Pssst. Are You Ready for Some Good News?

I have it on the word of two Republicant relatives that COVID-19—also known as the Corona virus—will end today.

It's true.

So throw away your masks! Stand next to a stranger and expectorate without inhibition!

We're free!

Physician Heal Thyself

Oh sweet irony. Oh sweet, sweet irony. The Denier-in-Chief has contracted COVID-19.

Of course, depending on the seriousness of the infection, he'll never have to worry about the shortage of hospital beds, ventilators and other medical equipment his inaction sentenced so many others to.

But watching him pull his “Virus? What virus?” act will certainly be made more amusing—not that the zombies who follow him would know the difference.

Gosh, Mr. President. Hurry up and (cough) get well soon. 

I mean that.

 

Kisses!

La Piazza Gancio 

We're in This Together?

You gotta love Texas. As their department of tourism once described it, it's a whole 'nother country. And months into the COVID pandemic, it's obvious that wasn't just a tagline.

Texas was a leader in the we-don't-need-no-stinkin'-masks movement. Texans knew intuitively that masks were a hysterical response to something that didn't really exist. Swollen with ego and defiance, any Texan within range of a television camera was only too happy to tell you how tough they were. How indomitable.

Of the joy they took in flouting liberal's timid and fearful protocols.

And however saturated the population was with its teen-aged sense of invincibility, it reached even greater extremes within the offices of the state's Republican party. They were incapable of contamination. Or infection.

Of course, this was a falsehood concocted to keep the runaway train of Texas capitalism roaring, and if you didn't like it you should just stay the hell out of the way.

Social media is stuffed with footage of their constituents thumbing their nose at the new normals of mask wearing and social distancing. They frolicked in their pools and gathered in their roadhouses and cavorted on their beaches.

Yee-hah! Gimme a T for Texas! Don't mess with Texas! And all of that.

I once asked a native of Oklahoma why it was so windy there. “Texas blows” she said. “Or sucks. Take your pick.”

All was going swimmingly until governor Greg Abbott got infected. It wasn't an especially contagious virus and is actually pretty rare in twenty-first century Republican circles. It bears the name common sense.

In its clutches, Abbott began to act strangely. First there was the involuntary attention to facts. Abbott listened to them. Considered them. And most-dangerously, acted on them.

Then he (gulp) issued a statewide mask-mandate.

Not long afterwards, the skies inside the state's GOP headquarters turned black. Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The end of days had arrived. The state's Republican leadership swung into action. If they didn't, lives would be saved. Curves flattened. Economies offered a long-term chance at restoration.

First there was a social media smear campaign. Abbott was painted as a mask-wearin' sissy. Then 130 Republican leaders vowed to censure him. Resolutions slandering the governor filled the air.

Then they looked inwards. If they had lost Abbott, someone—or something—was to blame.

The party's brain trust  (yes—that's a thing) spent days picking lint from their navels, because nothing precludes a deep dive like lint. Just ask your dryer. How many deep thoughts has it had lately?

James Dickey, the sitting chairman, was fired. Apparently, he had transmitted the common sense virus to Abbott that lead the newly life-loving governor astray. Left unexplained was if Dickey were also infected, why didn't he resign from the party as opposed to being marginalized by it?

At any rate, it was decided Texas needed a genuine, ass kickin' right-winger to get the state back on track. And they found him.

Allen West is a tried and true, one-hundred percent freak-a-zoid. And he just happens to be African-American, a fact which state Republicans can exploit until November third.

Trump loves him because as a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, West fired a gun at an Iraqi policeman's head during an interrogation. And as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, characterized then-president Obama as a “low-level socialist agitator”.

And West is already borrowing liberally from the Book of Trump. In a video address to delegates, West reiterated his ability to issue executive orders (huh?) and referred to Abbott's mask mandate as “tyranny” and called it a “new battleground.”

However much I love the sights and sounds of Republican infighting, there is a sad truth here. And that is the hypnotized, heartened by the conservative anti-mask response, will continue to embrace it.

As I have stated before, I fully support the conservative death wish. At least in theory. It is my wish that every right-winger in the land refuse to wear a mask, congregate in tightly-packed indoor spaces and drink from one another's cups until dead.

