Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy
Saturday, May 09, 2020
The Moron-in-Chief Goes Full Bolsonaro
Donald Trump says the Covid-19 pandemic's days are numbered. America doesn't need a vaccine, it'll just go away. He's like that lovely chrome pinball as it bounces off the bumpers and the flippers. Always on the go, pillar to post.
Maybe it's time for a little levity. Here, from February, 2019, the Family Guy, Peter Griffin, goes to work for Trump in the White House.
If Trump and his Republican governor brethren press forward with this insanity to "reopen the American economy", it's easy enough to imagine sometime in June a million dead Americans from this illness. By June. A month away.
And with every new case, there exists the possibility of a viral mutation, and it scything back through the population reinfecting those who'd fought it off before.
There's a reason old hospitals and sanitariums have tunnels leading direct to graveyards. Those old viruses that used to necessitate such measures demanded quick and easy solutions to safely dispose of contaminated bodies. In my community, on my reserve, the old mass burial sites of TB, Spanish Flu, Typhoid Fever, and other such illnesses were buried far back in the graveyard with iron crosses to be forgotten and never again disturbed, to be covered up in full by the shifting earth and the ever-growing treeline. The old church on my reserve had a TB shack, and there were probably more as necessary throughout the community.
That is the sort of solution Trump is really suggesting. To build little Covid-19 shacks, pile people up in them, and leave them to live and then die as fortune would dictate.
A brilliant solution, much in the same way as an Ammonia solution. Mix with Trump's bleach, and voila! Perhaps he'd been upset to learn he hadn't yet had as many innocent people killed as George W. Bush, and decided if he couldn't go to war with Iran, then he'd match Bush II's kill stats on the domestic front.
Just finished up my course work for a Banned American Literature class. Texts included Of Mice and Men, Catcher in the Rye, Rabbit, Run, The Bluest Eye, and American Psycho. I wonder at my professor's prescience, especially in that last named text. There runs through these books an analyzation of American exceptionalism, insecurity, narcissism, racism, sexualization, humiliation, violence, and lack of consequence. And through all these texts, I couldn't help thinking of how Trump was resultant of all this sort of American attitude, its casualization of male aggression and violence, and celebration of excess and conspicuous consumption, and the deification of work, and success in the workplace as symbolization of hard work, and luck as proof of divine intervention for the successful. And just this cyclical, spiralling downward trend of the American empire in its grotesque glory, taking credit for the accomplishments of generations long gone and removed from the decision making process, and selling off the materials needed for the making of a solid national foundation to China on the cheap.
And the Democratic Party, in its perverse nature, decided upon resorting to a sort of incestuous solution to confronting Trump by selecting Biden, a Reagonist hard-line, tough-on-crime, pro-wars in the Middle East, carbon copy knock off of Bush II, and then allowed its decision making apparatus to be taken over by Bush era officials in an effort to shut out reformists from ever having a chance at directing policy.
I was despairing at the idea of the USA having 100,000 dead. Now, a million dead seems a possible target when and if the USA opens up without the necessities for controlling the infection rate in place.
Trump does seem like the culmination of all the aspects of social decay that you list, Troy.
I have wondered if a change of leadership could bring a critically-needed Enlightenment to the US, some sort of progressive restoration. It's been difficult for me to accept that's not going to happen.
This Lord of the Flies reality has too strong a grip on America. Chris Hedges foretold chaos, seeing America as having entered a "pre-revolutionary" state. I wanted to dismiss that as hyperbole but I think he's right.
BTW, do you know Lisa Kenoras? https://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.com/2020/05/fighting-back-indigenous-women.html
I don't see the US headed for any sort of progressive enlightenment. That's not a possibility even assuming Biden is elected president.
Republicans are comfortable manipulating the rules of the game to their advantage, suppressing the Dem vote with voter ID laws and gerrymandering. The Justice Department is politicized and the courts are stacked with young reactionary extremists who will rule against any kind of New Deal for years to come. The right wing no longer believes in democracy or any one else's right to govern. It is shot through with ignorance and insane conspiracy theories. Finally, inequality and racism, the roots of the US problems, will only get worse as Biden had never shown any inclination to do what it takes to reverse them. The US is a failed or failing state, and we'd better do everything we can to avoid being taken down with it.
