“Of more than 140 charged so far, a review of military records, social media accounts, court documents and news reports indicate at least 27 of those charged, or nearly 20%, have served or are currently serving in the U.S. military.”
Putting that number in perspective, only about 7% of American adults are military veterans.
A senior defense official told NPR subsequent to Jan. 6 that last year, there were 68 notifications of investigations by the FBI of former and current military members pertaining to domestic extremism.
According to a 2019 survey conducted by the Military Times and Syracuse University, one third of troops said they personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism within the ranks, including:
“…swastikas being drawn on service members’ cars, tattoos affiliated with white supremacist groups, stickers supporting the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi-style salutes between individuals.”
This means the top brass largely tolerates this behavior. And it isn’t new, we’ve known for years that the US military officer corps leans Republican, and its younger, more recent veterans, even more so.
The demographics of the military has changed since we started the all-volunteer military in 1973. It skews southern, western and rural, all conservative-leaning parts of America. One study at the National Interest shows that over the last generation, the percentage of officers that identify themselves as politically independent has gone from a plurality (46%) to a minority (27%). The percentage that identify themselves as Republican has nearly doubled (from 33% to 64%).
This isn’t to equate Republicans with White supremacy, but the trend and recent events are the best reason to end our all-volunteer military. A military draft with NO exceptions would go a long way toward making military service more egalitarian and politically balanced. On to cartoons.
Somehow, we’ve made it to the last day of 2020. This year was awful. Even if you escaped unscathed, you would have to be a sociopath not to feel heartache for the tens of millions of people who didn’t escape: People who lost spouses, parents, and friends. People who lost their jobs, or their homes. People who couldn’t be at the bedside of a dying loved one, or share the mourning of their dead together.
You will see plenty of year-end reviews, so Wrongo will leave that to others. But let’s call out a few conclusions from 2020:
Our politicians failed us. We can never forgive the mismanagement of the national (or most state’s) responses to the virus. We also should never forgive the deliberately lax attitudes of many of our fellow citizens to physically distancing or wearing masks. We will never forgive Trump for his willful and obstinate refusal to even pretend to care about the Americans who were dying every day. Or, forgive Jared Kushner’s callous desire to keep the economy open in order to help Trump’s opinion polls and campaign because, at that time, only people in the blue states were dying. We should never forgive governors, Congresspersons and pundits who were mask-deniers or who said the Covid deaths were the price of keeping our economy and stock market on track.
Teachers are really important. We learned quickly that parents teaching at home were an imperfect substitute for professional instruction. In many cases, parents were also a full-time employee of someone else. There are yard signs everywhere in America’s suburbs thanking and celebrating school teachers. Will this lead to better pay and more resources directed to public education? Let’s hope so.
Apparently, people really don’t like spending their mornings and afternoons stuck in traffic. Work from home mushroomed. It appears to be yet another privilege that will accrue to white collar workers. There will be many more remote workers, maybe triple or quadruple the number there was before the pandemic. But, more than half the workforce has little or no opportunity for remote work. Many of those jobs are low wage, and more at risk for automation and digitization. Remote work will accelerate social and income inequalities.
Our divergent perceptions and beliefs about reality drove a deep wedge into our social fabric. 2020 saw facts and conspiracy theories about those facts fracture our social cohesion. “Hoax” should be the word of the year, because it describes the reaction by Trumpists to his election loss, and to the pandemic. The pandemic showed us how important it is that a critical mass of people accept a shared reality, allowing them to cooperate to solve nation-wide problems. Nurses and doctors worked shift after shift, putting themselves and their loved ones at risk, witnessing gruesome deaths, while watching as many of their neighbors went about their lives, ranting about how they were the ones who were being imposed upon.
2020 was the year that voters toppled the greatest threat to our nation. Turning out more people to vote against the president-strongman than had ever voted against any president in American history. Turning out large enough numbers to ensure the victory was clear, so that it thwarted Trump’s and the GOP’s attempt to overturn our democracy.
