Suddenly things began to change as the federal government stopped trying to save lives and started promoting policies that would eventually kill – unnecessarily – a half-million Americans...
This chronicle of the tRump administration’s malfeasance is so chilling but sadly 30-40% of the American people are in denial of the extreme destruction that tRump was willing to inflict on the rest of us. When so many Americans are wholly hooked into the myth of Republican ideology it’s difficult to get a clear eyed electorate. Comer’s circus in the House “ investigation” hearings is a case in point. Barely based on facts, using someone’s false suggestions to base an investigation on, that there must be “something something” to prosecute as long as it’s a democrat (as Marcy Wheeler in Emptywheel calls “frothers”) is the Republican example of governance. The Republicans only have destruction as their platform. Destruction of the health and welfare of regular Americans, destruction of women’s autonomy over their reproductive health, destruction over senior’s financial welfare and the right not to live in poverty as we age, destruction of voting rights, destruction of LGBTQ advances in American life, and of course destruction of our planet. All for the sake of a handful of fascist wealthy donors and the corruption of power. And please, enough of the “both sides, what aboutismism” BS. Not even close. tRump’s administration is racking up so many indictments with many more to come that it would take decades of examples of Democrat corruption to even come close. So if we even have an accurate historical account of the previous maladministration I’ll be surprised because rewriting history and events is the Republican wet dream. So I appreciate Thom’s calling out the reality of what Americans need to face to truly have a healthy democracy.
These appalling circumstances are absolutely true, and absolutely damning. As a physician, I watched to US response first with disbelief, then outrage. Remember that many non-white citizens worked in slaughterhouses and other food production and were legally forced to continue working in unsafe sites with no protective masks or distancing, because they were judged to be “essential workers”. They also got no paid sick time and often worked when ill, so they spread COVID even faster in these crowded pest houses. Putting Jared in charge of procurement of masks, gowns and other PPEs is the equivalent of putting an arsonist in charge of firefighting.
Frump is guilty of sexual assault, fraud, insurrection and treason, but worse than all of it is the fact that in the “greatest dereliction of duty in history”, he is guilty of mass murder.
And the harm perpetuates. The weaponisation of the anti-vax/anti-mask ideology; the harassment of truth-telling public health officials; the suppression of data collection on infection rates—all this still operates to the detriment of people everywhere.
And now we are documenting a “Long Covid” rate of 10% following even mild/moderate infections. So people who have a week of non-critical illness may not shrug it off as easily as they think. As years go by, we are accumulating a significant number of people who are unable to return to work, carry out their roles as parents or participate in active living. This will aggregate to a genuinely damaging effect on the social fabric.
And much of this, thanks to a criminal FPOTUS who is a psychopath willing to sacrifice half a million lives to his own ends. Tuck Frump!
I await Jack Smith’s indictments of the whole rotten gang.
Trump and right wing media are also responsible for the deaths of alot of older white mostly rural men. As a prior interviewer for a healthcare study, I was told by many women that all of their male relatives and friends died of covid because "no one was going to tell them what to do". If anyone ever comes out with the numbers of victims in race/income/geographic area I'd like to see it! Thanks.
It's really disappointing to see Jamie Raskin referring to the lab leak stupidity as something to be taken seriously and it's also really disappointing that the American media hasn't come back and reminded people about basic facts that make this stupid lab leak theory so appalling.
Here is what our ignorant public seems to have forgotten or avoided knowing about:
1. Wuhan lab was established because of sars in Asia and need to track and get ahead of similar viruses. Representatives from us health agencies were there and were not restricted there, but our lovely Govt-bashing politicians decided - just before covid - to recall our representative there. This was OUR choice.
2. Almost ALL of what we know scientifically about coronaviruses came from the Wuhan lab and work of shi zhengli (tge "bat woman") - a hero who did critically important work on coronaviruses.