I also fear the prospect of their contagion spreading across our border, Cap. What vexes me is the prospect of an American society divided and at each other's throats. I find that quite worrisome.
If Trump and his Republican governor brethren press forward with this insanity to "reopen the American economy", it's easy enough to imagine sometime in June a million dead Americans from this illness. By June. A month away.
ReplyDeleteAnd with every new case, there exists the possibility of a viral mutation, and it scything back through the population reinfecting those who'd fought it off before.
There's a reason old hospitals and sanitariums have tunnels leading direct to graveyards. Those old viruses that used to necessitate such measures demanded quick and easy solutions to safely dispose of contaminated bodies. In my community, on my reserve, the old mass burial sites of TB, Spanish Flu, Typhoid Fever, and other such illnesses were buried far back in the graveyard with iron crosses to be forgotten and never again disturbed, to be covered up in full by the shifting earth and the ever-growing treeline. The old church on my reserve had a TB shack, and there were probably more as necessary throughout the community.
That is the sort of solution Trump is really suggesting. To build little Covid-19 shacks, pile people up in them, and leave them to live and then die as fortune would dictate.
A brilliant solution, much in the same way as an Ammonia solution. Mix with Trump's bleach, and voila! Perhaps he'd been upset to learn he hadn't yet had as many innocent people killed as George W. Bush, and decided if he couldn't go to war with Iran, then he'd match Bush II's kill stats on the domestic front.
Just finished up my course work for a Banned American Literature class. Texts included Of Mice and Men, Catcher in the Rye, Rabbit, Run, The Bluest Eye, and American Psycho. I wonder at my professor's prescience, especially in that last named text. There runs through these books an analyzation of American exceptionalism, insecurity, narcissism, racism, sexualization, humiliation, violence, and lack of consequence. And through all these texts, I couldn't help thinking of how Trump was resultant of all this sort of American attitude, its casualization of male aggression and violence, and celebration of excess and conspicuous consumption, and the deification of work, and success in the workplace as symbolization of hard work, and luck as proof of divine intervention for the successful. And just this cyclical, spiralling downward trend of the American empire in its grotesque glory, taking credit for the accomplishments of generations long gone and removed from the decision making process, and selling off the materials needed for the making of a solid national foundation to China on the cheap.
And the Democratic Party, in its perverse nature, decided upon resorting to a sort of incestuous solution to confronting Trump by selecting Biden, a Reagonist hard-line, tough-on-crime, pro-wars in the Middle East, carbon copy knock off of Bush II, and then allowed its decision making apparatus to be taken over by Bush era officials in an effort to shut out reformists from ever having a chance at directing policy.
I was despairing at the idea of the USA having 100,000 dead. Now, a million dead seems a possible target when and if the USA opens up without the necessities for controlling the infection rate in place.
Trump does seem like the culmination of all the aspects of social decay that you list, Troy.
ReplyDeleteI have wondered if a change of leadership could bring a critically-needed Enlightenment to the US, some sort of progressive restoration. It's been difficult for me to accept that's not going to happen.
This Lord of the Flies reality has too strong a grip on America. Chris Hedges foretold chaos, seeing America as having entered a "pre-revolutionary" state. I wanted to dismiss that as hyperbole but I think he's right.
BTW, do you know Lisa Kenoras? https://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.com/2020/05/fighting-back-indigenous-women.html
I know the family, but not her personally.
ReplyDeleteI don't see the US headed for any sort of progressive enlightenment. That's not a possibility even assuming Biden is elected president.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans are comfortable manipulating the rules of the game to their advantage, suppressing the Dem vote with voter ID laws and gerrymandering. The Justice Department is politicized and the courts are stacked with young reactionary extremists who will rule against any kind of New Deal for years to come. The right wing no longer believes in democracy or any one else's right to govern. It is shot through with ignorance and insane conspiracy theories. Finally, inequality and racism, the roots of the US problems, will only get worse as Biden had never shown any inclination to do what it takes to reverse them. The US is a failed or failing state, and we'd better do everything we can to avoid being taken down with it.
Cap
I also fear the prospect of their contagion spreading across our border, Cap. What vexes me is the prospect of an American society divided and at each other's throats. I find that quite worrisome.
ReplyDelete