Americans seem to be very optimistic about 2021. Axios and Survey Monkey conducted an online poll last week that found 73% of Americans more hopeful about their future in 2021:
The only group that wasn’t optimistic about 2021 was Republicans: 41% said they were more hopeful, while 58% said they were more fearful. More demonstration of America’s failing social cohesion!
Let’s remember that unpredictable things will continue to happen: a year ago, “coronavirus” was a crossword puzzle clue, “wear a mask” was a Halloween suggestion, social distancing was for introverts.
We will drag the wreckage of 2020 along with us into the New Year. The first weeks of 2021 will be dark and stormy because of both our fractured politics and the pandemic. There will be no magical cure for these self-inflicted wounds to our society. We can see this, and have a very clear-eyed view of what comes next. But we can also be optimistic.
2021 will not be worse than 2020. In most ways, it will be better.
Can we learn from the past four years? Can we learn from last year? Will a better year bring an opportunity to foster more togetherness? Will we be able to start to rebuild trust and cooperation among our fellow citizens?
Here’s Wrongo’s hope that we can do all of these things. We’ll be here, trying to figure it all out right along with you.
Sunset, Manhattan Beach, CA – December 2020 photo by Linda Patterson
As 2020 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the hard lessons we’ve learned (or relearned) by living through 2020:
Essential workers aren’t valued. In most cases, they do not make enough money to take time off, even if they’re sick. Few received the PPE they needed to do their jobs, and so they caught the virus in higher numbers than non-essential workers. We shouldn’t be taking these people for granted. Hardly any political group genuinely cares enough about the interests of essential workers to put them above their political agenda.
The federal government is fully capable of doing the unthinkable. Like failing to rein in a president that has no regard for norms or laws. Or, by protecting us from cyber terrorism and spying. Or, by an administration purposefully mishandling a pandemic. Republicans have developed a clever way of inoculating themselves from accountability.
The House and Senate are broken. They care more about their opportunities for personal advancement and wealth, than about doing what’s needed for the country. If you doubt this, remember that it took 51 days for Republicans to ram through tax breaks for the rich in 2017. It took 219 days for them to act on a second 2020 relief package that originally passed by the House on May 15, 2020
Americans no longer care about each other. A common refrain heard throughout the pandemic was that “we’re all in this together.” Not true. We’re on our own. If this doesn’t change, it will eventually be the downfall of the country. It hasn’t always been this way. But now we’re out for ourselves, and we’ll do anything to get what we think we need.
Outrage shown by Republicans is different than the outrage shown by Democrats. Just this week, Republicans are outraged by Jill Biden using “Dr.” as a title. Jill Biden has an Ed.D. degree. Republicans have decided that hers is a phony degree, and that the title “Dr.“ should be reserved for MDs. Jill Biden wasn’t elected, and neither she, nor her dissertation, should be a subject of outrage on the right. Last week, Biden’s soon-to-be White House deputy chief of staff, Jen O’Malley Dillon, dropped several F-bombs, including one in which she referred to Congressional Republicans as “a bunch of f***ers.” Naturally, Republicans’ outrage flowed from a group who support a guy who has used profanity in public for years.Democrats OTOH, seem to be outraged by 300,000 Americans dying. They’re outraged by the continued killings of Black Americans by police. They’re outraged by the Republicans’ unwillingness to handle immigrant children humanely. Perhaps you can see the difference.
People haven’t the slightest clue about how to use facts and statistics. For most, facts and data are abstractions, while emotional arguments are very real. Use of science in every-day decision-making may vanish in one generation.
We’re seeing an acceleration of things that were coming, but have arrived sooner than we anticipated. People who can work from home will continue to do it. More post-high school students will take online courses. Some routine medical consultations will start as virtual meetings with tests done at testing facilities before moving to in-person sessions. Office space in cities will be less expensive for at least a decade. High speed internet is now a necessity for all of us.
Health is to be treasured. This is the great lesson of the pandemic.