3. Without zhengli's work we would have known little about zoological transmission and incubation of viruses.
4. When SARS Covid-19 was detected in Wuhan, all appropriate steps were taken by the lab to map the dna, and send the information on to other health agencies (when China delayed certain info, it had nothing to do with the lab)
5. The ORIGINAL report by zhengli disclosed the following, none of it ever disapproved:
A. Viruses with close similarity to Covid-19 (97 percent dna similarity) were collected from bats thousands of miles from Wuhan;
B. Wuhan is a central transportation hub connecting travelers from many far reaches of China;
C. The very first case in Wuhan had no connection at all to the Wuhan seafood market.
The Wuhan seafood market was inappropriately characterized as a wildlife market, and immediately in the US there were stories about how covid was coming from the sale of wild animals in markets. Yet at the time China had already banned most of these practices.
No other countries - particularly those that had major battle with previous SARS viruses, raised lab leak issues, because they dealt with the science and public health measures instead.
Reputable scientists explained how climate change, destruction of habitat and human migration, made theses types of viruses more prevalent.
So it's so disappointing to see Raskin give any air to Tom cottons nonsense.
Remember that in March and April 2020 people like TL Friedman wrote pieces in the New York Times, extolling the virtues of disregarding public health measures in favor of simply allowing natural immunity to deal with the virus. The fact that immunities with this novel virus weren't studied yet, and we weren't collecting the right data to study them, went over the heads of these morons.
TL referenced - and ny times separately published pieces by - certain "public health experts" like a dr David Katz who, unknown to the public, was widely viewed as a nut within the medical industry, whose public health expertise was in obesity and not at all in virology, and who in fact is a high-priced Beverly Hills diet doctor pushing high cost obesity programs.
It was a significant disappointment seeing the intercept to pick up on this nonsense last year and really, you have to understand that it's only a country that can't face realistic scientific understanding the things that results in this kind of nonsense.
Thank you for this reminder. So many things that assaulted our nation under Trump and Kushner during those four terrible years, so many crimes against humanity and our country, and the stress coming back again as I watch what the Republican party so cavalierly does today. The Judicial Committee meeting yesterday was appalling. They appear to have no respect or understanding at all for the humanity and principled ethics (especially for the truth) that is the bedrock of democracy.
I remember thinking when the NY Times report came out about minorities and the poor being the most vulnerable to covid, that Trump would likely be happy about the assessment. That he actually immediately moved to politicize it in such concrete ways truly shocked me with the kind of disbelief that paralyzes. I couldn't believe it. Trump quickly showed up in AZ and apparently talked Ducey into vacating the excellent covid research think tank that was immediately responding at the Univ of Arizona. It was such a feather in Arizona's cap, to show the UA's scientific depth and problem solving , humanitarian response, and Ducey sacrificed it for political gain. Ducey was influenced ahead of the visit as well, rolling back the surprising common sense caution that he had displayed initially. It was heartbreaking. Trump is a monster. The university continued innovative studies on identifying the virus in sewage to pinpoint outbreaks on campus etc. But the entire tenor in Arizona and the country changed. Trump definitely politicized the issue and so many many people died, so many families blown apart, orphaned children, the decimated ranks of health care workers. All so so unnecessary. I thought for sure the GOP base would finally see Trump for what he is. But the division and propaganda just gained momentum. And no one in power seemed able to do anything.
The young Max Kennedy you mention is Robert and Ethel Kennedy's grandson. Forced to delay school, Kennedy decided to volunteer for the White House Coronavirus Task Force's Supply-Chain Task Force., led by Jared Kushner,. Kennedy arrived at FEMA hq, and joined a dozen volunteers that he thought would be support staff to help the official task force distribute protective equipment to the nation. The reality was the volunteers, all in their 20's, WERE the official Coronavirus Supply-Chain Task Force, and responsible for obtaining the needed medical supplies using their own personal computers and private email accounts. Kennedy was pressured to create a model with false information on the projected number of coronavirus fatalities, and declined. He has also said they were instructed to prioritize the President's supporters and friends, including Jeanine Pirro; and made to direct the millions $$$ worth of medical supplies to five pre-selected distributors. In April 2020, despite having signed an NDA, he sent an anonymous complaint to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, detailing failures and "dangerous incompetence" in the Trump admin response. Kennedy referred to the coronavirus response as "family office meets organized crime, melded with Lord of the Flies" and called it "a government of chaos." He quit the task force later that month. I just thought the details were so telling of Trump and Kushner's immediate heartless, elitist and profiteering mindsets. No public servant hearts there at all. In any way shape or form, ever ever. Heartbreaking for this country and the world, what they did.
