Op-Ed Pages #6: COVID Notes…
Trump’s administration is the worst in American history…and like all fascist-inspired executive institutions, it is also incompetent and perfidious. The NY Times seems to have problems calling Trump and his administration fascist; I’ve been doing so since the 2016 campaign. I guess people like Robert Reich have finally decided that word describes Trump. I suppose I should feel vindicated.
Allow me to ignore the many tweets from this narcissistic ignoramus where he displays autocratic behavior and stupidity. I’ll be nice and just make a list of some his recent gaffes and sins where he shoots himself in the foot:
Stimulus program for individuals. His economics team, all of them Ayn Rand-supply-side-trickle-down con artists, Mighty Mouse Munchkin in the lead, convinced this man who takes credit for every NYSE good day to “save the economy” with this stimulus. Hard to do, because he only likes government largesse if it’s directed at him! Even GOP members of Congress got onboard in a rare instance of bipartisan agreement (Ayn Rand Paul was probably the exception—he doesn’t even want to prevent lynching), knowing they could co-opt the program to their one-percenter constituents’ benefit.
Not only was the stimulus too little and too late, there had to be a work-around for people who don’t declare electronically and people who had not yet declared their 2020 taxes. Checks and debit cards were sent out to the latter two groups. But people who never declare because they make too little, the nation’s poor who need the money more, were left out. Checks were stolen. The debit cards looked like those credit cards people receive as spam mail, so many cut them up. And carnivorous scammers preyed on everyone.
Complete incompetence.
Stimulus program for businesses. Another egregious gaffe occurred in sending funds to help businesses in COVID distress: (1) Some didn’t ask for it; and (2) others didn’t deserve it. But the policy disaster didn’t stop there. Small businesses who did need help, and lots of it, couldn’t get it. They had no relationships with the mega-banks in charge of distributing the funds, who naturally favored their privileged clients. And so many conditions were placed on the funding, many small businesses were afraid to apply.
Add to this Trump and the Good Ole Piranha’s desire not to help fund state and local governments—the hardest hit by the pandemic were blue states with their historic booming economies, and Trump wants to ruin them because he knows they’ll never vote for him. (The turtle put his foot in it by complaining about bailing out blue states—his Kentucky takes more than it gives to federal coffers). These states aren’t only the powerhouses behind the nation’s economy, they’re big employers of exactly those people battling the pandemic: the frontline workers like EMTs, firefighters, police, and nurses and doctors at public hospitals and clinics. (Some are pushing to defund the police right now, like Ocasio-Cortes. I’d argue that more funding is needed for sensitivity and de-escalation training.)
This policy’s implementation was also completely incompetent.
Rolling back EPA regs and land grabbing. I lump these two together because Trump and his administrative gorillas used COVID as a distraction. The first will imperil all future generations, in the US and the world, but Trump and his minions don’t care about that. They’re intent on scoring points with all those corporations willing to sacrifice the the nation and world’s future to have more profits in the present. That’s more than a gaffe; it’s pure evil.
Trump is also using the COVID distraction to steal land using eminent domain from farmers and ranchers along the Southern Border. Move in while they’re staying at home became the policy created by Stephen Miller and others of Nazi mentality who pander to Trump because he wants to build his wall. Again, pure evil.
We expect pure evil from fascists. The result of their actions is incompetence, to say the least.
The Bible and mixed messaging. I still can’t believe that Trump can be so stupid. The Bible incident is another distraction he’s created to make people forget about his fascist incompetence inre COVID, as well as to forget about protests against cops murdering black men, which caught even his fascist minions by surprise—they scrambled, of course, to make sense of it, but none can be made.
Mr. Biden suggested that le Gran Chump should read the Bible instead of using it as photo-op prop, and Mr. Biden’s correct. (Please note that I call old Joe Mr. Biden and POTUS just Trump. I don’t like politicians much in general, but fascist, racist Trump doesn’t even deserve to be called “mister,” let alone president.)
The problem with implementing Mr. Biden’s advice is that Trump can’t read even at third-grade level. He’s the ignoramus who doesn’t even try to read briefings offered by underlings trying to inform him. As a result, he’s rarely informed…although he believes everything he hears on Fox News, and worse, right-wing cable TV (tweeting that the seventy-year-old protester now in the hospital was an anti-fa provocateur was straight from right-wing cable TV that hardly anyone watches…except Trump).
If he ever read a Bible, Trump would know that true Christians eschew hatred, racism, and other bigotry. Trump and his followers personify the latter.
But trampling on Mr. Floyd’s memory continued. Trump conflated the minimal good news about job numbers with the protests. Saying that Mr. Floyd would be happy “up there” to see the improved economy was over the top and only more evidence for Trump’s moronic, insensitive behavior. By the way, someone should have told this “stable genius” that the black unemployment rate increased at the same time—did they forget that Mr. Floyd was black?
More incompetence.
Conclusions. Trump’s operating mantra has always been “With malice toward all, with charity for none,” completely opposite to our democratic traditions but consistent with his fascist personality. In 2020 we have to vote out this “f&^%ing moron” (SecState Tillerson quote). Democracy in this nation will not survive another four years under Trump’s fascist rule.
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Comments are always welcome, even contrary ones (but keep them clean).
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Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
