The Isolation Diaries No. 13

“This is a flu. This is like a flu.” Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, February 26, 2020

Trump holds a propaganda briefing even when he has nothing to report except stale talking points, half-baked fantasies about magic drugs, and outright lies about the information he’s receiving from hospitals and medical professionals across our Covid-19 blighted nation. Referring to hospitals and supplies of ventilators and PPE, Trump said on Sunday that they are “thrilled to be where they are.” Does Trump have any idea where he is? 

In Trump’s alternate universe he is providing heroic leadership and his administration is doing a fantastic job on all fronts. He shut down immigration from China early, signed a gargantuan economic stimulus bill, mobilized great companies to produce the equipment and supplies needed to contain the virus. All the while, his hair looked perfect, just like his phone call with the president of Ukraine was perfect. Nobody, except Trump, saw this pandemic coming. He has been tremendous, great, strong, and powerful, many people are saying. 

On January 8, 2020, the CDC issued a public warning about Covid-19. Think about all the statements Donald Trump made between that date and today, think of the dismissals, denials, and denunciations of those who tried to sound the alarm. Hoax, fake news, just like the flu, it will disappear like a miracle. The US will be open for business by Easter. I have a feeling. 

In the real world of death, infection, desperate doctors and nurses, unemployed workers, shut down cities and towns, overwhelmed morgues, nobody is saying that Trump has done a good job except the pinheads on FOX News, but the Orange Menace will go on trying to will his rosy vision into existence; he will continue to claim that there isn’t a shortage of ventilators and face masks and gloves; he will continue to erase and revise what he said yesterday, two weeks ago, last month. It makes for compelling TV -- and TV is the only thing Trump has a clue about. It would be a mistake to think for a minute that Trump doesn’t dig on some level of his twisted psyche, the role he’s got now, with the spotlight on him all the time, and the hated media forced to listen to his every pronouncement. Gaslighting the press and the public, knowing it will be beamed out on FOX News and Breitbart? Owning the libs? Blatantly contradicting experts, forcing them to take his view or fall out of favor? This is Trump’s man-juice, and it’s stronger than heroin. That’s why he has taken center stage at these daily briefings, shoving Mike Pence, purported Head Honcho of the Coronavirus Task Force, out of the way. Medical experts play secondary roles here -- this is Trump’s unreality show, where deaths in the hundreds of thousands are considered with a shrug of the shoulders and a blank stare. 

What batshit remark will Trump make this evening, which governor will he insult with a schoolyard taunt, how many times will he interrupt his own experts? Will he claim that at his direction more than a billion ventilators are on their way to hospitals and clinics all over America? “Every American who needs one will get a ventilator, free of charge, autographed by me, President Trump. Nobody has done the job we’ve done. Great, beautiful, big, strong, fantasic, powerful, nobody, anybody, people are saying, pandemic response. We saved millions of lives! Do you know how many people could have died if we hadn’t acted as perfectly as we did? Look at the transcript, it’s perfect.” 

Trump is insane. How long can this masquerade continue before the gilded carriage reverts to a lumpy, moldy, three-wheeled pumpkin, owned and operated by a morally and intellectually bankrupt second-rate TV personality?

Ten million unemployed and as I write this the NYSE has posted a gain of 1,627 points. The rich prosper when working people suffer. Fine country, yes indeed. Not a terminally ill nation at all. 

I admit to grudging admiration for die-hard Trump supporters. They are like football fans of a once properous club that dwells in the relegation zone every season, fighting to the last fixture to avoid going down, but no matter the mayhem on the pitch, the fans hold steadfast to the belief that their beloved club will miraculously rise to the top of the league. They never allow themselves to believe what they see with their own eyes, week after week. Crushing losses are seen as valiant stands against superior opposition. Delusion comforts them. 

I saw this sentence in The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos: “Suffering injustice is the natural condition of mankind.”

Turbulence Ahead

“The curse of the human race is not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike.” Salman Rushdie

New year. Like a child peeking out from under his blankets I peer out at this new year. Is the Orange Menace still holed up in the White House, wreaking havoc while he watches Fox News and issues insane Tweets about “border security?” As I write this, the NYSE is down another 500 points, below the 23,000 mark. Since the market began sliding in December, Trump hasn’t had much to say about the economy, except to blame the Federal Reserve for hiking interest rates. Trump is never responsible for anything negative, only the good, what little of it there is. Trump’s ability to debase whatever he touches is astonishing. America has had lousy presidents, but never one so blatantly inept and dishonest. Ditto the entire Trump junta. What a pathetic assortment of brutes, shitheads, assholes, and jerks. Like attracts like. Perfidy begets perfidy.

I’m not one for making resolutions, other than to stay in the present moment and try to be calmer and kinder, worry less, and enjoy more. I’m a lucky person, blessed with fortune. I have a rich life. When your chief wank is that your beloved football team (Chelsea) is playing uninspired, boring football, it means that the major aspects of your existence are damn good. I attribute my good fortune to luck more than anything else. I won Santa Barbara in the birth lottery and was reared before the American empire turned overtly, openly, cruel and maniacal. That’s the most disheartening aspect of the post-9/11 years, how America has lost whatever moral bearing we had before the Towers fell. Now we run side-by-side with rogue nations and make no excuses for it.

Because the federal government is at a standstill due to Trump’s temper tantrum over his Wall I have been thinking about the border with Mexico, our long suffering neighbor. As pointed out by Francisco Cantu in the New York Review of Books recently, the border area is one of the most heavily patrolled and surveilled on the planet. Migrants face a staggering array of obstacles, not to mention terrain that easily becomes deadly. Drones, helicopters, Humvees, infrared cameras, ground sensors, heavily armed agents. Against all this, and the fact that border crossings are down, the Orange Menace demands the public pony up the money for his vanity Wall. Colossal stupidity. When have walls, fences, moats or barricades ever worked for long? People always find a way under, over, around or through.

We don’t look at root causes, how from our very hand fell the seeds of the Central American migrant “crisis.” The elites in both political parties always have convenient justifications, plausible deniability, sound reasons, and, of course, historical amnesia. America is due a reckoning. We have to get over our 9/11 trauma and change cruel and inhumane systems, starting with our winner-take-all, survival-of-the-richest economy. The rich will have to take less, give more, and our tired empire must soon fold its tents, herd its livestock, and begin the long journey home. Trump is only a symptom of a disease, and even were he to be frog-marched from the White House in shame or shackles -- and no matter how good it might feel to witness Trump’s long overdue comeuppance -- the disease would remain, malignant cells rampaging over healthy ones.

Keep your seatbelt fastened. There may be turbulence ahead. If you ignored the flight attendant while he went over important safety features, you might want to take a moment now to identify the nearest exit.