Some people are out to kill you

As of today, there are more than 29 million cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., more than 524,000 deaths, and Brown County, where I live, is rated at a very high risk level. 

On the basis of age, I qualified to receive a vaccination early on.  So I got the shots as soon as I could.  The rest of my family is waiting for their turn.  Anyone who has acquainted themselves with the facts about this disease will want a vaccination to spare themselves and their families from a disease that has lasting debilitating effects and is killing thousands of people everyday.  The medical scientists and the federal government are pushing to get enough people vaccinated to defeat the virus.  

But there is a group of people who stand in the way.

...polls have repeatedly found that nearly one-third of Republicans share [a] staunch resistance to the coronavirus vaccines, although for a variety of reasons. Some worry they were… developed too quickly. Others argue without evidence that many vaccines are unsafe or will make them sick. Still more echo Trump’s repeated contention that the coronavirus threat is overblown and simply don’t trust the government’s involvement.

   Burning masks in Idaho

Yesterday's news showed a bunch of people in Idaho burning masks as a display of their rejection of the fact of Covid-19 and the government's efforts to control it.  They involved their children in the demonstration.  If there is a war against the virus, these people are inviting the enemy in to have its way with us.  For now, it is best to get the shots, keep wearing a mask, and stay away from these people.  They are mental failures who are willing to put you at risk by intention or mental incapacity.  At some point, we will have to find ways of dealing with them, but for now we can only hope to identify them and avoid them.  Their circumstance goes way beyond partisan politics and threatens democracy and a functional society.  

                                 The best future the coronavirus deniers can hope for.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/07/republicans-covid-vaccine/

Anatomy of an asshole

asshole

See synonyms for asshole on Thesaurus.com

---

noun Vulgar.

anus. 

Slang. 

1. a stupid, mean, or contemptible person.
2. the worst part of a place or thing.

adjective

Slang. stupid, mean, or contemptible. 

Many years ago, I was a house guest along with a retired banker from Chicago.  We got into a discussion about conniving businessmen and the damage they did.  The banker went into a rant about Donald Trump.  Trump had a reputation for not paying his debts and for being a total asshole, and the banker said that everyone he knew wanted Trump and his business to stay out of Chicago.  He said that Trump was one of the most loathsome creatures on earth who befouled everything he came into contact with.  Since that time, I've never heard a good word about Trump.  I have heard people acknowledge that he seemed to get by in business, but I've never heard anyone laud his business enterprises or say anything positive about his character.  Most people talk about his lying, his shysterism, his low-life character, and generally what a vile person he is.

I will never understand how Trump became president.  When he appeared in "debates" with other candidates, he acted like a belligerent, ill-mannered 13-year-old.  I assumed that few voters in America would not dismiss him as intellectually and morally unfit  and unable to be president.  I underestimated the intelligence quotient of America.  I forgot a principle of social organization that became evident during my elementary school years.  

Most people do not choose their leaders on the basis of character and principles.  They line up behind the people they think are the most powerful.  They passively subjugate themselves to small-minded bullies hoping some sense of importance attaches to them.  They live in fear of those behind whom they cower.  Despite his defects, Trump knows how to manipulate those who feel they can't live without him.

One of Trump's biographers has written a long open letter listing his defects as a person.  It includes this passage:

As President, your weaknesses posed terrible threats to the country. Your many failures at running businesses such as casinos or the airline Trump Shuttle showed that you were not a nimble thinker capable of leading complex operations. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made this glaring incompetence crystal clear -- and despite your efforts to deflect the blame, the country's death toll speaks for itself. More than 400,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States -- more than any other country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Trump's disapproval rating approaches the 60 percent mark, but as Talking Points Memo points out, "the party remains beholden to Trump, and terrified of the political consequences if they cross him."

The real defect is the fact that people in the country give Trump so much attention.  We must question why such a vile person who represents the opposite of what America says it reveres is allowed to dominate the public attention.  A large portion of the people admires assholes.  And that admiration signifies what America is--a country that represents the most repulsive part of the world anatomy.  

It is defining American character.

America no longer aspires to be the world's leading democracy

Trump lingers over the land like a fart that never clears a room.  His presence seems to leave an odiferous residue in the  national fabrics. 

Even though Trump was ousted from office by Joe Biden, who has been president for a few months, Trump still receives a lot of attention.  While Trump may have loyal fans who follow his moves, most of the attention is of the what-hell-has-the-idiot-done-now? variety.  During Trump's presidency, America lost its status as the world's leading democracy.  The world asked, what kind of country would voluntarily choose a person of Trump's ilk as its leader?  It answered, not the kind of country that  is fully invested in freedom, equality, and justice.  So, America has become a laggard, not a leader, in expanding the benefits of democracy.  That is Trump's legacy.

Serious scholars of political theory have always debunked the notion that experienced people from the business world will make good political leaders or competent public servants.  Establishing and adhering to budgets is not peculiar to business.  It is part of maintaining any organization.   But business leaders have a different priority.  While they may claim to be driven by providing a better product or service, their major function is to produce a profit.  Making a profit often displaces concern about the welfare of the people involved.  On the other hand, public service is supposed to be focused on the welfare of the people.  But the business-oriented leaders will question whether we can afford to care for all the people and label such notions as a liberal excess.  The GOP is quick to denounce social programs as a descent into a welfare state and to shame people for not caring for themselves.  It will even reverse its condemnation against wearing masks when the corona virus begins infecting them and then it gives lectures on the personal responsibility of keeping the air virus-free.  In America, it has become near impossible to have a coherent discussion about how to respond to a pandemic.  A large segment of America will stand firmly for the right to be stupid.  It's a god-given right, after all. 