Alas, the COVID virus has shown no ability to discern those who want it to thrive from those who wish to extinguish it. In other words, despite Republican's pro-life COVID stance, it won't just kill them.

It infects, sickens and kills indiscriminately.

Mr. West, it seems if anyone should be crying “Tyranny!” it is those of us who understand and respect the power and the scope of this threat to humanity, and yet risk illness and even death thanks to the politicized beliefs of the most-childish, selfish and ignorant elements of our society.

Texas Republicans are a panicked collection of people grasping at straws over something they can't shout or shoot away. At best, they lack the intestinal fortitude to face the challenges presented by sheltering in place, mask-wearing and social-distancing.

At worst, they appear willing to sacrifice everything (i.e. your life) for the economy. It must survive at any and all costs. How else to sustain the financial edge their favored brand of political leadership enjoys?

As it always has been, this is what is at the center of Republican action: politics and power—above all. 

 

The Sad, Giant Foam Finger of American Exceptionalism

I have forgotten who originated the expression be careful what you wish for—you just might get it. But its relevance to 2020 America is unmistakable.

This spring, we witnessed the outrage of those who (like their president), felt the Corona virus was a wildly-exaggerated hoax perpetuated by liberals and their media. They reacted in kind, crying “We don't need no stinking masks!”

They even accused the medical professionals trying to keep us safe and the pols who listened to them of tyranny.

So they opened their bars and their restaurants and their beaches in defiance of the fearful liberals who cautioned against this based on the advice of accredited experts like the Center for Disease Control.

All these months later, those oppressed Republican enclaves like Arizona, Florida and Texas are being subsumed by exploding COVID-19 infection rates.

But at least they didn't listen to liberals, right? That counts for something, right?

In the middle-school lunchroom that is the setting for so much of our political (for lack of a better word) debate, denial has become the flavor du jour of Republicans. Deny science. Deny facts. Deny, deny, deny. If it didn't spring from the mouth of Sir Lies-A-Lot, it is a baldfaced, well, lie.

And since Donald denied the seriousness of the pandemic and has refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever for it, COVID-19 has been handed an extended-stay visa with only the most feeble and occasional federal oversight.

Anybody have one of those giant foam fingers proclaiming we're number-one?

Despite their obnoxious posturing and my outraged reaction to it, I take no pleasure in the grim stories unfolding in Florida and Arizona and Texas.

Rather, I am deeply troubled, wondering how we could be so blinded and corrupted by our political biases not to see a common threat for what it was.

It has placed everything all of us know and love in grave danger.

Just Sayin'

What is it with Donald Trump and Hydroxychloroquine? It's been dismissed as a potential antidote for COVID19, yet Trump works it into the conversation nearly every chance he gets.

I'm guessing Donald bit on it as a potential cure for the Coronavirus and owns a controlling interest. Desperate to make his money back, he's pitching it as a general cure-all that fixes whatever is wrong and enhances that which is not.

Feel free to add your Snake Oil salesman joke here:

Death by Republican

Dear Lockdown Protester,

Suffering this tyrannical assault on your civil liberties must be very painful. As are the tyrannical measures which kept you alive. Let me say how very sorry I am.

How thoughtless of the rest of us.

To paraphrase a sign seen at several protests: “My health doesn't end where your impatience begins!”

Reasoned, well thought-out measures were put into place by people way smarter than us to simultaneously protect us and prevent the spread of this highly-contagious virus. Measures like requiring a state show a sustained, two-week decline in COVID19 infections before it be considered for re-opening.

But someone on Facebook told you that was stupid—even fearful, so it is.

We have yet to test even two-percent of the population. Again, people way smarter than us feel capriciously re-opening densely populated urban areas because we're anxious and bored amounts to posting I heart COVID19 memes on our social media accounts.

You don't want it to leave. You want it to stick around, like it was Tom Brady or Laura Ingraham that dropped in and you can't bear to see it/them depart. How will normalcy ever be the same after a celebrity crush has popped in?