Is anyone surprised by any of these revelations? Should we be shocked? It has been clear that Trump is a sociopath for years. We have seen sociopathic attitudes and conduct on the part of about half the Republicans in Congress for decades. That is what we are dealing with. Our response needs to be proportionate and swift. Unfortunately, that is not how it has been or will be.
Trump did not want just the blacks and the Hispanics to die, he wanted all the Democrats to die. In my opinion, the reason poor people were hit so hard by the virus was and is because they live in cramped quarters. Many sharing housing costs. Like three or four or more families to a dwelling. The right wing autocrats version of a Utopia appears to be, only healthy people who will work for peanuts. The old and disabled, gays and criminals can all die. About 100 million Americans in my opinion. Resembling the Asian autocratic Nations that regulate how many calories of food their citizens consume.
But, the news media and the GOP are trying to cover up genocide. You are doing a great job Thom. Let's hope some mainstream news media gets on board? You can count on none of the mega anti-mask wearing group to not read or listen to you. They just blame everybody else for their problems!
Turning the pandemic into a political game was shameful. It is good to hear TH's detailed account of the about-face of the former President, going full-force against the public health community, and the racism behind it. How the US with its superb medical research and wealth led the world with COVID deaths was puzzling. The political and racial wounds have not healed.
Thank you again Thom for keeping the misbehavior of your former president front and center, especially considering he has pulled out all the stops as far as disinformation goes, and is working so hard to change the messages (truths) coming out daily about him with his brand of "alternate facts". He's a devious politician, but fortunately we have people like yourself keeping us aware of the true facts.
Once Trump made it clear that he was trying to kill Non-Whites, I think it made a lot more Black people balk at what they were being asked to do. I also think that more Blacks got vaccinated than would have otherwise, just because they could see the deck was stacked against them. I personally talked a lot of vaccine averse Black, White and Latinx people into not only getting vaccinated themselves, but also getting their children vaccinated. No one that I know that is Asian was against getting vaccinated. Everyone knew that I was writing my governor daily, and the Dems on the Senate education committee to prioritize giving 16-24 year olds the vaccine, so that their parents could get them back in school, and stop them from doing the self destructive stuff that they were doing while not being in school, spreading the disease to others who were more vulnerable. My daughter wanted the vaccine for her 16th birthday and was able to get it about a month later. So, after killing off a lot of poor Black and Latinx people, Trump ended up basically setting up a lot of his Evangelical White crowd to die. He not only did not discourage the anti-vax position, he is the one who started it, so, his biggest claim to infamy is hard to determine. Overthrow the government and request that his non-compliant Vice-President be lynched by an angry mob, or kill off his constituency by modeling and promoting self destructive behavior. I think all of this will be in the history books if we can keep our backsliding democracy from sliding any further, or we can let the Trumps and Trump-likes like DeSatan take over the nation and remove any text that might teach any sort of history. When I have said that I see parallels to the Nazis when they were coming to power in what the Republican party is doing, I have not been using the word lightly. I have been using it as a historian. Analyzing the elements that were in place, and comparing them. The Republican Party, by another name would be more clearly what they are.
This is not so much a comment as it is a wish, or a hope.
From my point of view, any system that's designed to place one individual in a position of power, whereby they suffer the risk of being corrupted by that power, is a system that is doomed to face what we do now. I wish that someday our system of Government, and Commerce for that matter, will have 3 "Parties" (or Bodies, Groups, Leagues, Sets, Coteries, Alliances, Teams, Coalitions) which place 3 individuals at the top, and at each level of the hierarchy. For example, 3 Presidents, 3 smaller "Supreme Courts" made up of three individuals each, 3 Houses of Congress etc.
Shared power in sets of 3 would require, even demand concurrence. Concurrence should instill trust, and trust could heal the nation.
They had Vice President Harris there at every BFD the President presented to us. That was strategic. She very much has been the silent partner, and I think that's been necessary. Her book was well done and her story is just as good as Joe's. They are a kick-ass match. The only wrinkle in this partnership is well wrinkles, so to speak. Joe's age indicates statistically he will live into his 90's---he sure looks and acts like he will. Unfortunately, the same goes for Trump.
