"Pandemic-ing While White"

"@jmjafrxSomeone on here said, these protestors don't just want freedom. They want the access to other people's labor; services and pleasures they think they are entitled to. Mastery at any cost."

So that was an interesting tweet, and considering the nature of some of these protests from trumpland against staying safe, you would have to say that there is some validity to it.

Just look at the lady above. She wants her haircut. The scary thing is that she and her friends will have their way, because the governors of states that are beholden to trump will not want to rock the boat and piss off "Dear Leader" in an election year.

 This is Tim Wise's take on the state of affairs in some segments of White World:

 "I get it.

No one enjoys having their freedom constrained.

No one likes being told where they can go and what they can do.

Ya know why?

Because humans are fundamentally social creatures. We are not, contrary to popular American belief, merely rugged individuals. If we were, we wouldn’t mind isolation the way we so obviously do after a month or so of sheltering-in-place and following stay-at-home orders amid a global pandemic.

Even the most self-directed and introverted among us, who often revel in a bit of alone time, have limits.

But responding to this extraordinary moment, during which we are being asked to physically distance, and — for those who can — stay home while the curve of infection flattens, by picking up guns and heading to the state capitol to protest “tyranny?”

That is not merely indicative of a healthy human desire for connection. Nor is it a reflection of freedom-loving people, driven stir crazy by the overreaching hand of some nanny state.

That is something else.

Specifically, that is some white shit.

By which I mean the privileged move of (overwhelmingly) white people, who think that not being able to get their hair cut, or get seeds to plant flowers in their gardens for spring is tantamount to fascism. Yes, that’s a thing:

Or the stupendously Charmin-esque quality of standing with a protest sign that says, “Let My People Golf.” No, for real, that’s a thing:

Only white people — and not particularly poor ones at that — could manifest this kind of mentality in numbers this large. Only people for whom daily life is pretty easy could believe that the closing of bars, gyms, restaurants, and sporting events was a precursor to the gulag.

Ya know who doesn’t think that way?

Black people.

Well, I mean, black people other than Diamond, Silk, Candace Owens, and MAGA grifter, Terrence K. Williams, who cons white conservatives into getting his name trending every few months by insisting liberals are threatening to kill him.

Which is actually pretty funny, because despite how much Terrence K. Williams clearly reveres white people, he also knows something unflattering about us: namely, that many of our tribe will fall for anything.

It’s true, we will.

Like thinking vaccines are a globalist plot. Or that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.

Or that Anthony Fauci is a deep state operative and that Donald Trump is on the verge of busting up a pedophilia ring run by Hillary Clinton. Or like the idea that Elon Musk — who was born white in apartheid South Africa — is self-made. Because gullibility is also a privileged move. People of color rarely have that same luxury, at least not at this high a level of dosage.

They don’t typically have the privilege of thinking it’s oppression if you can’t go to the beach or get on a pedal tavern in Nashville with your bridesmaids and exercise your way around town while drinking beer: itself the absolute whitest pastime ever invented.

They have police to worry about, and not because the cops might give them a hard time for being less than six feet apart from someone else in a public park. Rather, because the cops might presume them criminal — even for merely wearing the same kind of face covering we’re all being encouraged to use — and toss them out of a store. Or, if history is any guide, worse.

Folks of color are facing anti-immigrant hysteria and disproportionate COVID death thanks to racial inequity that has left them at higher risk. And of course, for anyone of Asian ancestry, there is the specter of rising hate crimes directed at them as the supposed source of the present danger.

Meanwhile, white folks never have to worry about something like that.

When the CDC determined that the H1N1 flu in 2009 had its origins in North Carolina hog farms, white farmers weren’t worried about being blamed, let alone physically assaulted. Nobody boycotted Jimmy Dean sausage.

Because privilege.

And now, screaming about totalitarianism, the same kind of white folks who protested the Affordable Care Act — because some of them would rather die than get health care from the black guy, or from a program that might also help some black people — have taken to the streets yet again.

They have dusted off their Gadsden flags, or their Confederate flags (like I said, white people), added anti-vaxxer placards (again, mostly white people), and are presently ranting about stay-at-home orders being communism, or perhaps Nazism. They don’t know the difference and don’t care. To them, oppression is such an apparent abstraction, actually knowing the proper taxonomy of whatever awfulness you’re protesting doesn’t matter.

Because this isn’t about logic.

This is some white shit.