Look on the bright-side. Your president has mandated that meat processing plants remain open despite being confirmed hot spots for COVID19 infections. You can feed your death wish by consuming all the pork, poultry and beef these plants can crank out, and your survivors won't be able to sue thanks to your president's generous offer of immunity.

What a great leap forward towards the dystopia you so obviously crave.

I haven't seen a breakdown, but I suspect most of you are Republicans. Again, I apologize for your continued existence. I am as unhappy about it as you are.

To the woman who said “We can't pay taxes when we're dead”, I offer this: We won't be able to engineer a better, safer way forward, either.

I pray we are able to manage the second wave better than we did the first. Practice, I am told,  makes perfect.


Sincerely,

La Piazza Gancio

The United States of Stupid (Chapter Two)

In urban areas across the U.S., conservatives are assembling (often in groups of more than fifty), turning a blind eye to social-distancing guidelines and as they do so very, very well, ignoring facts.

Like the ones which point out that the Coronavirus has yet to run its course, and isn't even close to receding. Not when states like Georgia and Massachusetts and Illinois continue to post record numbers of new cases and Corona-related deaths.

But what's a pandemic compared to being able to trot down to your favorite mall, restaurant or movie theatre and spread the Coronavirus to friends and strangers alike? Or go back to work and congregate at the a.) water cooler b.) coffee-maker or c.) lunchroom microwave and share not only your heroic stories of sheltering in place but the Coronavirus, too?

Now if we could reach some kind of accord wherein conservatives would only infect other conservatives, I'd sign off on that faster than Donald Trump can inform you of his magnificence. I mean, fuck 'em. Good riddance.

Sadly, this is not possible.

Barrack Obama observed a few years ago that Donald Trump is not the cause of our failing society, but a symptom of it. To my ears, this is simply the most brilliant thing the ex-President has ever said.

Our towering egos, our impatience, our selfishness and our ignorance is reflected verbatim in the preening, sneering, arrogant puss of the creature who currently calls the White House home. The Open America Now protests are only the best example.

Information technology has created in us the feeling that we're geniuses because we can look things up on Google. Education and experience have been cheapened. “I don't care if you spent four years in pharmacology school! I looked it up online and you're wrong!”

The legions of medical professionals cautioning us against returning to normal so soon don't know what they're talking about. That 'Take Back America' page on Facebook will set those lockdown lib-tards straight!

In this, the age of conspiracy theories, let me add one more to the sewer-bound torrent: I think this is a plot by conservatives to start another round of Coronavirus infections and give Donald Trump another chance at getting his response right. 

Yep. The best way to revive the economy is with another round of COVID19 infections! 

Yay!

Our political divide has never been pretty. Wouldn't it be ironic if it was fatal?

As a young man, I had a great deal of interest in the Dark Ages. I couldn't understand how after centuries of progress, a civilization could go backwards. It was like a river reversing its course and flowing upstream.

Now I know.

P.S. When do we begin burning witches?

Now? Really?

With one-hundred percent of Americans tested, an effective anti-dote now available and new cases shrinking to numbers barely visible with the naked eye, The Great Man is pushing hard for us to jump into our cars, hop on our trains and ride our buses back to work.

As he eagerly tweeted today, LIBERATE MINNESOTA! LlBERATE MICHIGAN! LIBERATE VIRGINIA! 

Aided and abetted by the same noisy, mentally-challenged folk who put him in the White House (who are actually protesting the measures being taken to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus and, by extension, themselves) Trump adopted a softer tone at today's (cough) news briefing.

But given his abject fear of a campaign-crashing recession, you have to know he'll be working tirelessly behind the scenes, twisting arms and making threats. It must be remembered: Donald loves power even more than he loves money and celebrity. He will stop at nothing to quench his thirst.

(Personally, I'm just sorry there wasn't a camera pointed at his crotch as he riffed on the limitless power of the president earlier this week.)

Almost as bad are those of us moaning about being bored, pandemic or not. Yes, pandemics suck. I'm sorry. But your boredom is the price we have to pay. Besides, you were never promised that life would be a stream of unlimited, twenty-four seven entertainment. Deal with it.