When your step-children LOVE you, what does that say? The Second Gentleman has been great too. They are the mixed-up jumbled-up family she had over every week--Kamala COOKED for them for years. Great story. Read her book. Warm and fuzzy at home and a change-maker at work.
Back to strategy. It's tricky, and I hope they are listening to you Thom!
An interesting development in this strategy is their failure to appreciate that undermining the science, then casting doubts on vaccination and preventative measures, would blow back on the Republican base. They very well may have intended to focus their bio-weaponization of COVID-19 on POC. However, TFG's denial of masking, distancing, virulence of the disease, vaccine efficacy, promotion of horse de-wormer, press conference hypotheses of bleach and bright light use instead, all contributed to deaths of many of his own voting base, even if in lower proportional numbers than POC populations. POC, as Thom noted, were vulnerable due to the systemic inequalities pervasive in our healthcare system. Many of the Republican base that were sickened or died, not only had access to healthcare but to earlier delivery and more fully stocked inventories of vaccines that they refused to take, to their detriment. Dolt 45 is a cancer, a pox on the house of the United States.
All true but, so what, at this point? Climate CRISIS is on what we should be focusing. Poor Congress Member Raskin has cancer; why? Chemical exposures, genetic variants that developed or genetics that broke down because of repeated pollutant exposures. Maybe just sun UV exposure. We have got to quit whining over all the crap that Trump did and focus on supporting those in government who will save the Planet. We are out of time. Start talking to people who are solution driven and quit hashing over all the stuff that happened two, three years ago.
Did Trump Let 500,000 Americans Die Purely for Political Purposes?
‘So what ? Really? ‘Its like ‘so what ‘ to the Holocaust or genocide of any other group of individuals.
I suspected that this was contrived( the turnaround on policies to reverse the effects of Covids worst damages w masks , stay at home programs etc) .
The turn around on “Dr Faucis’ now the enemy “
The refusal to be vaccinated . The hate with which these people approached anyone following the directions of the WHO and Fauci, sudden hate for CDC.
The Trump/ Kushner annihilation program .
Against African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans ( who are always on the list of people to have their human rights ignored completely)
This atmosphere of disregard and hostility toward anyone who is not wealthy white and male continues.
Of all of Trumps transgressions this is the worst.
This is murder, hands free murder that allowed Trump the power and control he craves.
The whole sickness of the GOP endorsed and demonstrated by Trump is with us in every capacity.
The Supreme Courts ( far Right Six)need to have ultimate control and power .
So much so they are willing to rewrite and bastardize the Constitution , and they know it .
If not , why so vehement about no ethical supervision.
This chronicle of the tRump administration’s malfeasance is so chilling but sadly 30-40% of the American people are in denial of the extreme destruction that tRump was willing to inflict on the rest of us. When so many Americans are wholly hooked into the myth of Republican ideology it’s difficult to get a clear eyed electorate. Comer’s circus in the House “ investigation” hearings is a case in point. Barely based on facts, using someone’s false suggestions to base an investigation on, that there must be “something something” to prosecute as long as it’s a democrat (as Marcy Wheeler in Emptywheel calls “frothers”) is the Republican example of governance. The Republicans only have destruction as their platform. Destruction of the health and welfare of regular Americans, destruction of women’s autonomy over their reproductive health, destruction over senior’s financial welfare and the right not to live in poverty as we age, destruction of voting rights, destruction of LGBTQ advances in American life, and of course destruction of our planet. All for the sake of a handful of fascist wealthy donors and the corruption of power. And please, enough of the “both sides, what aboutismism” BS. Not even close. tRump’s administration is racking up so many indictments with many more to come that it would take decades of examples of Democrat corruption to even come close. So if we even have an accurate historical account of the previous maladministration I’ll be surprised because rewriting history and events is the Republican wet dream. So I appreciate Thom’s calling out the reality of what Americans need to face to truly have a healthy democracy.