Sheltering in your family bubble demonstrates your privilege. It has a lot to recommend it: Fewer chances for infection, more time to get to spend together, some chance for personal growth. Don’t dwell on the negative, dwell on the time spent learning something new. Family is paramount. Whether “family” means those related to you by blood is secondary. “Family” can be your support network, your spouse and offspring, your significant other(s), any group you choose.
There will be the pandemic equivalent of something like a Covid-20. What lessons will America learn that makes us better prepared next time? Do we need more than simply better presidential leadership?
Pundits know nearly nothing. Did any of them have a pandemic on their watch list for 2020? How many saw a second stimulus package taking 219 days to pass the Senate? This means Wrongo, too.
Elections will always have consequences. We must do a better job of seeing through the BS answers offered by candidates at all levels of government. We need much stronger guardrails to protect our democracy from another charlatan.
Financial markets are mysterious and resilient. They are adaptable beyond anything Wrongo imagined possible when he was on Wall Street. How many foresaw the stock market crash and the follow-up boom? America learned that “small business” is often large corporations that manage franchises.
America’s corporations, while seemingly innovative and impressive, are not our friends. The big tech firms are far too big and like all corporations, do not have our best interests in their business plans. Our social media interactions drive many people’s lives, and how easily something on social media morphs into political influence is dangerous to America’s well-being. Very often people’s “principles” are nothing more than social signaling.
Wrongo may have lived through the best years of the US. You may wish it weren’t so, but the sixties through the nineties may have been the peak period of US success. Our citizens were at their wealthiest, they still had pensions. Our prominence around the world was unquestioned. Wrongo’s heart goes out to those who are young now, in 2020.
What you learned may be different. In fact, it should be.
Turkey Pond, near Concord, NH – November 2020 photo by panasthropodism
The last time Congress passed a COVID relief bill was over seven months ago. This week, a bipartisan group of Senators revealed a new $908 billion stimulus proposal. This reflects a substantial cave-in by Democrats and House Speaker Pelosi, (D-CA) whose last offer was about $2.2 trillion.
Whether it goes forward depends on Pelosi and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) finding agreement, and then getting Trump to sign off. Pelosi and McConnell talked on Thursday about how to find common ground on both a funding bill to keep the government’s doors open, and on another coronavirus relief package. Needless to say, they are still far apart.
Sept. 8: McConnell releases plan including $300/week in supplemental federal UI [unemployment insurance] for jobless Americans
Dec. 1: McConnell releases plan including $0/week in supplemental federal UI for jobless Americans https://t.co/GywLXGzOP9
According to the Century Foundation, 12 million people could see their Covid-related aid disappear the day after Christmas. This cliff is a major factor in pressuring Congress to pass a new bill before their 2020 recess. This funding need is separate from the need to fund the government past December 11. James Kwak of the Baseline Scenario says:
“One of Congress’s top priorities this week and next is to pass some kind of funding bill that will keep the federal government operating past December 11.”
Kwak points out that there are two ways this could happen: First, Congress could pass a continuing resolution that maintains funding at current levels for a period of time, until after Biden is inaugurated, and a new Congress is seated.
Second, the Parties could agree to pass an omnibus fiscal year 2021 spending bill that funds the government through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, 2021. This is Trump’s preference.
This is a bit of inside baseball. Government funding measures are must-pass bills. No politician wants a government shutdown. Democrats have historically been able to pin most of the blame for a shutdown on Republicans, starting in 1995, when Bill Clinton successfully portrayed Newt Gingrich as a zealot who wanted to slash Medicare.
OTOH, an omnibus budget reconciliation bill could represent one of the Biden administration’s few real chances to pass anything big through Congress. This is true since bills passed via the reconciliation process are not subject to the Senate’s filibuster.
Biden probably doesn’t want to cede the omnibus bill win to Trump just as Trump is packing his bags.
But, if Dems linked the short-term funding bill to an omnibus budget reconciliation bill, they’d only need a bare majority of Senators to pass both. The gamble would be that in order to avert a government shutdown, a scant few Republican moderates might be pressured to join in an omnibus budget deal.
