The Isolation Diaries No. 30

“Those jobs will all be back.” Donald J. Trump

Another lovely day in Santa Barbara. The wind kicked up and chased the marine layer from the sky. I rode my bike to the office where now anyone entering the building must wear a facial covering. One of the contractors working on the heating and cooling upgrade never wears a mask. He looks like the kind of person who would say, “I don’t need a mask. It’s just the flu, and I never get the flu. It’s totally overblown.” Part of Canon Perdido street has been repaved, but the lane lines are yet to be laid down. Next door to the office a new building is under construction, a monster that runs from property line to property line, not an inch wasted, and rising three stories. Offices and apartments. Luxury living in beautiful downtown Santa Barbara. Mountain views. Across De La Guerra street, another project is underway and the street is blocked off to allow heavy equipment room to operate. I watch a man bust chunks of a sandstone wall with a sledgehammer. I hear the sound of hammers, saws, diesel engines. 

Whatever you believe about Barack Obama, the facts prove that his administration was one of the cleanest in modern American history. No scandals. No pornstars. No Russian agents.

As I ride my bike around there seems to be more activity, more cars, and more people out. A loosening of the net. But stores are closed, some retail spaces already wear For Lease banners, and the Nordstrom store that anchored one end of the Paseo Nuevo mall for decades has announced it will not reopen. We bought a lot of stuff at Nordstrom over the years, from shoes to cosmetics to jewelry to clothing. No Macy’s. No Nordstrom. No Forever 21. Who will fall next? I still believe that the majority of the general population has no idea what lies ahead. We’ve been hit hard by Covid-19, but the right hook coming from the economic collapse will send us reeling. 

Don’t ask me, ask China, says Donald Trump before he scurries from an uncomfortable press conference. An Asian-American woman half his size tried to hold Trump accountable. Donald hates accountability, whether in business or his personal life. Strong women frighten Donald and he doesn’t know how to react. He likes his women flashy and dense, not professional and determined.  

The crime is obvious to anyone, says Donald Trump, referring to a make-believe conspiracy called Obama-Gate. I don’t know any details about Obama-Gate, other than it’s likely manufactured from the detritus of fevered imaginations. Whatever you believe about Barack Obama, the facts prove that his administration was one of the cleanest in modern American history. No scandals. No pornstars. No Russian agents. Obama’s reign was clean and mostly efficient; while I don’t agree with how he did it, I recognize that he kept the nation on the rails in 2009 and 2010, when the rigged housing market collapsed and the paper economy buckled. 

“We have met the moment and we have prevailed,” says Trump, like a gladiator. According to MSNBC, 81,468 deaths and more infections than any other country. Testing per capita still trailing, though Trump insists that We Are No. 1. The CDC guidelines for safely reopening society are ignored by Trump himself. 

The US has five percent of the world’s population and thirty percent of coronavirus cases. MAGA, baby, this is the “transition to greatness”. We’re going to come roaring back like a locomotive in the third quarter. It will be beautiful, tremendous, like nothing anyone has ever seen, the world will envy us. 

Trump has never failed this spectacularly. This is the apex, the pinnacle, the room at the top of the world, the Emmy and the Oscar and the Tony, a diamond-studded Super Bowl ring, the Masters Green Jacket, the World Cup trophy, and the Olympic Gold Medal of Trump’s long run as a huckster and conman. Trump is the Meryl Streep of con artists, a man of the media age, where facts and truth are overrun by images and simplistic plot tricks. He didn’t just ratfuck a casino or an airline this time, he ratfucked an entire country. Trump knows the sales pitch, the slogan, the mirage, but nothing else. When the shit goes down, he cowers away, hides behind bogus lawsuits and bankruptcy protection. Trump’s a punk who thinks he’s a big boss. 

I miss soccer, it’s like a void. Marcelo from Real Madrid just turned 32, but it seems like he’s been at Real forever. Same with Sergio Ramos. Both are great players, fun to watch. This long hiatus must drive top players crazy. They are like racehorses, primed to gallop, not be cooped up, even if that means cooped up in luxury. 

May. The merry month of May. The mail carrier is wearing blue latex gloves and a face mask. It’s May in the time of Covid-19. It might be May on the edge of the abyss. 

It’s May as far as we can see. 

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.”

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.