless of collateral damage. 

What if, as the journalist Chris Hedges said in an interview recently, these days will be remembered as the “good” times? 

The tale is all-too-familiar. Powerful white man, younger female subordinate, a culture of male impunity. 

Where are the Democrats? Why aren’t Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer using their voices to counter Trump’s propoganda? Joe Biden is holed up in his basement, trying to square his story about one of his former aides, Tara Reade, whose allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her back in the early 90’s has resurfaced with renewed purchase. As if Biden needed another woman problem. The Democratic Party establishment and corporate media are reluctant to give Reade’s allegations any air, opting instead to see if the storm blows out. But you don’t think Trump and his people will let Tara Reade fade into obscurity, do you? Even though it’s rather ironic for Donald Trump, with his closetful of sexual skeletons, to accuse any man of being a sleazy, groping creep. You don’t think the Trump camp stopped searching for dirt on Joe Biden after Ukraine, do you? Deep down Trump’s a mobster and using scandal to advance his interests is second nature, part of normal operations. “Hey, Gino, I need you to dig me up some dirt on a guy.”

Is Tara Reade telling the truth? I don’t know enough about the case to say, though I’m not prepared to dismiss her allegation out of hand. What would make a woman make such an allegation public in the midst of a pandemic and a critical election year? Would a woman make the allegation public knowing the backlash and media scrutiny that would follow? Reade had to know she would be panned, downplayed and dismissed, and that her motives and character judged. For me the tale is all-too-familiar: Powerful white man, younger female subordinate, a culture of male impunity. 

We’re all Joads now. 

What a country we have! The most important election, possibly in America’s history, may very well come down to two old, decrepit white men, Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden, both gropers of females, both with blood on their hands, Biden from his Head Senate Cheerleader role in the run-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, and Trump, whose singular stupidity, incompetence, and laziness cost precious preparation time and almost certainly contributed to thousands of deaths from Covid-19. 

I pull The Grapes of Wrath from my bookshelf and open it at random. “But -- you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat.”

Yes, Mr. Steinbeck, it’s as true now as it was then. We’re all Joads now. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 25

“This is like a repeat of 2008, where Congress is dumping staggering sums of money into the hands of Wall Street thieves.” Chris Hedges. 

I spend three and a half hours in the deserted office. I feel clumsy in my own work space. Surrounded by familiar things, I still can’t work at my normal efficiency. Every task before me feels monumental. It’s one of those hit-the-wall days, a low ebb. They happen in bleak times like this. Stress, anxiety, worry, boredom, singularly, or all at once. I feel impatient, harried by my thoughts. When I return home I’m edgy with my wife. Has the apartment shrunk in my short absence? 

We’re at a stand-off with our 18-year-old daughter, who continues to blame her parents for the total disruption of her young, important life. She can’t hang with her friends or see her boyfriend; she asks if she can visit him, we tell her, no, not unless you’re prepared to move in with him. No going to and fro like Heidi Klum skipping down the runway. Uneasy truce. On the positive side the portable AC unit my wife ordered arrived. Our defense against the stifling days to come. My poor wife suffers in the heat, it wipes her out; fans don’t cut it. We have a swamp cooler that helps, but when it’s 85 or 90 outside it feels like 100 inside. 

What do you fall back on when you feel empty inside? Where do you place your faith? God or man? Religion never did it for me, but men frighten me more than God, because they’re here, now. Is there more good than evil in humankind? 

