A Long Climb Out

When this horrific era of death and isolation and lockdowns and screaming men with guns and infinitely long Zoom meetings finally ends, I know the phrase that will encapsulate it for me:

“Can I please share?”

That’s what my seven-year-old son says approximately 3,862 times a day. He yells this while he is in his remote-learning class, when he is one of two dozen second graders vying for the teacher’s attention.

“Can I please share?” he will shout while waving his artwork or math sheet or grammar lesson at the computer screen. Of course, many of the other kids in the class also want to share their work, or just be the first one to give the right answer. So they all start shouting, “Can I please share?” or “I want to share” or “It’s my turn to share.”

And then it turns into an online Lord of the Flies, but with arguments about adverbs and improper fractions.

In any case, I’m grateful that my son is doing ok in his virtual classroom. Because the same cannot be said about many American kids.

Although early studies of online learning indicate that “the Covid-19 pandemic and the learning disruptions it caused have been less detrimental than researchers had expected,” it could be years before we know “the true educational toll of the pandemic — and the effects could be long-lasting.”

And we know that for many “Black and Hispanic students, as well as those in schools that serve low-income populations, the situation is more concerning — with marginalized students falling further behind in reading and math.”

This, of course, means that the educational gap between ethnic minority children and White kids is only widening.

Now, that’s grim news, to be sure. But hey, won’t everything get back to “normal” after all those kids get vaccinated and return to the classroom?

Well, this presupposes that Black and Latino kids get vaccinated at the same rate as White kids. And the truth is that “America'shistory of racism in medical research and a lack of trust in the federal government is making some Black Americans and Latinos hesitant to take the vaccine.”

It’s almost like the Tuskegee experiments, the forced sterilization of Latinas, and the unethical testing of procedures “that caused health complications or death” have left ethnic minorities distrustful of the medical establishment. 

I mean, what are the odds?

Currently, only 14% of Black Americans trust that a coronavirus vaccine will be safe. Latinos are more optimistic, with 34% saying they trust the vaccine to be safe. But compare that to the 61% of White people who are eager to be vaccinated.

The result is that “vaccine hesitancy could result in some Black and Latino Americans not being vaccinated as Covid-19 continues to batter their communities at disproportionate rates.”

Latinos have the additional burden of being fearful of the government, which is something that just sort of happens when a president spends his entire term demonizing Hispanics. Indeed, the Trump Administration's “anti-immigration policies, public charge rules that create barriers to citizenship, and threats to the Affordable Care Act have made some Latino families reluctant to receive healthcare.” 

As a final handicap, keep in mind that many ethnic minorities live “in poor and urban neighborhoods that don't have doctors or healthcare facilities near their homes.”

So we have a situation where Black and Latino kids are suffering the most from the pandemic, and are the least likely to come out of it quickly.

For those kids, it will 2020 for years to come.

All This and Worse

In theory, by this time next year we will all be vaccinated against COVID-19. And then we’ll hug and clap hands and laugh about the silly virus.

“That whole killer pandemic thing,” we will chortle. “What was that all about anyway?”

Well, before we banish the coronavirus and the entirety of 2020 into the deep, dark memory hole where we bury all our unpleasant thoughts, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the here and now.

You see, because of the Trump Administration’s unique combination of incompetence, hubris, idiocy, and depraved indifference, we are now at about 14 million Americans infected, with over 270,000 dead. We are seeing higher numbers of death on a daily basis, and soon we will endure the equivalent of “a 9/11 every single day.”

In response, the administration has fluctuated between doing nothing, embracing denialism, promoting quackery, and dismissing the experts, which is “in keeping with their guiding philosophy that there is no problem so great that it cannot be solved by knowing lessabout it.”

Of course, this is not a recent collapse. Months ago, the administration basically gave up fighting the virus and hoped that “Americans will go numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day.”

And that’s pretty much what conservatives have done. Hey, over half (52%) of Republicans believe that “the U.S. reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic is overblown,” which is double the percentage of Democrats who think the same thing.