Part of the Dem’s reasoning for wanting to take only a short-term government funding deal is a bet that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock can both win in Georgia on January 5. Then, the Senate would be split 50/50, with VP Harris, as President of the Senate, in a position to cast the deciding vote(s) on the Democrat’s agenda.
If both Georgia candidates win, Democrats will control both Houses of Congress for the first time since 2010, but by a razor-thin margin. They would need to insure that the one Senate Democrat in name only, Joe Manchin (D-WVA) would agree with whatever bills they put forward. Manchin will be in a position to control much of the Democrats’ political agenda.
We’ll see how all of this plays out in real-time, since the Senate is planning to head for home on December 18. Kwak says:
“…Democratic leadership in Congress seems inclined to give up the potential chance to write their own appropriations bill in January in exchange for a bill that they have to negotiate with McConnell and…Donald J. Trump.”
Congress might pass something that is an extension of the CARES Act, stranger things have happened. It’s likely it will pass a government funding extension before leaving for the holidays.
Did you realize that the Republicans have made it a long-term strategy to delegitimize the last four Democratic presidents? That includes Carter, Clinton, Obama and now, Biden.
What tactics the GOP will use against Biden probably haven’t been fully fleshed out yet, but it’s still seven days until the Electoral College’s “Safe Harbor” date; 13 days until Electoral College votes are cast; and 50 days until Joe Biden is inaugurated.
There’s plenty of time for their plan to come together, but you can be sure that it will be déjà vu all over again. What we already know is that many Republicans are already coming out of the woodwork to criticize Biden or his nominees to various key positions. From the WaPo:
“In near-identical tweets this week, GOP senators Tom Cotton (AK), Josh Hawley (MO) and Marco Rubio (FL) all came out pretty aggressively against Biden’s Cabinet picks.”
The common thread of their tweets is a resistance to the educated, steeped-in-government expertise that Biden wants to shape his government with. Imagine the anti-elitists making that argument: Cotton graduated from Harvard undergraduate, and Harvard Law. Hawley graduated from Stanford, and Yale Law School. All three Senators voted for Trump’s Cabinet, which was filled with people who also went to Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools. Trump also bragged about going to an Ivy League school.
Even Larry Hogan, Republican governor of Maryland, who told Trump to concede, saw fit on Monday to endorse the two Georgia Republican Senate candidates, Loeffler and Perdue. So even the better ones aren’t changing their spots.
And we still have the twin Republican stains on the country: Eleven months into the Covid mess, sourcing sufficient testing is still a struggle, and we’re still short on PPE. As Robert Reich said:
“Leave it to Trump and his Republican allies to spend more energy fighting non-existent voter fraud than containing a virus that has killed 244,000 Americans and counting.”
The cost of the Republicans’ misplaced attention is clear: While Covid-19 surges to record levels, there’s still no national strategy for sourcing PPE or tests. There’s no national standard for stay-at-home orders, or mask mandates. There’s no funding for additional Covid relief.
Instead, the Republicans have led millions of Trump voters to believe the election was stolen. They will be a hostile force for years, supporting Trump’s presidency-in-exile at least until the 2024 elections. Delegitimizing Biden will pull lots of money into Trump’s newly formed PAC. It also allows Trump to keep himself at the center of media attention.
One thing this delegitimizing of Biden will do is keep the political gridlock going for another four years.
That will continue to enable the 40-year old Republican heist. According to a recent Rand study, if America’s distribution of income had remained the same as it was in the three decades after WWII, the bottom 90% of Americans would now be $47 trillion richer. More from Reich:
“The upward redistribution of $47tn wasn’t due to natural forces. It was contrived. As wealth accumulated at the top, so did political power to siphon off even more wealth and shaft everyone else.”
Today, we live in the richest third world country on the planet. Since Covid hit, the rich got richer. The Treasury and the Fed bailed out big corporations but let small businesses go under. Since March, billionaire wealth has soared while most of America has become poorer.
By the end of this pandemic, Trump’s legacy will have entered Pol Pot territory. He’s been ever-present, even while being a terrible president. There were no checks or balances. The GOP gave him everything he wanted, up to and including a theocratic SCOTUS.