The most salient objection to Trump leading the nation is that he is a very stupid man.  His appeal to a large segment of the American people is to have one of their own lead the country.  His supporters claim it is good to have a business leader as chief executive, but Trump's business career is more notable for its failures than its successes.  His major success is in getting gullible people to believe the lies he tells about himself.  And that is the country's greatest danger.

Any country--or any kind of organization--that builds itself on lies is doomed to failure.And when lies seep into its foundation like water seeping into a house's foundation, the credibility and the trust in the country erodes away.  Joe Biden is president at a time when the nation has been left in a cheapened state by his predecessor, and there is doubt about whether the nation can or wants to rise above it.  The election of Biden may indicate that a majority of the citizens want different and better than Trump and his ilk.

However, the presence of the Trumpists indicates that many have abandoned or never desired, in the first place, a lofty role for America. For them, the vision of the democracy the United States has been trying to become has dissipated away.  

On the deaths of eleven-year-old boys

 It has been a new year of heartache.  Friends have dealt with losses in their families, some involving suicide, which leaves a permanent  and often disabling break in the heart.  One  never knows what to say.  One fears that words of condolence may aggravate the wound rather than offer a measure of comfort.  But it is a time when one shares the sorrow experienced by friends and wants to express understanding and support.  

Nothing devastates as much as the death of a child.  Even though I'd never heard of him before, news of the death of an eleven-year-old boy from hypothermia in an unheated mobile home hit as hard as if he were he one of my grandchildren.  Part of the reason is that eleven-year-old boys hold a special image in the mind.  At eleven, they begin the transition from childhood to adulthood.  When they make that transition in an attentive family, they experience the typicalities of adolescence.  But when they are without a functioning family, their stories are dispiriting, often tragic.  A priest who had been assigned to work with children in an orphanage said to me that no one is more vulnerable to the iniquities of the world than an eleven-year-old boy.  His words are haunting.  

Over the years as an instructor of writing for college students,  I have encountered the stories of children who are left to face the world on their own--and they are many.  The ones that never fade from memory are the accounts of young boys.  One was of an 11-year-old who escaped the malice of a troubled mother by becoming a street child.  After a brutal episode, he simply walked out of his house one day resigned to living on the street.  His history from that point ranged from horror to redemption.  His mother was fine with his action.  His father was torn between trying to help a troubled woman and providing a home for an abused son.    The child lived through the intrusions of government agencies, ending up in college where I learned of his story in a writing class.  At 11, he had ventured into a world he had little knowledge of with the hope that he would learn the tasks of living as he went along.  He did.  But he said it was a mistake:  any eleven-year-old setting out on his own is destined to suffer.  His redemption came when a friend told a youth pastor at a church of his plight and the pastor got him into a denominational-sponsored residential center, which eventually enabled him to return to his family.  His account of his experience noted that most such cases did not have happy endings.  Eleven-year-olds don't make it on their own.

Some die in cold beds.

The rise of the shitgibbon.

We know that the coronavirus has the ability to mutate  into highly infectious and deathly forms.  We never worried too much about what kind of lethal variant the shitgibbon might become.  And then, along came Trump.

The shitgibbon has a way with language.  It can turn a sentence into a seething pile of feces, the species source not always recognizable. If it is like nothing you've ever heard (and prefer not to} it is the droppings of the shitgibbon. 

Shitgibbons tend to run in packs.

                                                                         They also pout a lot.

If you aren't careful, they will take over the country and make it a pile of poo.

Woops.  You weren't very careful, were you.

Remember Chernobyl. Because that's where we are now.

                                                   Chernobyl is too toxic for any living thing.

A large portion of Ukraine is off limits after the worst nuclear accident in history blew up the reactor at Chernobyl.  About 1,000 square miles of the region is considered too toxic to be inhabitable.

Much of America is toxic and devastated and unlivable.  It was contaminated by Donald Trump.  There are personalities that cast a blight on humanity that leaves it sere and barren.  That is the case with Trump.  His term as president gravely reduced the expectations of humanity.  Rather than contemplate how good humankind can be, we've been forced to confront how wretched it often actually is.  Although Trump has departed from the White House, the intellectual and moral desolation he leaves behind lingers.  Half of America chooses Trump's desolation over a nation devoted to the better angels of our natures.  

Although an American majority made a choice for a more beneficent leader in Joe Biden, a significant number prefers Trump.  And that number shapes the political landscape.  The image of America today is captured in the video of Marjory Taylor Greene following behind a victim of the Parkland school shooting, David Hogg, insulting and abusing him.  That is an image of how vile and malevolent America has become.

Bad things happen in America.  But rather than denounce them and take measures to prevent them, people like Marjory Taylor Greene take pride in the them and celebrate them.  It is the equivalent of sending up a cheer when Nazis  shoved Jewish babies into gas ovens.  

America has become a moral Chernobyl.

The Sedition and Treason Act applies to Trump

Former Senator and President of The New School Bob Kerrey says there is no ambiguity in the matter of Trump's incitement of insurrection.  Trump broke the law:

         §2383. Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

 To be impeached, a president does not have to violate a law, but in this case Trump did.  His efforts to overturn a legitimate, free election were extensive.  More than 60 court cases were dismissed for lack of evidence of any voter fraud.  His attempts to get Georgia officials to change the state's vote tally were committed before the public.  His lies about the election constant and disproven.  His incitement speech to those who took over the Capitol was recorded and played over television.

The question is not whether Trump should be convicted, but whether the GOP senators are honest enough to do it. Trump's presidency has cast doubt about whether the United States can function as a democratic republic.  The Senate will make that determination.