So if you’re in the GOP, overflowing hospitals and widespread death is no reason to get all excited. This is despite the fact that “only cancer and heart disease will kill more Americans this year” than coronavirus. In fact, the bug has already “killed more than twice as many Americans as either strokes or Alzheimer’s disease, about four times as many as diabetes, and more than eight times as many as either gun violence or vehicle accidents.”

Again, none of that is reason to be concerned — if you’re a Republican.

If you are not, and you actually respect science, you might be interested to know that recent studies verify “what health officials have been telling us for months: Masks do work by significantly slowing the spread of COVID-19.” In fact, there may be up to “a 50% reduction in the spread of COVID-19 in counties that had a mask mandate compared to those without.”

But of course, our disease-ridden president mocked facemasks for months, and provoked the stupidest culture war of all time, apparently because masks weren’t manly or would hurt the economy or something similarly incoherent.

Oh, and speaking of Republicans and their favorite subject — the economy — keep in mind that mask mandates lead to “greater confidence and spending among consumers,” and “are also linked to higher consumer mobility.”

So if conservatives really wanted to rescue the economy, and not just kill grandma in a futile ploy to boost Wall Street, they would be clamoring for everyone to wear a mask. Also, the conservative insistence that lockdowns would destroy the economy looks even more pathetic now, considering that most economists say “the U.S. would be in a better economic position now if lockdowns had been more aggressive at the beginning of the crisis.”

In essence, the Trumpian approach killed more people and made the economy worse — a win-win only if you are a delusional Republican or a cackling demon from the underworld who loves human suffering.

Yes, the virus was always going to be bad, but this level of calamity is the direct result of an infantile, self-obsessed president and his “incessant destruction of reason, evidence and science in the service of his personal whims, conspiratorial mindset and political requirements.”

In future generations, there will be myriad books, documentaries, and feature films about American life during coronavirus. And they will all come to the same conclusion:

It didn’t have to be this bad. 

The WYSIWYG Presidency

There is no master plan. 

There is no four-dimensional chess game being played.

There is no laying the groundwork for 2024, nor is there a rebranding campaign going on.

He is not focused on establishing his own television network, and he is not interested in implementing conservative policies on his way out the door.

And of course, all of his pathetic acts of desperation are not the final maneuvers in a ludicrous, idiotic conspiracy involving satanic cannibals.

It’s perfectly obvious — or should be at this point — that the president is a narcissistic sociopath who is incapable of long-term planning. And although he lies nonstop, he is honest about his lust for power and contempt for humanity, democracy, and Americans in general. 

So why are so many people — from respected journalists to intelligent politicians to pretty good actors —mystified about what is going on?

Perhaps we want to believe, despite all evidence, that Americans did not elect a corrupt con man who is indifferent to the nation’s well-being. We want to imagine some hidden depth to a vapid egotist who received the enthusiastic support of over 70 million citizens. We want to believe that he is not as buffoonish and corrupt as he clearly is, and that there is some misguided principle being manipulated here.

But here is the truth about what Trump wants.

He wants to be president, and he wants Republicans to help him pull off a coup.

That’s it. That’s all.

Sure, there may be supporting malignancies, like his desire for revenge and gluttonous appetite for cash.

But really, he is trying to bully and cajole the GOP into overthrowing the government for him. And he has gotten more than a few conservatives to say, “Sure, why not destroy democracy?”

Apparently, this fact is too disturbing for many Americans to acknowledge, so they scratch their heads and wonder what Trump is possibly trying to accomplish by filing one ridiculous lawsuit after another. Or they question why he flings out wild accusations that shatter upon the slightest analysis. Or they ask why the White House took so long to acknowledge reality and allow the transition process to begin.

OK, one more time —Trump is trying to subvert the will of the people so that he can remain in the White House. It really is as simple as that.

The fact that he is sucking at this endeavor doesn’t mean that he has a hidden agenda. The Trump Administration has been one long study in cartoonish incompetence — from building his mythical wall to protecting Americans from Covid-19. So why should his attempt to seize power be anything other than haphazard and flailing?