These appalling circumstances are absolutely true, and absolutely damning. As a physician, I watched to US response first with disbelief, then outrage. Remember that many non-white citizens worked in slaughterhouses and other food production and were legally forced to continue working in unsafe sites with no protective masks or distancing, because they were judged to be “essential workers”. They also got no paid sick time and often worked when ill, so they spread COVID even faster in these crowded pest houses. Putting Jared in charge of procurement of masks, gowns and other PPEs is the equivalent of putting an arsonist in charge of firefighting.
Frump is guilty of sexual assault, fraud, insurrection and treason, but worse than all of it is the fact that in the “greatest dereliction of duty in history”, he is guilty of mass murder.
And the harm perpetuates. The weaponisation of the anti-vax/anti-mask ideology; the harassment of truth-telling public health officials; the suppression of data collection on infection rates—all this still operates to the detriment of people everywhere.
And now we are documenting a “Long Covid” rate of 10% following even mild/moderate infections. So people who have a week of non-critical illness may not shrug it off as easily as they think. As years go by, we are accumulating a significant number of people who are unable to return to work, carry out their roles as parents or participate in active living. This will aggregate to a genuinely damaging effect on the social fabric.
And much of this, thanks to a criminal FPOTUS who is a psychopath willing to sacrifice half a million lives to his own ends. Tuck Frump!
I await Jack Smith’s indictments of the whole rotten gang.
Trump and right wing media are also responsible for the deaths of alot of older white mostly rural men. As a prior interviewer for a healthcare study, I was told by many women that all of their male relatives and friends died of covid because "no one was going to tell them what to do". If anyone ever comes out with the numbers of victims in race/income/geographic area I'd like to see it! Thanks.
It's really disappointing to see Jamie Raskin referring to the lab leak stupidity as something to be taken seriously and it's also really disappointing that the American media hasn't come back and reminded people about basic facts that make this stupid lab leak theory so appalling.
Here is what our ignorant public seems to have forgotten or avoided knowing about:
1. Wuhan lab was established because of sars in Asia and need to track and get ahead of similar viruses. Representatives from us health agencies were there and were not restricted there, but our lovely Govt-bashing politicians decided - just before covid - to recall our representative there. This was OUR choice.
2. Almost ALL of what we know scientifically about coronaviruses came from the Wuhan lab and work of shi zhengli (tge "bat woman") - a hero who did critically important work on coronaviruses.
3. Without zhengli's work we would have known little about zoological transmission and incubation of viruses.
4. When SARS Covid-19 was detected in Wuhan, all appropriate steps were taken by the lab to map the dna, and send the information on to other health agencies (when China delayed certain info, it had nothing to do with the lab)
5. The ORIGINAL report by zhengli disclosed the following, none of it ever disapproved:
A. Viruses with close similarity to Covid-19 (97 percent dna similarity) were collected from bats thousands of miles from Wuhan;
B. Wuhan is a central transportation hub connecting travelers from many far reaches of China;
C. The very first case in Wuhan had no connection at all to the Wuhan seafood market.
The Wuhan seafood market was inappropriately characterized as a wildlife market, and immediately in the US there were stories about how covid was coming from the sale of wild animals in markets. Yet at the time China had already banned most of these practices.
No other countries - particularly those that had major battle with previous SARS viruses, raised lab leak issues, because they dealt with the science and public health measures instead.
Reputable scientists explained how climate change, destruction of habitat and human migration, made theses types of viruses more prevalent.
So it's so disappointing to see Raskin give any air to Tom cottons nonsense.
Remember that in March and April 2020 people like TL Friedman wrote pieces in the New York Times, extolling the virtues of disregarding public health measures in favor of simply allowing natural immunity to deal with the virus. The fact that immunities with this novel virus weren't studied yet, and we weren't collecting the right data to study them, went over the heads of these morons.
TL referenced - and ny times separately published pieces by - certain "public health experts" like a dr David Katz who, unknown to the public, was widely viewed as a nut within the medical industry, whose public health expertise was in obesity and not at all in virology, and who in fact is a high-priced Beverly Hills diet doctor pushing high cost obesity programs.
It was a significant disappointment seeing the intercept to pick up on this nonsense last year and really, you have to understand that it's only a country that can't face realistic scientific understanding the things that results in this kind of nonsense.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/
Thank you for this reminder. So many things that assaulted our nation under Trump and Kushner during those four terrible years, so many crimes against humanity and our country, and the stress coming back again as I watch what the Republican party so cavalierly does today. The Judicial Committee meeting yesterday was appalling. They appear to have no respect or understanding at all for the humanity and principled ethics (especially for the truth) that is the bedrock of democracy.