As is saying, “Jesus is my vaccine,” which vanilla stupidity featured prominently on a truck that drove through the anti-lockdown protest in Pennsylvania this week. Thinking Jesus is all you need to get through danger and difficulty is something only white people can generally swallow. Black folks know from lived experience that faith without works is dead. Oh, and also that medicine works and things like measles are dangerous, so they’ll readily take the shots that millions of white folks fear because noted scientist, Jenny McCarthy, insisted they were poison.

Still more whiteness: “Economist” Stephen Moore suggests these protesters are the moral equivalent of Rosa Parks. It is almost comically difficult to imagine saying something whiter than this: to believe that protesting government actions intended to keep people alive is the same as protesting government actions designed to treat millions of people as second-class citizens.

Difficult, but alas, not impossible. As it turns out, the competition for gold in the Whiteness Olympics (which by the way are never canceled) is fierce. To wit, the late entry from Idaho state legislator Heather Scott (R-UzBeckystan) who notes that closing down businesses deemed “non-essential” is “no different than Nazi Germany where you had government telling people either you were an essential worker or a non-essential worker, and non-essential workers got put on a train.”

Yes, because Pilates instructors and vape shop employees are literally headed to Auschwitz if the liberals get our way. Had it not been for this damned quarantine, we’d have already fired up the ovens. Trust.

I’m not sure if that’s insane. But I know what it is.

That is some Miracle Whip wingnuttery. Some albumen asininity.

Indeed just showing up at a state capitol with loaded guns and camo, screaming about tyranny is white as fuck. I fantasize about black folks doing that, or Muslims doing it, to protest the stuff they have to deal with on a regular day, no pandemic required.

Or rather I would fantasize about this, but I don’t, because I know what would happen. They would get shot, or at the very least arrested en masse. And they wouldn’t have the president saying they seemed like “responsible people,” or signal boosting their message on his Twitter feed.

Because whiteness lets people get away with this nonsense.

Just like how, during the Obama years, it covered for overcompensating firearm fetishists who regularly gathered, strapped to the teeth, to protest what they just knew were pending gun grabs from the Gay Kenyan Muslim in the White House.

Just like it protected rocker Ted Nugent when he called Obama a “sub-human mongrel” who can “suck on my machine gun,” and then did the same for Sean Hannity when Hannity was asked about Nugent’s hateful, bloodthirsty rant and refused to criticize it, insisting that Nugent was “a friend.” Naturally, Donald Trump has hosted Nugent at the White House, because they both take the white part to be about more than paint color.

And of course, whiteness insulated the Teabaggers who surrounded members of Congress during debate on the Affordable Care Act and screamed at them, cursing them for daring to support Obamacare. Because they were convinced it would lead the government to let old people die rather than shoulder the expense of their care. As a side note, these are the same people now screaming that we must let old people die rather than shoulder the expense of a largely shuttered economy.

Because apparently, irony is also ivory.

These people don’t care about big government. They don’t care about tyranny. They support a guy who proclaimed, before he backpedaled in the face of the plain wording of the Constitution, that he had total authority to override state lockdown orders. They said nothing in the face of this declaration of dictatorial power. Because it isn’t government they hate, or authoritarianism. It’s government in the service of the wrong people. Or in the hands of the same. So long as government is being used to “own the libs,” punish the poor, and deport or incarcerate the black and brown, they’re fine with it.

Because America is on some white shit.

And there are an awful lot of folks determined to keep it that way, even if it kills them.

As indeed, it might."

Yes Tim, but when you have a president who is more concerned with his television ratings and beating out The Bachelor in the midst of a deadly pandemic, than the welfare of the American people, what do you expect? 

Oh, and for the record, Tim Wise is white.  

 

They want liberty from the virus, but there is no one to lead them.

It's not so hard to figure out why trump and his supporters are suddenly pushing to open up America. It just happens to coincide with all these new studies saying that blacks and other minorities are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus. 

Remember when that wasn't the case? We were quick to shut everything down, weren't we? Not any more. Now, trump supporters are taking to the streets and demanding that we open things up. Their "Dear Leader" is telling governors of states who care about the well being of their citizens to free them and let them go back to normal activities and infect themselves and the rest of us. (What's with all the  guns? Are they going to shoot the virus?) As Rick Wilson said, the man would literally start a civil war to cover up his immense failures when it comes to the handling of this epidemic. 

At a time when the country needs leadership, the president sits on twitter all day and attacks his political opponents and every perceived enemy both real and imagined. It's a rather sad and pathetic spectacle, and I suspect that it's having a very negative effect on the country's psyche.

When he (trump) is on television doing his nightly propaganda and campaign rally style briefings, he is blaming everyone but himself for this terrible state of affairs. It's the Chinese fault, it's Obama's fault, it's the W.H.O.'s fault, it's young people's fault, it's the governor's fault, it's the media's fault, and on and on it goes. It's everyone's fault but his own. This is not leadership.

Sarada Peri writing for The Atlantic sums things up perfectly:

"Between the 2016 campaign and now, Trump has gone from “I alone can fix it” to “I don’t take any responsibility at all.” Both those statements reveal Trump’s profound misapprehension of what the presidency is all about. It is not a dictatorship—however benevolent—that can single-handedly solve people’s problems in exchange for fealty. Nor is it a figurehead atop a loose coalition of competing states. It is a position that wields hard and soft power on behalf of the American people—and it must be held by someone who understands that in a global crisis, everyone, including markets and states and ordinary citizens, relies on the federal government to guide a response. If the conductor doesn’t raise her baton, the orchestra slides into chaos.

Laying out a strategy, using federal authority to align the private sector’s capability with the public’s needs, guiding state responses, publishing reliable data and information, setting a tone both measured and optimistic—that is the president’s job. Despite the purported breakdown of the liberal international order, the world still sheepishly glances in our direction, hoping that a steady hand might convene the alliances that exist precisely to grapple with, say, a global pandemic."

Trump is no conductor of an orchestra, he is more like the captain of the Titanic. His minions and the sycophants in his party are the orchestra, and they will just keep playing while the ship goes down.

Caption this picture.

Off the rails.

I think it's safe to say that these daily coronavirus propaganda briefings from the White House are doing way more harm than good for the country. The president holds these briefings at lease once per day, because he can't hold his "Dear Leader" rallies where thousands of...let's just say his red state faithful gather and feed his fragile ego. 

Yesterday's briefing, to put it mildly, went way off the rails. Mr. trump had an epic meltdown on national television, when a CBS reporter (who also happens to be a lawyer) called him out on his lie about doing everything possible to stop this pandemic and saving lives.  Mr. trump became so shook that you could literally see him shaking at one point when the reporter refused to back down. Caught in a lie, and with nothing to back his spurious claims, he reverted to name calling. It was embarrassing to watch. And if you are proud to be an American, watching your president make an absolute fool of himself in such a manner cannot make you feel good about your country. Dr. Fauci, a man who most of us hold in high esteem, also made himself look really small yesterday. The briefing opened with him having to grovel to Dear Leader, and clarify his truthful statements made to Jake Tapper on CNN  the day before.

Mr. trump started the press conference with Fauci, and pretty much told d him to go up there and tell the world why he dared to go on television to make "Dear Leader" look bad. Fauci himself became snippy when a reporter asked him if that's the only reason he went up there. Truth is, we hardly heard from Fauci after that statement, and he sat there for two hours listening to trump's BS propaganda session like a bad student on time-out without hardly a peep.

But that wasn't even the worst of it. "Dear Leader" actually played a video from the press room which was nothing more than a FOX NEWS prepared campaign video. It was filled with lies and misinformation about how Mr. trump handled the coronavirus epidemic. Shockingly, it seemed to have prepared by White House staffers working on our (the taxpayer) dime. Some cable news outlets cut away, and their talking heads declared later that they were "shocked" that the president would do such a thing. You have to wonder what planet they have been living on for the past four years. Nothing that this man says or does should shock them.

At one point yesterday Mr. trump wrongly declared that his power is absolute, and that he has "total authority" to do whatever he wants. I don't want to get into a Constitutional law lecture here, but let's just say that he is wrong. Article II does not give him "absolute power" as he likes to declare. He shares that power with two other co-equal branches of government. He is not a King. It's kind of what this whole Revolution War thing was about.  You can read more about the powers of the Executive branch here.  And here I thought that republicans respected the concept of federalism and the separation of powers.

 “I have the ultimate authority,” the president responded...... “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total. The governors know that.”

Nope, that's not the way "it's got to be".  Maybe come November, Mr. trump will learn the truth the hard way. 

*Image from npr.com

Caption Sunday.

I need a caption for this picture. 

*Image from www.inquirer.com.

These are challenging times, and there is no leader to be found.

This is day... I'm not sure, I lost count....let's say day 14 of my "shelter in place". Social distancing is clearly working here in America, because according to some of the experts thousands more people would die if we weren't taking these mandates seriously.

I say good for you America. I knew we could do it. We will learn to adjust to whatever circumstances we are forced to live in. It's not easy, but, at least for now, we are coping. 

Now of course,  as is always the case in these divided states of America, it's not all good. We knew that their would be some challenges.

"Kip Diggs glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror before heading into the grocery store: a baby-blue bandanna — matching his University of North Carolina baseball cap — masked his nose, mouth and salt-and-pepper beard.

The 53-year-old Nashville marketing consultant had chosen his face covering carefully for his trip to Kroger on Sunday, his first outing since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines advising Americans to cover their faces to slow the spread of covid-19.

“As an African American man, I have to be cognizant of the things I do and where I go, so appearances matter,” Diggs said. “I have pink, lime green, Carolina blue so I don’t look menacing. I want to take a lot of that stigma and risk out as best I can.”

A recent report of a police officer following young black men who wore masks while shopping has amplified fears among people of color of being profiled as criminals or gang members. Civil rights leaders, politicians and community activists worry that concerns of racial bias will discourage black people from wearing masks to protect themselves and others, further increasing their exposure to a virus that is disproportionately infecting and killing African Americans. 

“This is a powder keg waiting to take shape. And that is the last thing we need dealing with this pandemic,” said Hardie Davis Jr., mayor of Augusta, Ga., and president of the African American Mayors Association, citing high rates of infection among black residents in cities including Chicago nd Detroit, as well as parts of rural Georgia such as Albany. His association plans to release recommendations this week on how best to communicate CDC guidelines to the black community.

In Wood River, Ill., two black men wearing surgical masks recorded themselves being followed by a police officer as they left a Walmart last month.

“He just followed us from outside, told us that we cannot wear masks,” one of the men said in the video, posted on YouTube on March 18, which shows the officer walking behind the pair with a hand resting on his gun. “The coronavirus is real. This police officer just put us out for wearing masks and trying to be safe.”

The Washington Post could not reach the men for comment, but they described the encounter to the local newspaper as “terrifying” and said they felt the officer was stalking them as if they were “prey.”

Wood River Police Chief Brad Wells told The Post the incident is being investigated internally, with the assistance of the local NAACP branch, after the video drew more than 175,000 views.

Wells said the officer approached the men outside the Walmart on March 15 because he “believed the two individuals to be acting suspiciously.” The officer asked for their identification and erroneously told them that city ordinance prohibited the wearing of masks, Wells said.

“This statement was incorrect and should not have been made,” Wells said in a written statement. “The city does not have such an ordinance prohibiting the wearing of a mask. In fact, I support the wearing of a nonsurgical mask or face covering when in public during the COVID-19 pandemic period.”[Source] 

It's a damn shame! Black men shouldn't have to be making these types of decisions. Whether to risk our lives to go out and get food, or to stay at home and starve to death. Clearly we need the masks to cut down on the chances of contracting the virus, but then, if we wear the masks......well, you just read the article. 

And then there is the challenge of having this current president. This man, who is supposed to be leading this nation through a time of crisis, is actually more concerned with the ratings of his nightly briefings, than he is with the almost 17,000 dead Americans (at the time of this post) as a result of this horrible virus. That's three times as many American lives lost to this virus in a matter of weeks than the entire war in Iraq. Let that sink in for a minute. 

So as they dig mass graves in his hometown (see the first pic above), the president of the United States brags about his television ratings, being number one on facebook, and makes jokes about sex with models on live television when he should be comforting the nation. 

"The Wall Street Journal always “forgets” to mention that the ratings for the White House Press Briefings are “through the roof” (Monday Night Football, Bachelor Finale, according to @nytimes) & is only way for me to escape the Fake News & get my views across. WSJ is Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 9, 2020"

That is not leadership, it's lunacy.  

*Images from syracuse.com & the grio.com.

More lies.

“The code of the con is to know just enough about everything so you can lie about anything." ~E. Tancarville~ 

I know I shouldn't be watching Donald trump's nightly liefest and propaganda filled news conferences to the nation, but it's like a car wreck on the highway, I find myself unable to turn away. Honestly, they don't need to bring SNL back, because the comic relief this guy gives us night after night is better than anything that they could ever write on one of those shows.

It's sad, too, because the purpose of these press conferences is to give the nation a daily update of what is going on with the deadly coronavirus. But sadly, night after night respected doctors and health professionals have to stand aside and listen to this egomaniacal buffoon tell one glaring lie after another. 

These press conferences have come to take the place of his rallies, because he no longer can meet with large groups of his cult followers to soak up the glow of adoration they pour on him.  And so, at least for now, these press conferences will have to do.

The poor journalists whose job it is to ask questions, are finding out they they are the villains in his sick game. If they dare to ask a legitimate question, he lashes out and calls them fake news. If they attempt to fact-check him, he openly and brazenly lies, because he realizes that he will not be fact-checked in real time. In that room, it's just their word against his, and unfortunately for them, the bully pulpit always wins.

Last night was no exception. trump told lie after lie about his response to the virus, and added yet another scapegoat for his missteps: The World Health Organization. He even threatened to pull funding from the organization. Imagine that, pulling funding from an organization that is responsible for monitoring the state of the world's health when there is a global pandemic raging. 

He kept touting a drug that has not been proven to cure the coronavirus, and like a true conman, he had an example of a woman who had miraculously been cured after taking his magic drug. The lady in question was African American, and he made sure to let us know that. ("She spoke so well. It was unbelievable!" You know, cause black folks are not expected to speak well. Shades of Joe Biden and his Obama articulate gaffe.) The drug in question is now in short supply for people who really need it, and this is a direct result of trump's actions. But hey, in the con game, only the present matters. 

We did learn one thing from this press conference and the medical experts last night, and that is that blacks are being more effected by this virus than all other segments of the population. They said that they are still trying to figure out why, but there is no need for that. I will tell them why: It's because blacks are the ones cleaning in environmental services and working on the front lines in hospitals, as well as other essential service industries. It's because black folks can't afford to take off from work and "social distance". They have to decide if they want to take a chance and die from hunger or the virus.  It's because blacks continue to lag behind the rest of the population when it comes to having proper healthcare and access to proper nutritional foods. It's because regardless of what you might hear, when it comes to healthcare- like so many other aspects of American life- there is no true equality in this country.

trump, of course, had a lie for that as well. "We are going to take care of the African Americans".  

Those words should terrify every African American in this country.

Image from UPI.com

Trying to find trump's soul.

 The following is just the latest in a growing list of articles documenting Mr. trump's mishandling of this coronavirus pandemic. It's from Frank Bruno writing for the New York Times, and it might be the best of the lot. 

.

"Do you remember President George W. Bush’s remarks at Ground Zero in Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? I can still hear him speaking of national grief and national pride. This was before all the awful judgment calls and fatal mistakes, and it doesn’t excuse them. But it mattered, because it reassured us that our country’s leader was navigating some of the same emotional currents that we were.

Do you remember President Barack Obama’s news conference after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 28 people, including 20 children, dead? I do. Freshest in my memory is how he fought back tears. He was hurting. He cared. And while we couldn’t bank on new laws to prevent the next massacre, we could at least hold on to that.

One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?

It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.

In Trump’s predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can’t, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don’t know what to do with.

Americans are dying by the thousands, and he gloats about what a huge, rapt television audience he has. They’re confronting financial ruin and not sure how they’ll continue to pay for food and shelter, and he reprimands governors for not treating him with adequate adulation.

He’s not rising to the challenge before him, not even a millimeter. He’s shriveling into nothingness.

On Friday, when Trump relayed a new recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all Americans wear face masks in public places, he went so far out of his way to stress that the coverings were voluntary and that he himself wouldn’t be going anywhere near one that he might as well have branded them Apparel for Skittish Losers. I’ve finally settled on his epitaph: “Donald J. Trump, too cool for the coronavirus.”

This is more than a failure of empathy, which is how many observers have described his deficiency. It’s more than a failure of decency, which has been my go-to lament. It’s a failure of basic humanity.

In The Washington Post a few days ago, Michael Gerson, a conservative who worked in Bush’s White House, wrote that Trump’s spirit is “a vast, trackless wasteland.” Not exactly trackless. There are gaudy outposts of ego all along the horizon.

When the direness of this global health crisis began to be apparent, I was braced for the falsehoods and misinformation that are Trump’s trademarks. I was girded for the incompetence that defines an administration with such contempt for proper procedure and for true expertise.

But what has taken me by surprise and torn me up inside are the aloofness, arrogance, pettiness, meanness, narcissism and solipsism that persist in Trump — that flourish in him — even during a once-in-a-lifetime emergency that demands something nobler. Under normal circumstances, these traits are galling. Under the current ones, they’re gutting.

“I don’t take responsibility at all.” “Did you know I was number one on Facebook?” To bother with just one of those sentences while a nation trembles is disgusting. To bother with both, as Trump did, is perverse.

He continues to bash the media, as if the virus were cooked up in the bowels of CNN. He continues to play blame games and to lord his station over those of a lesser political caste, turning governors into grovelers and suggesting that they’re whiny piggies at the federal trough.

He continues his one-man orgy of self-congratulation, so that in the same breath recently he speculated about a toll of 100,000 deaths in America from Covid-19 and crowed about what a great job he’s doing.

And he continues to taunt and smear his perceived political adversaries. Last week, on Fox News, he called Nancy Pelosi “a sick puppy.” This is how he chooses to spend his time and energy?

At those beloved daily briefings of his, where he talks and talks and talks, he sometimes seems to regard what’s happening less as a devastating scourge than as a star-studded event. Just look at the nifty degree of prominence it’s conferring on everyone and everything involved! He has mused aloud about how well known Anthony Fauci has become. He has marveled at the disease’s celebrity profile.

“Become a very famous term — C-O-V-I-D,” he said on Thursday. Was that envy in his voice?

He leaps from tone deafness to some realm of complete sensory and moral deprivation.

“I want to come way under the models,” he said on Friday, referring to casualty projections. “The professionals did the models. I was never involved in a model.”

“At least this kind of model,” he added. No context like a pandemic for X-rated humor.

It’s an extraordinary thing: to fill the air with so many words and have none of them carry any genuine sadness or stirring resolve.

I can hear his admirers grumble that he doesn’t do camera-perfect emotions, that Obama was just a better actor, that Trump is the more authentic man.

To which I answer: What’s the point of having a showman for a president if he can’t put on the right kind of show? Performances count, even if they’re just performances. And Trump clearly isn’t averse to artifice. Just look at his hair.

A cheap shot? I’m feeling cheap. A loss of life and livelihoods on this scale will do that to you.

As of this writing, at least 9,600 people with the coronavirus have died in the United States. That’s more than three times the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. New York State alone reported 630 new deaths on Saturday. No school shooting has taken even a small fraction of as many lives.

And while I’m not looking to Trump for any panacea, is it too much to ask for some sign that the dying has made an impression on him, that the crying has penetrated his carapace and that he’s thinking about something other than his ratings? I watch. I wait. I suspect I’ll be doing that forever." [Source]

My only problem with Mr. Bruni and others who are now writing these brilliant and thoughtful essays is this: Where have they been all along? Nothing about Mr. trump's modus operandi has changed. He is who he has always been, and we allowed him to get this far.

Caption Saturday.

 

I need a caption for this picture. 

*Image from phuketnews.easybreanches.com

The blame and distraction game.

Imagine being the leader of a country that could possibly have 200,000 of your people die from a pandemic, and in an address to those people you brag about being number one on facebook. 

First, it's a a lie (both former president Obama and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo have more followers), but it also shows just how much of a narcissist, and ego- driven the individual charged with leading us is. Just watching him up there day after day gives me no confidence that he will be able to handle what we are facing.

We used to be able laugh at trump's buffoonery and his gross incompetence, but given what we are all going through, it's just not funny anymore. Now, more than ever, America needs someone in charge who knows what they are doing. This is trump's first government job, and it shows. The scary thing is that the people around him who might ---and should-- know better are afraid of him, and so they act as sycophants instead of being real advisers.

Sadly, we can't even count on these news conferences to give us information anymore. Yesterday, rather than give us an update on the virus, trump and his political team held a press conference (complete with Bill Barr standing behind him) to tell us what the administration was doing to fight the war on drugs and the Venezuelan President. Yes, that's really what they led with. At this point I am quite sure that must Americans could give a damn about the war on drugs. In fact, quite a few of us are probably saying give us more drugs not less. Lord knows we need something to take us away from this craziness.

Here is the thing, our government is supposed to be protecting us from the scourge drugs, that's kind of their jobs. We need to hear about what's going on with this pandemic that is killing people and making them sick, not the war on drugs. 

But we know why they did it, to create a distraction, because they STILL can't give us any concrete answers about this crisis and how to fight it. It's like Groundhog Day with these people.

Now, predictably, they are blaming everyone else for us being in this predicament but themselves. Yesterday Mike Pence blamed it on the CDC, and Donald trump has blamed the nurses, doctors, the governors, the Chinese, President Obama, and President Bush. 

"The wartime president Harry Truman used to keep a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here.” Trump, however, seems eager to wash his hands of the matter, if not actually wash his hands. “Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”'

So much for leadership.