“Trump is clearly out of his depth, which is basically the shallow end of the kiddie pool.” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch
I’ve changed the title of this series because the pandemic and people’s Rebellion of 2020 has for me merged into one event. As I write this, my wife is in Cottage Hospital waiting for a procedure to remove a stone from each of her kidneys. I have to call the pharmacy. If all goes as hoped, I should get a call to meet my wife in the recovery area in about an hour. I’ll see what I can get down here and hope it makes sense. I put in a lot of effort on the day job at the school district today, and as a result I’m tired. Plus, I had a training session in the heat of the afternoon, working my new double-end punching bag for a few rounds.
There’s too much news. My head hurts from trying to process it all. That’s another reason the pandemic and the Rebellion have merged. I am reminded of how things connect, how one thing affects another, and how if you’re aware, you can follow the tracks, treads, wires, and highways to the core issue. I think of the pandemic, and how those Americans who work for wages quickly exhausted their resources, a measure of how poor the economy really is for the majority of citizens. Saving money is damn hard for the working poor. All the money that comes in goes back out, and when there’s more going out than coming in, that’s when you start letting stuff slide, like insurance premium payments and visits to the doctor or dentist. Debt usually follows, compounding the woe. Maybe this is temporary, you get back on an even keel eventually, but you don’t rebound to where you were, you’ve fallen, for good. Maybe you’ve hit that one-way street that runs straight downhill. You see a lot of people going that way, but when you look at your screen all you hear is how well this or that corporation’s bottom line looks, or how low the “official” unemployment rate is. You hear about bull markets, investor confidence, liquidity and bond yields, the latest pronouncement from the Federal Reserve, and it’s just noise because none of it means shit. We still got the problem: too much going out and not enough coming in.
Off the tip top of my head, I estimate our out of pocket costs for my wife’s kidney stone procedure will land north of $3,500. The insurance companies always seem to do just fine. The bankers of all sizes and shapes make money coming and going, all legal, all immoral as hell. But who cares about morality when you’ve got the keys to the Treasury, a license to plunder.
How about Trump. What a motherfucker. He’s one of the dumbest fucks ever, but there are some people around him who are truly wicked. I can summon an image of the dark lord, Stephen Miller, the gray cloud above his head, the faraway look in his eye, his dick hardening by a wonderfully wicked thought. What a way to stick it in their Black Lives Matter faces. What a way to signal them that their pathetic protests don’t mean shit. We have power, and that’s all the matters. Trump is untouchable. Let’s hold a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19th.
That’s some shit at this moment. Juneteenth. Freedom Day. Tulsa. The white on black massacre of 1921. Hundreds murdered. Black-owned buildings and businesses torched, black wealth gone forever, up in smoke, ashes in the dirt. To pick that day for one of Trump’s Nazi rallies takes a streak of evilness that makes repeat appearances in human history. To hold that kind of animating hatred, to deliberately use that level of hatred to manipulate people. Trump doesn’t own any hotels in Tulsa that I know of, so he’s probably clueless about the history of the place, not that it would make any difference. Trump’s going to Tulsa for the imagery and images, the backdrop, the photos he can blast out to his diehard base. Trump’s got a jones for footage that can be sliced, diced, and spliced together to create an alternate reality on Fox News, during the Republican National Convention and all the way to Election Day (if there is one). Trump’s itching to release his MAGA Greatest Hits.
The market’s saturated with Trump’s bullshit, his stock is falling, he’s dumb and can’t adapt because all he’s got in his bag is a driver.
Covid-19 is with us. But it appears our political leaders are OK with it. We’re not hearing much from the doctors and scientists these days, they’ve been muzzled, although new outbreaks and increased infections in states that refused either patience or prudence are concerning. My sense here in sunny Santa Barbara is that we jumped the gun by at least two weeks. We have to wait and see which way the wave breaks.
Happy to report that my wife made it through her procedure, and came home last night. Howls when she pees, but is otherwise mending.
Trump Death Clock
69,005
Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction
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