I remember thinking when the NY Times report came out about minorities and the poor being the most vulnerable to covid, that Trump would likely be happy about the assessment. That he actually immediately moved to politicize it in such concrete ways truly shocked me with the kind of disbelief that paralyzes. I couldn't believe it. Trump quickly showed up in AZ and apparently talked Ducey into vacating the excellent covid research think tank that was immediately responding at the Univ of Arizona. It was such a feather in Arizona's cap, to show the UA's scientific depth and problem solving , humanitarian response, and Ducey sacrificed it for political gain. Ducey was influenced ahead of the visit as well, rolling back the surprising common sense caution that he had displayed initially. It was heartbreaking. Trump is a monster. The university continued innovative studies on identifying the virus in sewage to pinpoint outbreaks on campus etc. But the entire tenor in Arizona and the country changed. Trump definitely politicized the issue and so many many people died, so many families blown apart, orphaned children, the decimated ranks of health care workers. All so so unnecessary. I thought for sure the GOP base would finally see Trump for what he is. But the division and propaganda just gained momentum. And no one in power seemed able to do anything.
The young Max Kennedy you mention is Robert and Ethel Kennedy's grandson. Forced to delay school, Kennedy decided to volunteer for the White House Coronavirus Task Force's Supply-Chain Task Force., led by Jared Kushner,. Kennedy arrived at FEMA hq, and joined a dozen volunteers that he thought would be support staff to help the official task force distribute protective equipment to the nation. The reality was the volunteers, all in their 20's, WERE the official Coronavirus Supply-Chain Task Force, and responsible for obtaining the needed medical supplies using their own personal computers and private email accounts. Kennedy was pressured to create a model with false information on the projected number of coronavirus fatalities, and declined. He has also said they were instructed to prioritize the President's supporters and friends, including Jeanine Pirro; and made to direct the millions $$$ worth of medical supplies to five pre-selected distributors. In April 2020, despite having signed an NDA, he sent an anonymous complaint to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, detailing failures and "dangerous incompetence" in the Trump admin response. Kennedy referred to the coronavirus response as "family office meets organized crime, melded with Lord of the Flies" and called it "a government of chaos." He quit the task force later that month. I just thought the details were so telling of Trump and Kushner's immediate heartless, elitist and profiteering mindsets. No public servant hearts there at all. In any way shape or form, ever ever. Heartbreaking for this country and the world, what they did.
Is anyone surprised by any of these revelations? Should we be shocked? It has been clear that Trump is a sociopath for years. We have seen sociopathic attitudes and conduct on the part of about half the Republicans in Congress for decades. That is what we are dealing with. Our response needs to be proportionate and swift. Unfortunately, that is not how it has been or will be.
Trump did not want just the blacks and the Hispanics to die, he wanted all the Democrats to die. In my opinion, the reason poor people were hit so hard by the virus was and is because they live in cramped quarters. Many sharing housing costs. Like three or four or more families to a dwelling. The right wing autocrats version of a Utopia appears to be, only healthy people who will work for peanuts. The old and disabled, gays and criminals can all die. About 100 million Americans in my opinion. Resembling the Asian autocratic Nations that regulate how many calories of food their citizens consume.
But, the news media and the GOP are trying to cover up genocide. You are doing a great job Thom. Let's hope some mainstream news media gets on board? You can count on none of the mega anti-mask wearing group to not read or listen to you. They just blame everybody else for their problems!
Turning the pandemic into a political game was shameful. It is good to hear TH's detailed account of the about-face of the former President, going full-force against the public health community, and the racism behind it. How the US with its superb medical research and wealth led the world with COVID deaths was puzzling. The political and racial wounds have not healed.
Thank you again Thom for keeping the misbehavior of your former president front and center, especially considering he has pulled out all the stops as far as disinformation goes, and is working so hard to change the messages (truths) coming out daily about him with his brand of "alternate facts". He's a devious politician, but fortunately we have people like yourself keeping us aware of the true facts.