Now we need to make sure we’ll never have another authoritarian President. We’ll do that by cleaning out the political rot. It will be hard work, it means that we need to be citizens, not merely consumers. With the Conservatives trying to combine Church and State with big business, what must be done will be hugely difficult to accomplish.
Ruminate on the return of the darkness by listening to Disturbed’s cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”. Perhaps the best cover song ever:
Listen carefully to the words, and you will understand the story of the decline of our values and our country.
We’re back from our turkey-induced coma, but it’s hard to start a new week without our usual Sunday humor:
Yummy Thanksgiving pie:
Looking forward to the Inauguration:
This Thanksgiving, Biden thanked all the front line workers for all they have done. Trump thanked all of his lawyers.
Wrongo hadn’t realized that Trump has now spent more than an entire year of his term on a Trump property (418 days), and 307 days playing golf. Imagine how much more damage he could have done if he wasn’t so lazy.
Why is it so difficult for Americans to understand the threat to our society from Covid? From the WaPo: (emphasis by Wrongo)
A few long-reluctant Republican governors recently adopted statewide mask orders and stricter social distancing measures. But not all: For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), last Tuesday extended an executive order that bans city and county governments from enforcing mask ordinances or limits on restaurant capacity. South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem (R) is still resisting any kind of mask mandate. Nebraska’s governor Pete Ricketts (R) again stated his opposition to mask mandates, while Nebraska’s rural hospitals are nearly at capacity, as are bigger cities, like Lincoln.
White, rural American states are late to the pandemic’s deadly impact – partly due to how physically distant their residents are, by definition. But rural states have the smallest margin for error in terms of health care infrastructure. Their lack of ICU capacity combined with their relative inability to handle delivering the new vaccines when they become available, may see rural Trump-loving Americans take a much harder hit than they expected from Covid.
The exact criteria for who will be first in line won’t be defined until immediately after a vaccine is authorized. But the pressure’s on: The WSJreported that United Airlines is already flying doses of Pfizer’s vaccine to points around the country in order to be prepared for distribution, if Pfizer wins government approval.
Think about the enormous pressure there is on the FDA to approve use of these vaccines. That approval starts with a meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC). The FDA has scheduled a Committee meeting on Dec. 10 to discuss the request for emergency use authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine.
As of now, the FDA hasn’t made the names of Committee members’ public. But imagine if there are a few Committee members who disagree that the vaccine should be made available immediately.
This recently happened with an Alzheimer’s drug. The FDA’s review division reported that the drug’s effectiveness data was “extraordinarily persuasive”. But many on that drug’s Advisory Committee rejected the study, saying that the data showed the drug offered no significant improvement to patients.
Now, the FDA is not required to follow the recommendations of its outside advisors, but it often does. So what happens if the Pfizer Committee has a split decision?
Finally, the Supreme Court’s decision in a Covid case about whether or not a state official could close down places of worship in order to stop the spread of a deadly disease, seems out of step with where we are in America. They ruled that restrictions previously imposed on New York places of worship by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) during the coronavirus pandemic violated the First Amendment.
That’s a huge shift since Coney Barrett joined the court. In a similar case earlier this year, the court declined to lift pandemic restrictions in California and Nevada when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was alive.
But the longer term issue isn’t the possible infringement of individual religious liberty. It’s how the American Right wants to expand it so that religious people can ignore just about any law they don’t like.
The problem with this decision is that it expands an individual right to a communal right. A religious person should be able to follow their faith, but once you start giving religious communities separate rights, you’ve weakened the rule of law.
Your exercise of a right shouldn’t impose unreasonable burdens on others. But Conservatives want to treat religion as having a higher level of rights then others’ individual rights, and this isn’t right.