Back to normal, back to normal, back to normal the drumbeat sounds. Back to normal? No, that’s a mirage. An economic bomb is about to hit. We’re about to learn how hard it is to build a foundation that can stand the test of time, good and bad, droughts and floods, wars and hurricanes, earthquakes and fires, and how easy it is to destroy a foundation that has been deliberately allowed to rot. The odds of a swift recovery are very long, this isn’t 2008/09. We allowed that golden opportunity to angle the economy -- just a tiny bit -- toward average people and away from the wealthy to pass in favor of the status quo. Obama chose the wealthy over the people. The rich got richer, remember? Executive bonuses and stock buybacks. Even greater wealth inequality.Working people either lost or stayed the same. Had our economy been stronger prior to the pandemic, the hurt now would be less drastic. (By stronger I don’t mean a bigger bull market and hefty corporate profits, I mean more equal in terms of wealth, more equitable sharing of the spoils, far less precarity.) No person allowed to die of hunger or neglect. No person unhoused. No person without access to medical care. No person without access to clean water. No tents on the streets of Los Angeles, no Skid Row, ever, anywhere. Let’s start with FDR’s 4 Freedoms, see how those notions can be improved and expanded upon. Let’s revive the idea of social justice. We need a new definition of profit that takes into account owners, workers, and the planet. You can make money, lots of it, but not on the backs of workers, and not to the detriment of the planet. The Pentagon all-you-can-eat buffet must end; wars of choice that never end must stop. Unbridled corporate power must be checked. Our political system must be reformed, big money and soft money and dark money rooted out, voting rights expanded and secured, and the war on the poor that manifests in mass incarceration, ended. Only then might we stand a chance against what’s barreling toward us. 

Yeah, it was a day. I guess this is what I fall back on, playing with the word. It’s funny to think that six weeks ago our routines, our lives, seemed solid and predictable, but of course that was an illusion. Life is more fluid, especially in a society like ours, gilded on the surface and rotten to its core. This realization is humbling, and infuriating. A line from a Springsteen song comes to mind, from his album The Ghost of Tom Joad: “You get used to anything and it becomes your life.”

What stupid thing did Trump say today? What was the lie of the day? 

What happened to the anti-war movement in the US?

If America had a robust labor movement and a semi-level regulatory playing field, would we all enjoy universal health care now? 

The big money boys put the New Deal to the sword. Now they are busy looting the treasury. They do their best work in broad daylight, out in the open, under the glare of TV cameras. We get $1200, the dust left over from the frenzy of theft orchestrated by corporate lobbyists and their political cronies. 

Dust to dust. The human condition. I take a snifter of Irish whiskey out on the deck and sit in my new recliner. As the evening quiet deepens, I sip whiskey and stare at the waxing crescent moon. I can’t believe how beautiful it looks. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 24

“Meanwhile the authorities had another cause for anxiety in the difficulty of maintaining the food-supply. Profiteers were taking a hand and purveying at enormous prices essential foodstuffs not available in the shops. The result was that poor families were in great straits, while the rich went short of practically nothing.” Albert Camus, The Plague

Bad week for King Donald I. After his reality show utterly tanked on Thursday, when Trump rambled about UV rays, light, sunlight, light in the body, light on the skin, and then mused aloud about the possibility of injecting “disinfectants” into the lungs of Covid-19 patients. Even by Trump’s lofty standards, it was batshit of the highest grade and potency. Public health officials, product manufacturers, poison control centers, and political figures immediately urged people to ignore Trump’s remarks. On Friday in the White House, Trump attempted the greatest gaslight in world history by claiming that he had posed his death spells as sarcasm aimed at the assembled media, an assertion that millions of people know by their own eyes and ears is flat out false. Trump was dead serious on Thursday, and he wasn’t posing his fabulist queries to journalists -- he was talking to his own people, no one else. It was pathetic, or, sad, as Trump might Tweet. Loser. 

The daily propaganda briefing on Friday was shy of thirty minutes long, a record for brevity. Trump turned and left the stage like he couldn’t get away fast enough. He took no questions. The bully is also a coward. 

That’s why you have to go after Trump hard and directly. Once you get past his first line of defense -- the name calling, the lies -- Trump’s got nothing. At that point he’s a target, an exposed mug waiting for a jab-cross-hook combination that sends him to the canvas. The money media play Trump’s game, participate in the charade, pretend that Trump is somehow minimally qualified for the office he holds. False deference. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt, they say. But why? He’s been spouting insane gibberish since the day he was fucking inaugurated. Stop treating him like he earned the right to be there. 

