“The past is uncertain, mobile. It shifts and rearranges back there. All might turn out and change back there yet.” Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier
Sunny days in Santa Barbara, but so windy at times that the old windows in our apartment rattle. A gust pulls the back door shut with a bang. Our Covid-19 spring. SB remains in hibernation, though it seems more and more people are venturing out. Cautious optimism from local officials and Governor Gavin Newsome, the usual batshit happy talk from the White House.
As of this writing, the Trump Death clock has recorded 55,642 deaths as a result of Trump’s incompetence.
The Orange Menace claims to be taking daily doses of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has shown little to no efficacy against Covid-19. Despite medical evidence, Trump continues to tout the drug, saying he’s heard many stories about its effectiveness. Still hoping for a magic bullet.
By mid-June, if not earlier, we will know if this re-opening gambit was worth the potential risk. If a flare-up of infections is going to happen, it should happen around that time. I think about Frank Snowden, a historian of infectious diseases, most notably the Black Death that struck parts of Europe off and on for nearly 400 years, who contrasted the public health response in Italy (Snowden was there, caught Covid-19, recovered) with that of the United States. Unlike here, where the message about the pandemic has been inconsistent, chaotic, contradictory, and politicized, Italy’s public messaging about the virus was consistent, focused on public health, not politics, sparing lives, not attacking scientific authorities or drenching the public with magical thinking and empty boasts day after day.
As of this writing, the Trump Death clock has recorded 55,642 deaths as a result of Trump’s incompetence. This shocking number and the misery and sadness and grief it represents, should spell doom for Trump in November, even against a cardboard cutout of Joe Biden, but this is America and there’s a very good chance that the Electoral College will once again deliver victory for Trump.
That thought is too depressing to contemplate at this early hour of the day, when I can hear birds chirping in the yard.
Democrats are decent when it comes to governing, but hopeless when it comes to winning elections; Republicans have their message down pat, know how to perpetuate their power, but can’t govern their way out of a wet paper sack. Republicans can’t get over their ideological wall to deal with reality, while Democrats are so compromised by being joined at the neck with Big Finance that they have alienated millions of people who once supported Democrats, no matter what.
And there we sit, on this slippery, dangerous slope. Our old nemesis, avarice, grins at us from higher up, dislodges a boulder with his foot, and laughs as it tumbles down.
Spring of discontent, disaster, depression, denial, and dereliction.
Sun climbing the bottlebrush tree, a crow squawks and is answered by a bluejay. Another Covid-19 morning.
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