Time to wake up America! The fault lines of our society have been exposed by Covid and the Republican response to it. To help you wake up, listen to a cover version of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” by cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his siblings. He became an instant sensation after his cello performance at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. Watch it, you won’t be dissapointed:
There are a few fine Republican governors out there. Vermont Governor Phil Scott is one. Earlier this week at a press conference, he spoke to the COVID skeptics, and to those who refuse to wear masks or follow Vermont’s social distancing mandates. Scott said that “they can do what they want”, but added:
“Don’t call it patriotic. Don’t pretend it’s about freedom. Because real patriots serve and sacrifice for all, whether they agree with them or not. Patriots also stand up and fight when our nation’s health and security is threatened. And right now, our country and way of life is being attacked by this virus — not the protections we put in place.”
Scott was recently re-elected by a wide margin by the voters in his very blue state. Bravo!
Could a campaign work that characterized those mask refusers as cowards who won’t stand up and fight, who won’t serve and sacrifice for the good of the country? Would it change a few minds? Nothing else has: not science, not facts, not cajoling, not even mandates. Maybe trying shame is overdue. On to cartoons.
Sunset, Bryce Canyon NP, UT – November 2020 photo by cookdog1117
We’ve come to a point where the future of our democracy depends on a few Republicans doing the right thing.
Wrongo has never written a scarier sentence, but it’s true. The success or failure of the slow-rolling Trump coup will be decided by a small group of Republicans who have the job of certifying the election in key swing states. The WaPo says it all:
“…Trump is using the power of his office to try to reverse the results of the election, orchestrating a far-reaching pressure campaign to persuade Republican officials in Michigan, Georgia and elsewhere to overturn the will of voters in what critics decried Thursday as an unprecedented subversion of democracy.”
We became aware of Trump’s plan when he called a Republican member of Michigan’s Wayne County Board of Canvassers (who had earlier voted to certify the County’s vote) to persuade her to change her vote. After speaking to Trump, she unsuccessfully tried to rescind her certification of Biden’s win in what is the state’s largest county.
Not giving up, on Friday, Trump summoned two Michigan GOP leaders to the White House ahead of next Monday’s state canvassing board meeting to certify Michigan’s results for Biden. After the meeting, they said they were “not yet aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election” in Michigan. They also vowed not to interfere with the certification process.
Trump’s efforts threaten our system of democratic presidential elections: If state officials start claiming the right to overturn elections because of unsubstantiated claims about “election fraud,” our democratic system will die.
What Trump is doing is election tampering. He risks criminal charges for directly intervening to change the votes for certification by the Wayne County Board members, and the minds of the two Michigan legislators. When does his criminal attempt to influence the Michigan election people become actionable?
If Michigan’s board becomes deadlocked, it is possible that Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature could ignore Biden’s popular-vote win and seat Trump electors. But, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has the power to fire members of the canvassing board and appoint interim replacements without legislative approval.
The Georgia recount is finished and Biden won. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the statewide result on Friday, as required by law. The certification now sits with Gov. Brian Kemp (R). His signature is required by law on Saturday. But Trump has been publicly badgering Kemp to intervene in the recount to reject ballots and “flip” the result. The WaPo reports that Trump has told advisers he is furious with the governor for not doing more to help Trump take Georgia.
Trump’s coup would also need to succeed in Arizona, along with Michigan and Georgia, to change the election’s outcome.
Despite the voting, the counting, the re-counting and absolutely zero evidence of fraud, America needs a few Republicans to put country over Party, or the coup may succeed. Inadvertently, Trump’s effort to grab power has made the most persuasive argument yet for doing away with the Electoral College. What we’ve learned the hard way is that America lacks the proper checks and balances in our government to stop a tyrant. It’s very clear that Trump is free to subvert the very democracy he was elected to lead.
This is a lesson that must be learned. We must make sure this doesn’t happen again. We need to assure that no future tyrant like Trump is allowed to be the final judge in his or her own cause.
It’s difficult to divorce our thinking from the possible wreckage of our democracy, but let’s try to move away from it for a few minutes on this Saturday, while calming down to the extent we can.