Can we agree the ADHD among us should never, ever make this decision?

We know so little about the Coronavirus. Can't we at least develop a vaccine before we resume stuffing our offices and our transportation networks? Or test more than one-percent of the population before having factory workers return to working side by side on the nation's assembly lines?

How about waiting until N95 surgical masks return to their pre-pandemeic prices before we send workers back cutting meat and processing our fruit and vegetables? Is waiting for hand sanitizer to make a return to grocery store shelves asking too much?

In an administration fraught with stupidity, recklessness and selfishness, this is Trump at his most-stupid, most-reckless and most-selfish. The well-being of America's citizenry should be treated like a star athlete and not be returned to action until all concerned are absolutely sure they are ready.

Which isn't now.

To outraged conservatives, I say this: we need to clench. We need to stay calm and understand this thing, eradicate it and make sure we're much-better prepared the next time a virus emerges.

Given our level of unpreparedness and the unwillingness of so many of us to shelter in place because it's inconvenient and worse—boring—we need to step it up. Big time. This ain't no game.

I want to live. And I want you to live. And if Trump doesn't win re-election, life will go on.

I promise.

Co-existing with COVID19

As a frequent critic of America and Americans, I am forced to set aside my misanthropic tendencies and remark on the amazing-ness happening all around us.

Many businesses—open by necessity to the public—have done a remarkable job of adapting protective measures for their employees and customers while still remaining accessible and open for business.

Take the simple genius of designating one set of doors as entrance-only and another for exit-only. This allows pedestrians to avoid face-to-face encounters, which I'm guessing are the most-effective at spreading the Coronavirus.

One-way aisles are another. And for the same reasons as dedicated entrances and exits. Some stores are even limiting the number of patrons at any given time to ensure that social-distancing is not theoretical.

And lastly, we have the surgical masks presumably supplied by employers for the safety of both their employees and their customers. While you could argue these masks have a higher purpose in ERs and ICUs and other medical settings, preventing the spread of infections is likewise critical.

Gay, straight, black, white, male, female, boomer or young Z Gen just beginning to make their way in the world, we all go to the grocery store. (It is perhaps the last thing we have in common.) It is obvious that preventive measures should be in place not only there, but up and down the food chain.

Trump and his rampant deregulation couldn't have offered a bigger target for COVID19 as far as this sector of the economy is concerned, and we are beyond lucky it wasn't impacted more-seriously than it was.

There are the trucks drivers supplying those stores, and the warehouse workers loading those trucks. Think of where we'd be without them.

Then there are the CNAs and nurses and social workers who do at-home care and continue to visit their patients, even at great risk to themselves. In a better world, they would receive automatic immunity for their selflessness.

The bank employees maintaining our access to our money. The postal employees making sure we get our mail. The restaurant owners and employees doing their best to offer us the delights most of us are unable to create in our own kitchens (if not for lack of trying).

Firemen and EMTs are still putting out fires and responding to medical emergencies. The police are still policing and making sure things don't get too far out of hand.

And then there are the doctors and nurses in the belly of the beast, working under conditions I can't begin to imagine. In hot spots like New York City, I don't know how they do it. How do they overcome the mental and physical fatigue? The mounting despair? The collective weight of desperate patients begging and pleading with them to save their lives? The needs and demands of their families? The conveyor belt of corpses?

Calling it overwhelming doesn't seem sufficient. And I haven't even touched on the shortages of essential equipment and supplies.

I wish I could offer something other than my eternal regard.

While we have seen the worst of us (the hoarders attempting to exploit the pandemic through online marketplaces, the senseless churches who confuse the restrictions on public gatherings as an assault on their right to practice religion and just about anything having to do with Donald Trump), we have seen the best of us.

We have the benefit of medical professionals who know what to do to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. All we have to do is listen.

I mean, how easy is that?

Yes, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs. But unlike the Great Recession, the feeling here is that recovery will happen comparatively quickly. You should remember that markets weren't depressed for financial reasons. They crashed owing to a pandemic.

People cannot wait for things to return to normal. We will shop. We will eat out. We will go to the movies, watch ballgames and listen to music en masse. And attending these activities along with us will be our wallets and handbags. 