Once Trump made it clear that he was trying to kill Non-Whites, I think it made a lot more Black people balk at what they were being asked to do. I also think that more Blacks got vaccinated than would have otherwise, just because they could see the deck was stacked against them. I personally talked a lot of vaccine averse Black, White and Latinx people into not only getting vaccinated themselves, but also getting their children vaccinated. No one that I know that is Asian was against getting vaccinated. Everyone knew that I was writing my governor daily, and the Dems on the Senate education committee to prioritize giving 16-24 year olds the vaccine, so that their parents could get them back in school, and stop them from doing the self destructive stuff that they were doing while not being in school, spreading the disease to others who were more vulnerable. My daughter wanted the vaccine for her 16th birthday and was able to get it about a month later. So, after killing off a lot of poor Black and Latinx people, Trump ended up basically setting up a lot of his Evangelical White crowd to die. He not only did not discourage the anti-vax position, he is the one who started it, so, his biggest claim to infamy is hard to determine. Overthrow the government and request that his non-compliant Vice-President be lynched by an angry mob, or kill off his constituency by modeling and promoting self destructive behavior. I think all of this will be in the history books if we can keep our backsliding democracy from sliding any further, or we can let the Trumps and Trump-likes like DeSatan take over the nation and remove any text that might teach any sort of history. When I have said that I see parallels to the Nazis when they were coming to power in what the Republican party is doing, I have not been using the word lightly. I have been using it as a historian. Analyzing the elements that were in place, and comparing them. The Republican Party, by another name would be more clearly what they are.
This is not so much a comment as it is a wish, or a hope.
From my point of view, any system that's designed to place one individual in a position of power, whereby they suffer the risk of being corrupted by that power, is a system that is doomed to face what we do now. I wish that someday our system of Government, and Commerce for that matter, will have 3 "Parties" (or Bodies, Groups, Leagues, Sets, Coteries, Alliances, Teams, Coalitions) which place 3 individuals at the top, and at each level of the hierarchy. For example, 3 Presidents, 3 smaller "Supreme Courts" made up of three individuals each, 3 Houses of Congress etc.
Shared power in sets of 3 would require, even demand concurrence. Concurrence should instill trust, and trust could heal the nation.
Just. Watch. Her.
They had Vice President Harris there at every BFD the President presented to us. That was strategic. She very much has been the silent partner, and I think that's been necessary. Her book was well done and her story is just as good as Joe's. They are a kick-ass match. The only wrinkle in this partnership is well wrinkles, so to speak. Joe's age indicates statistically he will live into his 90's---he sure looks and acts like he will. Unfortunately, the same goes for Trump.
When your step-children LOVE you, what does that say? The Second Gentleman has been great too. They are the mixed-up jumbled-up family she had over every week--Kamala COOKED for them for years. Great story. Read her book. Warm and fuzzy at home and a change-maker at work.
Back to strategy. It's tricky, and I hope they are listening to you Thom!
An interesting development in this strategy is their failure to appreciate that undermining the science, then casting doubts on vaccination and preventative measures, would blow back on the Republican base. They very well may have intended to focus their bio-weaponization of COVID-19 on POC. However, TFG's denial of masking, distancing, virulence of the disease, vaccine efficacy, promotion of horse de-wormer, press conference hypotheses of bleach and bright light use instead, all contributed to deaths of many of his own voting base, even if in lower proportional numbers than POC populations. POC, as Thom noted, were vulnerable due to the systemic inequalities pervasive in our healthcare system. Many of the Republican base that were sickened or died, not only had access to healthcare but to earlier delivery and more fully stocked inventories of vaccines that they refused to take, to their detriment. Dolt 45 is a cancer, a pox on the house of the United States.
Yes, but that was 3 years ago and Biden did not do much.
All true but, so what, at this point? Climate CRISIS is on what we should be focusing. Poor Congress Member Raskin has cancer; why? Chemical exposures, genetic variants that developed or genetics that broke down because of repeated pollutant exposures. Maybe just sun UV exposure. We have got to quit whining over all the crap that Trump did and focus on supporting those in government who will save the Planet. We are out of time. Start talking to people who are solution driven and quit hashing over all the stuff that happened two, three years ago.