We are OK as long as the money holds. Then it will get tough. I feel a bad juju coming, unpleasant tidings, a sense that this pandemic is shifting the foundation of our lives in ways that we will be dealing with for years. How can we possibly bounce back to where we were? A better question is: why would we want to? I know, I know, greatest economy, ever, courtesy of King Donald I. Really? How did your personal circumstances change in the past three years? Are your taxes lower? Did you earn more? Do you have access to health care? Can you drink the tap water in your community? Can you afford housing? How are you better off now than you were when you became convinced that Donald J. Trump was the answer to your grievances against Barack Obama and the United States?  

Cognitive dissonance between the world I read about online, and what I see in my own community. Most people are staying the course, staying home as much as possible, but judging by what I see it seems that vehicle traffic is heavier, and there are more people out and about. Most wear masks, but not all. It’s even more difficult to remain cooped up when the sun is out, the sky is blue, and the ocean offers respite from the heat. Santa Barbara is a place where it seems possible to keep the ugliness of the world at bay. Somewhat isolated, hyper-expensive, the city’s a self-satisfied haughty beauty. We are, after all, the American Riviera. 

I just had the luck to be born here. 

Lady Liberty. 

We believed you to be beautiful and just; 

now we see you for what you have become, 

a crass, crabby, stingy and severe old woman. 

When did the rose of your beauty become this thorn? 

Mike “I’m With God” Pence says the pandemic should be done & dusted by Memorial Day. We can celebrate with Covid-19-free hotdogs. Mike must know something the rest of the nation doesn’t. 

I bet Trump whines every night like a little bitch. “This pandemic is very unfair. It’s very unfair that my great administration got hit with this. It’s unfair to me. I’m the greatest American president, ever. Number 1 in the ratings. My crowds are the biggest, millions of people, they love Trump, they love me. They should give me the Nobel Prize for medicine, or science.”

America desperately needs a reboot. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 23

“I think of the entire history of human strife and how we navigate the frightening and the unknown.” Anna Badkhen, New York Review of Books

Hot. 90 degrees at 6:00 p.m. in Santa Barbara. Our apartment is stifling, even with the front and back doors open and a ceiling fan and three tower fans running at top speed. The breeze brings warm air. After sundown the wind lashes at the windows, yanks the doors closed with a bang. The wind recedes, then rushes again with renewed ferocity; the wind chimes on the deck dance madly. Another day of self-isolation comes to a close. We survive, none are ill under our roof or the roofs of our immediate family. Our niece, Mia, a nursing student, is hunkered down in NYC. 

I work off and on, read The Plague and The Plot Against America, take a short nap, have a training session in the glaring afternoon sun, sit on my meditation cushion. For my 61st birthday I received a pair of Apple Airpods, an extravagant gift from my wife and mother-in-law. I drink several cups of peppermint tea. 

And then back to the pandemic, the open air asylum that is Trump and McConnell’s America, unmasked now with all its weakness and cruelty on full display. The hypocrisy of the GOP is stunning. Of course the people are subjected to another session of Trump’s verbal diarrhea. Trump seems to have backed off his favorite Covid-19 miracle drug, hydroxycholoquine, now that more evidence against its efficacy is presented. Trump is now on to sunlight and lung-cleansing disinfectants. I wonder if the good folks over at FOX News, like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Dr. Oz, and Brian Kilmeade will echo Trump about the latest nonsense as they did hundreds of times about hydroxychloroquine. Will someone sue these people or FOX News? One can only hope. At a time of great crisis and danger, America is bereft of great men (we have some great women, but none of them are in power). Instead our fate rests in the hands of greedheads, imbeciles, charlatans, jesters, cranks, crackpots, cretins, xenophobes, homophobes, Christian warriors, fools, fakers and misanthropes.

I came across this passage in The Plot Against America: “I went because every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country?”

That about sums it up. 

Neoliberalism is on its deathbed, stripped of its gloss and false promises of trickle down prosperity; we should hasten its demise, pull the plug, but the white men in power stay our hand and will, they want to keep the patient alive while they continue, by means fair or foul, to rig the end game so they win and the masses lose. I came across this in the New York Review of Books by Hari Kunzru:

“The rapid disintegration of all social and economic life has exposed the terrible fragility of the American system. How does a society that privatizes risk cope with a public health crisis? How can it ask for social solidarity when it demonizes every expression of it as ‘socialism’? Suddenly we are all socialists, even Mitt Romney, trying to reinvent community as we self-isolate in our apartments.”

I keep fear and despondency at bay by keeping my focus in the moment. It’s a difficult task. Others must feel the same because I see more traffic on the streets, more people outside. My sense is of a boundary being pushed and prodded to see how much it can bend. The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in this county approaches 500. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 22

“No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.” Albert Camus, The Plague

American flags. Red MAGA caps. Camo hunting vests, jackets and pants. AR-15 rifles. Confederate flags. A few Nazi flags. Holstered pistols. Signs demanding liberty from lockdown. Don’t tread on us, the real Americans who want to get on with our lives.  

The protests against social distancing, business and school closures, curtailed church services, are likely to be the flash point, bound, sooner or later to take a violent turn. Egged on by far-right websites, FOX News, and Donald Trump -- whose administration issues revised social distancing guidelines on Thursday, only to have Trump tweet LIBERATE MICHIGAN, LIBERATE MINNESOTA, LIBERATE VIRGINIA, on Friday, further proof of how little coherence matters to Trump -- the issue morphs from public safety and health to evil government intrusion and an abridgement of personal liberty. How’s that for rhetorical judo? Who comes up with this stuff? The ever-servile and unscrupulous Bill Barr is on the case, opinning that his Department of Justice might support suits against governors who refuse to lift social distancing restrictions. To the slaughter, cries Barr. 

No protest thus far from Lindsey Graham or Devin Nunes or Marco Rubio or Rand Paul about states’ rights, federalism, and small government. 

Apparently, the protesters believe that some governors are deliberately sabotaging their state economies in order to make citizens suffer even more. Or maybe they believe the imposition of social distancing is a power grab by Trump’s many devious enemies. 

What Trump wants is obvious: to get the serfs and servants and toilers back to work to juice the stock market, which is central to Trump’s reelection. Human sacrifice. There are more than 22 million unemployed people in the US, and millions more in India, and China is still finding its footing. The global economy isn’t going to snap back any time soon. We’re at the start, the end is a dream.   

Watching clips of these protests, resisting the urge to dismiss them out of hand as the work of a small minority of misguided souls, which, despite media amplification I think they are, I wondered (for about ten seconds) how local authorities would react if armed African Americans or Latinos marched on a state capitol? Why is it that police departments treat armed white protesters with such leniency and tolerance? We know why, it’s the history of America, it’s white privilege in its fullest incarnation. We know this plot inside and out. White protesters gather; black and brown protesters riot. White people get in scuffles with the police; black and brown people assault the police. White protesters are deemed peaceable; black and brown protesters are deemed violent. 

What this pandemic has shown is that the vast majority of Americans are decent, kind, reasonable, adaptable, with enough sense to comply with professional advice that gives them the best chance to survive. New Yorkers, hardest hit, have been phenomenal examples of courage and grit. Those who take to the streets with their guns and MAGA caps and Nazi flags are a minority, but they garner an inordinate amount of media attention, far more than workers at Amazon and Whole Foods who have walked off the job for lack of protective gear. I feel, however, that the rational center will not hold, and too many states will cave to the desire for a normal feeling moment, even if that moment turns out to be a grave mistake as most public health officials believe it will. 

The HBO series, The Plot Against America, ended this past Sunday. Unlike the novel, where life returns to an FDR sort of normalcy, the series ends on a note of ambiguity. Did Roosevelt win another term, or were enough ballots destroyed to keep FDR from another term? We don’t know. Neither do the fictional Levins.  

Trump’s daily BS show, Fake President, continues to muddle along, one episode similar in tone to the one that preceeded it. Trump congratulates himself repeatedly for things he didn’t accomplish, blames anyone else he possibly can for his multiple, lethal failings, jabbers in circles and into blind alleyways and dusty doorways, lies, gesticulates, snarls and preens. He’s where he wants to be, before a camera, dictating the story, weaving a spell of deception and denunciation and denial and death.  

I stopped watching. I’ve seen enough. The question is the same as it has always been: what can we do about Donald Trump? I’m still of the opinion that Trump will not leave even if he loses to Joe Biden by significant margin. He’ll go immediately on the offensive with massive voter fraud claims, he’ll sue, and battle House Democrats with even more lawlessness than he has to this sad point. It’s still a long way to November. If you pay attention it’s easy to see what Trump’s trying to do, which is rewrite history almost as it happens. A few White House correspondents have finally begun to push back, but in general, the American press is too deferential to power. Trump should have fried over a spit by now. 

Coming home from a short stint in the office I ride up State Street. There’s more vehicle traffic today, some workmen, the homeless, and a solitary pedestrian or two. The man I saw camped in the doorway of a closed store yesterday has a female companion today; their belongings are spread out on the sidewalk. I see a UPS truck and an armored truck. 

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times must be pissed at Trump. Haberman was one of the reporters of the recent Times piece that detailed Trump’s failures. After calling the NYT fake news, washed up, soon to fail and disappear, etc., Trump used a cherry-picked audio clip of Haberman praising Trump for his China ban. So if the NYT is nothing but fake news, why is Trump using its reporting to make his case for him? Did Trump think no one would notice? Even you can’t have it both ways, Donald. 

I fear that cynical, power-mad people will make the Coronavirus about the Other, whether China, the World Health Organization, the poor, or immigrants. The ugly is never far below the American consciousness. The virus is the enemy, not the place where it originated. Pandemics happen, over and over. This one’s not over yet. 

It’s day by day. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 21

“And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled, and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house.” Albert Camus, The Plague

I start every self-isolation day with a survey of the news about the pandemic, the number of cases in Santa Barbara Country (now over 300), the United States and world, and the reported death toll, always mindful that the actual number is probably higher. According to MSNBC, the US death count stands at 36,000. 

My small family is, like thousands in our community, trying to do our part by taking social distancing seriously, by wearing masks when out in public spaces, and staying home as much as possible. It’s frustrating, at times boring, disorienting, and at others frightening; my wife’s hours at work were cut. She has applied for unemployment benefits but hasn’t received any money yet. We received our so-called “stimulus” money from the federal government. While we can use this money to offset my wife’s lost income, I’m still of two minds about it. In the first I know that $1,200 won’t be enough for most families, not by any stretch, and as this pandemic drags on, the feds will have to give people more money. That Congress tossed the people a one-time pittance is not only insulting, it shows how out of touch our rulers are. If Congress doesn’t come through with more money, it will make it even more difficult for the populace to maintain the discipline needed for social distancing to pay off. When you know you have enough money to keep a roof overhead, food in the refrigerator, medical care if needed, it’s much easier to exercise patience. 

Like our economically unequal society, the effects of the pandemic are felt unequally. On a normal day, the poor in America are punished, demonized and blamed, but in a piece of delicious irony, it’s today the working poor, not the millionaire class, who are now doing our essential work. Congress can’t even bring itself to do business by remote means.  

Trump is fracturing America. The fault line lies between the reasonable and necessary caution required to stop the spread of Covid-19, and those who, like Trump himself, practice a dangerous brand of impatience and magical thinking. Trump has failed Leadership 101. It’s too late now, but he should have taken note of what the Queen of England said when the UK implemented its lockdown. The Queen was somber, serious, and yet hopeful. She called on Britons to find the fortitude that Londoners showed during the Blitz. Only moral authority and honesty can hold a nation together under pandemic circumstances, and because Trump has no morality or honesty, he’s failing spectacularly. Rather than unite, Trump divides and inflames, as if he cannot help himself. Impulse control is a problem for Trump.  

Protesters in Minnesota and Michigan demand freedom from enforced isolation, but not from Covid-19. The “cure” assaults their sense of individual liberty. My life, they proclaim, my risk, except it’s not, viruses that pass person-to-person don’t work that way. Covid-19 hasn’t read, and doesn’t care about, American exceptionalism or myths of rugged individualism. 