Nearly all of the leaves are down on the fields of Wrong, and our thoughts turn to the holidays. This year, Thanksgiving and Christmas will be smaller, but surely as nice as bigger ones in the past. Scaling back for a year should be seen as an act of generosity, part of our community’s effort to avoid spreading the Coronavirus.
It’s frighteningly clear that the rampant growth in cases of Coronavirus show that society is failing the “marshmallow test”, because the “libertarian” way of life in red States means “I only do the things that I want to do, how that effects the rest of you be damned”.
Let’s relax with a piece by Franz Liszt, “Un Sospiro”, the third of three Concert Études he wrote between 1845-1849. An etude is a study in crossing hands on the piano, playing a simple melody while alternating hands with increasing complexity. This étude has been considered by many pianists as one of the most beautiful piano pieces. Here it is played by Dubravka Tomsic:
Doesn’t this disgusting guy show absolutely everything that’s wrong with America in 2020? The facts are bad, says the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“At least 1,210 new coronavirus deaths and 159,121 new cases were reported in the US on Nov. 14. Over the past week, there has been an average of 145,726 cases per day, an increase of 80% from the average two weeks earlier. As of Sunday afternoon, more than 11,050,100 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 245,700 have died…”
Why is stopping the Coronavirus political? The virus needs hosts and targets. If we are sufficiently far apart, the virus can’t spread, and will eventually die out. But people like our fellow citizen above refuse to believe they will spread, or get sick from Covid.
Long-time blog reader Pat M. asked Ms. Right to show Wrongo an article by Dr. Leah Curtin, “Pathological individualism”, in which Dr. Curtin says this:
“It seems we can no longer tell “freedom” from “license,” “rights” from “responsibilities,” or “laws” from “the common good.” And while the world pities us…we stand like spoiled children, insisting on our “rights” and making fun of people in masks.”
Curtin points out that even a superficial study of the Constitution is clear about our freedoms, our rights, and our individual responsibility to help bring about the common good: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“…to be “free” means to be able to do the doable without being subject to unjust constraints. It doesn’t mean that any of us can trample on the rights of others, though we’re still struggling to understand and implement the latter…..personal rights come with the responsibility to maintain them for self and others.
In other words, we don’t have the freedom to infect others. Why? Because that creates conditions that violate other people’s unalienable rights. If you think this is exaggerated, consider this tweet from a thread by a South Dakota ER nurse:
“President-elect Joe Biden says he’ll personally call red state governors and persuade them to impose mask mandates to slow down the coronavirus pandemic. Their early response: Don’t waste your time. Almost all of the 16 Republican governors who oppose statewide mask mandates are ready to reject Biden’s plea…even as they impose new restrictions on businesses and limit the size of public gatherings to keep their health systems from getting swamped.”
South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem, Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt and Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts, whose states are seeing tsunamis of new cases, say mask wearing should remain a personal choice, not a legal obligation. This shows how difficult it will be for Biden to build consensus around even basic public health strategies after he’s sworn in.
Other Republican governors, like Eric Holcomb in Indiana and Kay Ivey in Alabama have had mask mandates for months, while Utah Gov. Gary Herbert imposed a statewide order last week when it became clear that his state’s hospitals were overwhelmed. Mike DeWine in Ohio also did the right thing.
We continue to think that we can only control Covid with a binary switch. The economy is either closed, or open. We either save the economy, or save the healthcare system.
But, the Biden administration isn’t proposing using an on/off switch for the country, or for individual states. They propose using a dial, with stops from fully open to fully closed, and many stops in between, depending on the local severity of the pandemic. This approach will recognize facts on the ground as they change, and keep draconian measures like lockdowns from being the only tool in the box.
When we wear masks that cover our noses and mouths in public, people should understand that:
The wearer knows that they could be asymptomatic and still give someone the virus.
They don’t “live in fear” of the virus; they just want to be part of the solution, not the problem.
They don’t feel like the “government is controlling them”.
Wearing a mask means they are caring and responsible.
Will Republicans help Biden create a teachable moment for America? Don’t count on that. As Thanksgiving approaches, it just seems that no one wants to bother: Sure, it kills other people, and that might include grandma, but it won’t kill me.