There are no smokescreens. His lawyers really don’t know the difference between Michigan and Minnesota. But this just means that Trumpists are idiots. It doesn’t prove that they are master manipulators with unknowable goals. 

After all, if we saw a kindergartener throw a massive temper tantrum for ice cream, we wouldn’t say, “I wonder what he really wants” and attribute complex motivations that end with the assumption that the kid is angling for broccoli.

No, we would say that the little brat wants some goddamn ice cream.

The president, who has been compared to a toddler more than once, is that spoiled kid who wants ice cream. You can tell him that he can’t have any more, or that the store is out of ice cream. Hell, you can tell him that thousands of people might die if he keeps shrieking for ice cream.

It won’t matter. Because he has always gotten everything he ever wanted, no matter how horribly he has acted.

He will never stop kicking, screaming, and threatening. And there is no mystery about what he wants.

Cheaters Never Win (Hopefully)

Now that this grueling, era-defining election is over, let’s take a moment to reminisce.

No, not about the Trump presidency. We will be reliving that in our nightmares for the rest of our lives.

Instead, let’s fondly recall the myriad ways that the GOP tried to steal this election. Oh, I know that most Republicans are convinced that it was the Democrats who cast illegal ballots, threw out GOP votes, forged dead people’s signatures, hacked voting machines, or mumbled some satanic curse that fooled the media, election experts, and the majority of Americans into thinking Biden won the election. But that just shows how devious liberals are!

Because as we all know, there is just no way that a guy who lost the popular vote in 2016, was projected to lose this time, is reviled like no other president in recent history, and who never once cracked 50% approval for his entire term (a first in polling history) could possibly come up short. 

I mean, it’s just impossible. Right?

In any case, if politics were a football game, the GOP would facemask, eye-gouge, trip, elbow, spike toes, and throw punches in scums. They would do this nonstop. Then they would whine to the refs if the Democrats were off-sides once.

Consider that Republicans, without exception, do everything they can to make voting harder or limit who can vote. To them, voting is not a right. Hell, it’s not even a privilege. It’s a rare luxury reserved for conservatives, preferably white ones.

For example, in my current state of California, the GOP put out ballot boxes, marked them “official” (which they were not) and when caught, simply refused to “comply with an order from the chief elections official to remove the unofficial ballot drop boxes from counties with competitive U.S. House races.” Yes, the party of law and order defied the law and ignored orders. 

In my home state of Wisconsin, “a sophisticated and multi-front effort by Republicans to prevent many Wisconsinites from casting a ballot” was just part of the GOP’s plot to create the most gerrymandered state in the country.

And in Texas, the conservative governor didn’t like all those latte-sipping liberals in the big cities being allowed to vote easily. So Texas counties, regardless of size, were limited to “only one drop-off location for voters to hand deliver their absentee ballots during the pandemic.” Texas Republicans also tried to throw out 120,000 votes from “the state's most populous, and largely Democratic, county,” which I’m sure was just a coincidence.

Oh, and they also tried to disqualify votes in Pennsylvania, and to stop the counting of votes in Nevada.

When none of that worked, Republican senators just openly tried to “find a way to throw out legally cast absentee ballots.” And if you’re wondering, yes, that effort just might have broken “any number of laws.”

Even after the election was settled, Republicans in Michigan tried to block certifying the results “based on dubious claims of voting irregularities in Detroit.” And then after being shamed into doing their jobs, they attempted to rescind the certification, upon orders from their divine leader.

Of course, the president’s hapless, humiliated lawyers are enduring defeat after defeat, basically getting laughed out of court, as they try to conjure a world in which their delusional client got reelected. Indeed, “some of the lawyers at the firms handling the litigation work for Trump’s campaign or related Republican Party organizations are now raising concerns internally about the legitimacy and purpose of the legal claims they are currently being asked to advance.” The attorneys are concerned that they may run into ethical trouble for filing frivolous lawsuits. But to the GOP, that’s their problem.

However, all this Republican subterfuge really started before the election. After all, it was our neo-fascist chief executive who shrieked those “frequent and false claims of widespread voter fraud and repeated calls for his supporters to ‘watch’ the polls and stop it.” And as we know, conservatives need very little provocation to show up with guns and intimidate people.

Furthermore, it was the president’s supporters who sent threatening emails with the subject line “Vote for Trump or else!” to Florida residents. Opinions vary about whether the originator of the emails was the Iranian government or the Proud Boys (both are winning organizations). But in either case, the message “we will come after you” was pretty clear. 

And don’t forget that the fabled Hispanic vote — which was either a godsend or a major disappointment, depending on your point of view — was likely influenced by “a web of disinformation websites aimed at Latino Americans.” Again, it wasn’t progressives spreading the fake news.

You see, “the objective, pursued by Republicans in a seeming war of attrition, is to use a range of tactics and tools to reduce the number of votes cast by people of color.” The GOP dream is that young people, ethnic minorities, and anyone who lives in a city just shut up and let white rural Americans make all the decisions. 

And yet despite these gargantuan efforts, despite these desperate ploys and unethical maneuvers and pathetic illegalities, Trump still lost — solidly as it turned out.

So to my GOP friends, I must assert — without malice — that if you lie, cheat, and whine but still get trounced, maybe it’s time to admit the truth:

Most Americans just didn’t like your guy.

A Brief Checklist of the Current Madness

Look, I don’t know if the guy is planning a coup, or plotting revenge, or just being pissy. Nobody can figure it out.

Even after 48 months of daily insanity, we are still perpetually shocked at the scattershot behavior of a septuagenarian whose rambling self-absorption should disqualify him from hosting a neighborhood bingo night, much less guiding a nation of 300 million people through a pandemic and an economic collapse.

What we do know is that Trump's administration is “taking on the characteristics of a tottering regime — with its loyalty tests, destabilizing attacks on the military chain of command, a deepening bunker mentality, and increasingly delusional claims of political victory.” 

We also know that the number 70 is popping up with disturbing regularity, like it is some kind of mystical numeral.

Witness the fact that 70% of Republicans “say they don’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair.” Their entire basis for this belief is, of course, that their guy lost.

Contrast this with the statistic that Biden’s winning base “encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity.” This means the areas that voted for Trump account for less than a third of our nation’s economic output, which is interesting in that they are supposedly the hardworking ‘Mericans being victimized by the big evil cities, when in truth they are being subsidized and would starve in the gutter without urban areas to prop them up. 

The third appearance of this magical number is the stat that more than 70 million citizens voted for the reelection of the worst president in history. They apparently believe that these last four years of hell were the fault of liberals, the media, the Chinese, or anybody but a president who can’t string two sentences together without complimenting himself. Yes, almost half of our fellow Americans are fine with this guy.

Of course, this reveals another disturbing fact, which is that although “pundits suggest that the two different political ideologies in America are about values and principles,” the truth is that “the primary difference between the two camps is between those who are living in a fictional world, created by generations of right-wing media, and those who are living in the real world.”

And speaking of living in the real world, keep in mind that despite the bellowing of conservatives, there is not a micron of proof that massive voter fraud took place. In fact, it appears that the most significant lying and cheating is being done in the name of the GOP. 

Furthermore, Biden’s win was actually more decisive than you think, and it was certainly more convincing than Trump’s victory in 2016. Yes, I’m sure plenty of right-wingers are politely debating those very points on Parler right now.

You see, conservatives are depressed that their hero went down in ignominious defeat. Of course, for most people, the first stage of grief is denial. But for Trump supporters, it’s more like denial interspersed with shrieking, foaming at the mouth, and issuing death threats.

In any case, our favorite soon-to-be ex-president has more or less checked out, and he isn’t even pretending to do his job anymore.

This isn’t all bad, in that a monkey with flamethrower would be a more effective leader than Trump. 

But it is interesting that he is abandoning his post just as coronavirus makes its dreaded encore. The stable genius who said the virus would magically disappear seems to have gotten it just the tiniest bit wrong. But he clearly doesn’t care about that insignificant detail.

This collection of motley facts is the full extent of what we know.

So let’s not indulge in conjecture about what happens next. Because to be honest, it’s anybody’s guess.