Americans are perhaps the world's most-impatient people, but if we can be the people we say we are on Facebook, this will be easy-peasy.

LPG out.

Leadershit

I'll admit to being incapable of suppressing a smirk at the news that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a proponent of letting the Coronavirus burn through the population and damn the consequences, tested positive himself.

As Donald Trump's tousle-haired twin, the irony couldn't have been greater.

Turning stateside, well, we have Donald.

After shutting down the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense because pandemics don't really happen, Trump then referred to the COVID19 outbreak as a hoax.

When the brighter lights surrounding him advised the president that it was a thing, Trump downplayed it, waving his little pink hand and stating at a February 28^th news conference that it would “disappear”.

While technically correct, this is—at best—a half-truth. Yes, the virus will run its course and recede. But not before it takes thousands and thousands of lives.

Trump's haphazard response means the United States (with a population roughly one-quarter of China's) has already surpassed China not only in the number of confirmed infections, but deaths.

This with the COVID19 wave yet to crest.

Naturally, the fart-in-a-suit will tell anyone within earshot that his administration has done an amazing job of handling the crisis, and that everything is under control. And as the hypnotized do, Trumpers will believe him.

Really? This is what "under control" looks like? Have you visited a New York City hospital?

Sigh. If only Donald's bullshit were an endangered species.

Like his pal Boris, COVID19 presents both an opportunity and a problem for President Petulant.

Donald is determined to gut Social Security after determining it helps the one-percent not one iota. But even he has to know this is a very high-risk proposition, and would face towering opposition in the House and Senate.

I can almost hear Trumpy-bear's thoughts: “Hmmm. There's a virus creeping around that will disproportionately affect those over sixty-five. You know, that would take care of my Social Security problem and I don't have to lift a finger. My God! My thinking is like my phone calls! They're perfect! No wonder I'm president!”

But then Trumpy-bear remembers he's up for re-election. And that the longer COVID19 lingers, the worse the effect on his economy. And since he's been trumpeting (sorry) his powerhouse economy for most of his presidency, that could be a serious problem.

What to do?

It's a question Donald is still struggling with. He invokes the Defense Production Act one day, and the next declares that Americans want to get back to work and that this must happen by Easter. Are you listening COVID19? The president has spoken.

He gets juvenile with governors who don't kiss his ring, oversteps his authority and contradicts himself or the medical professionals in his administration every other day or so.

But one thing is crystal clear: Trumpy-bear is overmatched.

Ultimately, his biggest problem may be the Republican strongholds of Florida and Texas, states stuffed with the same belligerent, it's-my-right types who elected him. Worse, their Republican governors refuse to take the Coronavirus seriously, clinging to Trump's initial assertions that it is a liberal hoax and nothing to worry about.

Did I mention they happen to be the second and third most-populous states in the union? 

Yeah.

That same Republican intellect is also on display at Liberty University, which through (cough) privately-funded research has determined that COVID19 no longer poses a threat and will re-open the school immediately. 

Have you shared this news with Trumpy-bear? And if not, why?

Like I said, the country with four-times as many people had fewer infections and fewer deaths. And Corona hasn't even peaked. There's a reason for that.

Lift an urgent prayer to the heavens, people. And vote Democrat in November.

Fear of Bernie

I find it wildly amusing that Democrats are apparently terrified of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and his (gasp) socialism. Never mind that perhaps two out of ten Americans could even explain what socialism is.

To blunt its headlong march across the United States, they last Tuesday turned to former Vice-President Joe Biden and clutch at him like a child does a favorite stuffed animal. “Save us, Joe!”

Kindly ignore the fact that of the six candidates recently pursuing the Democratic nomination, only Biden has an Achilles heel (his son's lucrative position with a Ukrainian energy company) Donald Trump can stand on and mercilessly exploit until November.

But at least we won't be subsumed by Bernie Sanders' socialism.

We can stretch out, fold our hands behind our heads and relax in the radiant warmth of four more years of Donald Trump and his oligarchy's rape and pillage.

I have never desired more-urgently to be wrong.