Trump and Republicans have shown utter indifference to Covid and how it’s affected people’s lives. But it didn’t seem to hurt them in the elections, at least at the state level.
Big Lily Creek, Russell County KY – November 2020 photo by Dean Francisco
On Friday afternoon, the WaPo called Georgia for Biden and North Carolina for Trump. They were the last two states to be called. Overall, Biden is projected to win 306 electoral votes, Trump is projected to win 232, the same tally as in 2016, with Trump on the losing side this time.
So far, Biden has about 5.2 million more popular votes than Trump.
You may remember that in 2016, Trump called his Electoral College win a “landslide”. This time, no concession so far. We hear from the Right that “there is no Constitutional requirement for a concession speech, and the press does not certify election results.” That’s true. And there’s no Constitutional requirement for fairness in our society. Maybe there should be one. For better or worse, social norms, including being a graceful loser, are part of what keep our society functioning. If we ignore those norms, society will have problems surviving.
One malfunctioning area of society is our pandemic response. Alarm bells are going off all across the country because of COVID. The situation is approaching the horrific. Back in March/April, when hospitals became short staffed, they were able to hire nurses and other health care workers from parts of the country that hadn’t been overwhelmed.
Now, the disease is everywhere. It’s so bad that Doctors Without Borders, the independent organization that sends physicians to less developed countries having some sort of health care crisis, has sent COVID-19 teams to the US. How embarrassing.
The following chart on COVID hospitalizations shows you why we need hospital workers. We’ve hit a new high in America:
The result is a surging pandemic that has been left to run wild across the country and a “catastrophic” lack of ICU beds in places like El Paso, TX and Minnesota. The WaPo quoted Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy:
“This is like one huge coronavirus forest fire, and I don’t think it’s going to spare much human wood out there unless we change our behavior.”
Sixty-seven thousand hospitalized and 1,100 dead per day. We’re not in a presidential transition, it’s more of a death march to January 20th.
If you live in South Dakota or Iowa, and take a COVID-19 test, the odds are that you will test positive. Positivity rates in both of these two states are above 50%. In South Dakota, its 56.4%; in Iowa, its 51.4%. Here in Connecticut, we’re at 4.3%, among the top eleven places with the lowest positivity rates in the US.
FYI, despite what you may hear, higher positivity rates do not correlate with more testing. In fact, South Dakota and Iowa are testing fewer people per 1,000 population than any of the 11 states with low positivity results.
In North Dakota, health-care workers with asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus were authorized by the governor to keep working. North Dakota is one of 15 states without a mask mandate. The ND Nurses Association has called for a mask mandate if they have to work while infected.
There are Maskholes in every state, people who are following their warped sense of “personal freedom”, and not wearing a mask to protect others, or themselves. Remember during the campaign when Trump told his followers that the day after the election, the media would stop mentioning COVID-19 because the only reason they were reporting on it was to hurt him?
His management of America’s COVID response is just one of many things that will improve after January 20. That brings us to the World According to Trump:
Stop testing – then we won’t have new cases…
Stop counting the votes – then I win…
Don’t publish my tax returns – then I’m still a billionaire…
Let’s cruise into the weekend leaving the Concession and COVID behind, at least for a little while. It’s cold and crisp in Connecticut this weekend, and time for our Saturday Soother, that part of the week when we try to refresh our bodies and souls before again strapping on the gladiator equipment for next week.
There’s little left to do to prepare the fields of Wrong for winter, so the focus today is indoors. Let’s start by brewing up a mug of La Esperanza Colombian Natural X.O. ($16.95/12 oz.) from Durango Coffee in southwestern Colorado. Durango Coffee’s motto is “Tough Town, Great Coffee.”
Now grab your mug and sit by a window where you can see the last of the leaves swirl down to earth, like Trump’s reelection chances, and listen to the “Band of Brothers Theme” from the soundtrack to the Band of Brothers movie. It’s played by the London Metropolitan Orchestra, conducted by Michael Kamen:
