“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.
No comments:
Post a Comment