The people need to know that their self-discipline and sacrifice will be rewarded. A true leader would lift the nation’s spirit, acknowledge the daily difficulties people face, but also provide assurance that the government is doing everything in its power, with no regard for the politics of red and blue states, to keep the crisis from causing even more suffering. On every level, Donald Trump has failed.

In the dungeons of the past, prisoners were starved of light; in our modern dungeons, prisoners are drowned in constant light.  

The Isolation Diaries No. 20

“And then we realized that the separation was destined to continue, we had no choice but to come to terms with the days ahead.” Albert Camus, The Plague

Numbers, again, reported in various media, approximations of the damage done: more than 32,000 dead, 22 million unemployed. 

I go into the quiet school district office where only a few people from the technology department are working, handing out iPads to parents. The contractors replacing the HVAC system practice a loose style of social distancing, and none of them wear masks. The men’s room on the second floor stinks and the sink is streaked with soot. I have time-sensitive tasks to accomplish, and then some interviews via Zoom for a vacant accounting position. Riding my bike home a few hours later I wonder if we will see food shortages; a few of my colleagues had talked on email about a shortage of flour. 

When I return home the sun is high and bright. A tree company is working at the apartment complex to the west of our triplex, chainsaws whining. An hour later the gardeners arrive at our place and fire up a gas-powered leaf blower. Chainsaws on one side, leaf blower on the other, a discordant, aggressive wall of sound. I see that we are out of almond milk, almost out of yogurt, getting short of coffee, and out of bananas. We have to make a shopping run again. I should start a list, but don’t because I’m distracted by the sound of the chainsaw; the sound makes me angry and I want it to stop, but it doesn’t. It lulls for a moment, then starts again. 

On Spotify I listen to a hip-hop artist named Polo G: “all gas, no breaks.” I think this describes my country, the human race, and definitely our capitalist, plutocratic rulers. Look at Trump, all he cares about is putting the pedal to the floor, fuck the fact that his engine is gushing oil. Trump is Captain Queeg. Or Ahab. I ask myself when Republicans in Congress will wake up and take the wheel from Trump’s inadequate grip. Haven’t they seen and heard enough? Or is there nothing Trump can do or say that will force the scales from their eyes? Madness has been normalized, the bar lowered, the doors of the asylum thrown open. Trump, the cornered pretend strongman, threatens to force Congress into recess so he can make political appointments of more unqualified hacks and sycophants. 

On social media I see that my acquaintance, the author Nomi Prins, is taking part in an online event with the journalist Greg Palast. Topic: the 2020 Election. Will it even happen? I don’t know. Palast, who has done excellent reporting and movie making about systematic voter suppression and dark money in politics, believes that Trump has already stolen the election. 

You may dodge Covid-19 this time around, only to contract it down the road. I imagine the kids returning to school in August in face masks. 

At six o’clock in the evening I hear the peal of church bells, a sign that we are still here, and I think of little towns and villages in medieval Europe.  

Introverts who do extroverted things. This thought comes to me, and I jot it down to think about some other time. I also think I would enjoy observing a conversation between Zadie Smith, Arundhati Roy, Jesmyn Ward, and Yaa Gyasi. Whatever these women talked about would be interesting, different, more insightful and soulful than the claptrap I hear on MSNBC or see on social media. All I know is that the powerful are more than willing to sacrifice the lives of those beneath them. They make no secret of this. They use the media to fan the fires of impatience and many in Ohio and Michigan respond, demanding a return to business as usual, an end to social distancing and shutdown businesses; they raise a middle finger to caution and prudence. Again we hear, “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.” I think, again: America has lost its moorings, lost its soul, lost its fucking mind. We’re incapable of learning, incapable of questioning, incapable of rational thought. 

Around midnight I am awakened by the sound of my daughter crying. She’s having an anxiety attack. Terry goes to comfort her. 

Camus, again: “Most people were chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected their interests. They were worried and irritated -- but these are not feelings with which to confront plague.”