The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 10

“It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you or your kin, and then death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots.” Sebastian Barry, Days Without End

Trump Death Clock

84,589

Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction

Trump has his own force of Brownshirts now and they are deployed on the streets of Portland, Oregon, uninvited and unwanted by state and local authorities. Heavily armed, decked out in camouflage fatigues sans branch insignia or name plates, riding around in unmarked vehicles, their mission is to stir the cauldron of social unrest on behalf of our demented president. Trump is itching to demonstrate how to dominate the urban “battlespace” and show the enemies of our beautiful white republic how a real “strong man” operates. If largely peaceful protests and acts of legal civil disobedience can be turned into a street brawl, so much the better. The tactics are straight from the tattered authoritarian playbook; first light a small fire, fan it with armed goons, add copious amounts of gasoline, then ride in with the Law & Order brigade to put the conflagration out. 

Trump is an arsonist, his target is the Constitution.

Silence from the ranks of the GOP Death Cult of traitors, cowards, hypocrites, and opportunists. The rancid moonshine Republicans have been guzzling since 1994 (Newt Gingrich’s family recipe) has shrunk their hearts and muddled their brains, and now a majority of the party is indifferent to the suffering of others whose race, gender, or religious affiliation differs from theirs. They’ve got the power disease as bad as Southern Democrats had in 1857. They’ve convinced themselves that the blood running in the veins of some Americans is inferior to their own. 

Trump will send his Brownshirts to other cities where they will be as unwelcome as they are in Portland. The Orange Menace is desperate for a foe he can vanquish to lift his sinking reelection prospects; Covid-19 is far too formidable, and when it comes to the economy, the GOP will ride their nihilistic ideology into the fires of Hell before they marshall the resources of the government to help ordinary citizens weather the crisis that is barreling toward us. Trump’s betting the last of his chips on beating the mythical “radical left.” I wish we had a radical left in this country. 

The excesses of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 return to roost in 2020, and Democrats bear as much responsibility as Republicans for creating this monster in the first place. Misuse and abuse was an inherent danger of granting so much power to the executive branch in the name of “security.” That brand of power will inevitably be used for nefarious purposes by unscrupulous actors. Thanks, Congress. 

Trump is an arsonist, his target is the Constitution.

In the late 1880’s, when southern Democrats had reclaimed political power and derailed the lofty intentions of Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass urged his fellow Americans to “Remember that all the present rests on all the past.” Almost every day, Donald Trump tries to make Americans forget the present. After all these months, after all the insane pronouncements about the pandemic, after all the blaming of others, after all the denials, after all the suffering and deaths, after all his abuses of power, Trump still insists that he, and he alone, can defy gravity. 

He can’t, but Trump will go down swinging at his real and imaginary enemies. He will make our three-headed crisis -- pandemic, economic collapse, and police violence -- worse. With every passing day, America sheds its democratic skin and takes on the visage of a pathetic banana republic. Our political leaders, of both parties, have failed the nation, failed the people, and failed to do their Constitutional duty. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 32

“If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases.” Donald J. Trump

Yeah, the sitting president of the United States is as ignorant as the quote above indicates. A moron, or, as Rex Tillerson famously said, “a fucking moron.” Tillerson was a corporate weasel, but he picked up on Trump’s vibe right away. Other administration figures must have felt -- and at least one or two must secretly feel -- the same way about Trump, but most of them have taken a vow of silence, afraid, I guess, of being disparaged on Twitter and FOX News. 

Tyrants, whether the real deal like Putin or a faux model like Trump, rise to power with the silent complicity of people who know better. 

Yesterday I finished reading a book by historian Jeff Forret titled Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts. After the United States prohibited the African slave trade, the internal demand for enslaved labor in the sugar and cotton producing southern states drove a furious forced relocation of black people from the Chesapeake region to the lower south. Forret meticulously documents the business and legal structures that made this trade possible and enormously profitable for many slave traders, buyers, boat captains, bankers, lawyers, speculators, and owners of private slave jails or pens. 

In the Epilogue Forret draws a line from the antebellum era, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, creation of black codes and  convict-leasing, all the way to mass incarceration in our time. Here’s a short passage:

“As with the slave trade, prisons engage in a form of economic speculation grounded in African-American bodies and the shipment of captive workforces to locations where the demand for labor is high. The modern-day exploitation of black inmates’ labor remains a thriving business in which the law has again been complicit.”

