May 21, 2020
After two months in lockdown, we are bored. The sameness of the days, and the inability to gather with anyone outside of our immediate household has us antsy and irritable. Yet, in our haste to emerge from quarantine, some ugly truths are being revealed.
Despite scientific evidence that wearing a mask will stop the spread of the coronavirus, thousands of Americans, like petulant children, refuse to do so. They blithely venture out unmasked to malls and restaurants, breathing with impunity on the masked workers who serve them, heedless of the harm they’re inflicting on others. Some have reacted violently to the suggestion that they can’t enter an establishment without wearing a mask. These people confuse lack of responsibility for freedom. They demand the “right” to do what they want, regardless of who it harms. Who can blame them, though, when the tone is set from the top.
In states with meat processing plants, Republican governors are actively suppressing the release of information on the number of positive cases or the number of deaths, because, in their eyes, the lives of the predominantly Latinx workforce simply don’t matter, (Source: “Infection rates were climbing at Nebraska meatpacking plants. Then health officials stopped reporting the numbers,” by Pete Whoriskey, The Washington Post, 5/12/20). After all, as Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack said during the oral argument on the constitutionality of Governor Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order, it’s not as if “regular” people were at risk, (Source: “Supreme Court Justice Roggensack blasted as ‘elitist,’‘out of touch’ for meatpacking remark,” by Daniel Bice, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 5/6/20). As shocking as her statement was, the pictures of the full bars that emerged as soon as the court issued its order proved that it was a view that was widely shared.
They are taking their cues from Trump, who refuses to wear a mask and encourages gun-toting, knuckle-dragging morons to flout the recommendations of the neutered CDC. Earlier this week, he announced that he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative, despite the fact that the FDA advised doctors not to use the drug to treat COVID-19 outside of hospital settings. His statement set off frenzied speculation as people tried to decide what was crazier—if Trump was lying or telling the truth.
In all likelihood, it was merely Trump defaulting to his favorite parlor trick – sowing chaos and confusion to distract the press and the public from the bigger story, which remains his staggering failure at every level to manage this pandemic and the escalating cost in American lives.
His bizarre pronouncement also served to distract us from Trump’s continuing assaults on democracy. Last Friday,Trump fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, the fifth inspector general he has fired in six weeks, (Source: “The internal watchdogs Trump has fired or replaced,” by Melissa Quinn, CBSnews.com, 5/19/20). Linick was in the midst of investigating Secretary Of State, Mike Pompeo, both for his use of Department personnel for his personal errands, and more significantly, for secretly using an emergency declaration to sell $8 billion worth of arms to the Saudis, in contravention of the Congressional freeze on such sales, (Source: “Pompeo Declined Interview Request From Inspector General About Saudi Arms Sales,” by Edward Wong and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 5/19/20).
Two of the terminated inspectors general, Mitch Behm at the Department of Transportation, and Christine Grimm at HHS, were responsible for investigating aspects of the government’s pandemic response, while a third, Michael Atkinson in the Intelligence community oversaw the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment, (Source: Quinn, CBSnews.com, op cit).
While spoiled suburbanites channel their inner outlaw, Trump and the Republican officials remaking themselves in his image are waging an all out war on the very idea of accountability. The Republican Party is building a war chest to combat that ultimate instrument of accountability—the ballot, (Source: “Freed By Court Ruling, Republicans Step Up Effort to Patrol Voting,” by Michael Wines, The New York Times, 5/18/20). They are doing everything they can to rig the game and taking no chances. We’d better not either.
#VOTE
#Fightvotersuppression
#Wearamasksavelives