There were many interesting aspects to Williams’ Gang, but one that struck me was how fearful white people were of slave revolts. The memory of what happened in Haiti and many smaller domestic slave insurrections was never far from the mind of slave owners. Blacks who had been convicted of crimes were not welcome in many states because citizens feared that even by mere presence they might unduly influence enslaved people. 

Again the weather is sublime, blue skies, warm sunshine, the beauty of Santa Barbara on full display. The vibe is that of a city soon to be freed from constraint, able once again to open its arms and welcome the world. 

I’ve read a few reviews of books coming out that compare the contemporary polarized American political scene to that of the decade before the Civil War. It’s an interesting comparison. Whether slavery would be curtailed or allowed into new swaths of American territory was a central question, as was the fate of fugitive slaves, and whether or not the authorities in a free state had to take a hand in the return to their owners of enslaved runaways. These were divisive issues that turned the nation against itself. Local skirmishes and vitriol pointed to a cataclysmic confrontation.  

“Tell me some good news about the pandemic,” my daughter says. I tell her the cities and states where new cases seem to be on the decline, but add a cautionary note about states that might be tempting the Virus God by trying to reopen prematurely. “Not helpful,” she says. Then she sing-songs a line about wanting to hold her boyfriend’s hand. This pandemic has been inconvenient for young lovers. 

We walked from our apartment to the CVS in the 1100 block of State Street. There were definitely more people out and about, gathered in small groups on the Courthouse lawn; a family of Chinese people were taking photographs of each other on Figueroa. CVS was quiet, as many employees as customers. 

Again the weather is sublime, blue skies, warm sunshine, the beauty of Santa Barbara on full display. The vibe is that of a city soon to be freed from constraint, able once again to open its arms and welcome the world. 

I’m not that optimistic. Fits and starts is what I see. Covid-19 still has the country on the backfoot. When defensive soccer teams come out of their block too soon against superior opposition, lose the shape, recklessly commit too many players forward, they are usually punished on the counter-attack. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 31

“Don’t ask me, ask China!” Donald J. Trump

It was only a matter of time until the Trump gang employed a typical tactic in the face of rising American deaths from Covid-19: change the metrics, change the way Covid-19 deaths are reported so that the number appears lower.

Don’t like the hard facts? Create alternate facts, even if they fly in the face of science, logic, and direct evidence. 

Film director Eugene Jarecki has a different idea. Jarecki is the mind behind the Trump Death Clock in Times Square in NYC, a running tally of all the Covid-19 deaths that can be attributed to Trump’s failed response to the pandemic. As of this writing, that number stands at 51,134. The website is worth a look. Here’s a link: https://trumpdeathclock.com.

In striking down the governor’s stay-at-home orders, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has surely laid the groundwork for more infections and deaths. Nice work, ideologues. The bloodstains on your hands will not wash away. Wisconsinites now have the freedom to put themselves and others in mortal danger. Freedom! Haircuts! Bars are open!

Trump was made for TV, not reality. He gambled with the lives of Americans and lost more than 50,000 times. 

As I write this, the Dow Jones is down 383 points, after dropping more than 500 points yesterday. I’m sure this bothers Trump far more than the mounting deaths from the pandemic; human casualties are one thing, but when the Almighty Stock Market declines it’s a crisis for the wealthy and in America we cannot subject our wealthy citizens to any hardship. Back to work serfs! Put your shoulders to the wheel, to the oars, to the mines, open the factory gates and make those furnaces hotter than hell. 

Trump was made for TV, not reality. He gambled with the lives of Americans and lost more than 50,000 times. The script isn’t to his liking, he doesn’t like the arc of the story, so he’s simply going to ignore any fact that makes him look bad. Between now and election day Trump and his gang will deploy every trick and sleight of hand they know to erase history. Pandemic? What pandemic? Oh, you mean the one we triumphed over like no one the world has ever seen? 

Will America survive Trump’s manifest stupidity and incompetence? The country has faced great upheaval before, during the Civil War and the Great Depression. The Reconstruction period helped the nation recover from the Civil War; the New Deal got us through the Depression and World War II, created a deep, wide middle class and a quarter century of economic prosperity. Those were bold, imperfect, controversial responses to existential crises, opposed by many, even to this day. 

What will we do? Which way will we go?