There is some kind of pathology at work here, but I can’t pin down exactly what kind it is.
Four CEOs of food companies and the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation were told to remove their face masks before a meeting in Iowa Friday with Vice President Mike Pence, a startling video posted by The Intercept reveals.
Pence — also without a mask — appeared a short time later at the headquarters of the Hy-Vee grocery chain in West Des Moines for a roundtable discussion with the men in front of an audience.
And this, from three days ago:
Two dozen House Republicans gathered with Trump and other administration officials in the State Dining Room at the White House on Friday afternoon to discuss the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic. None of the attendees wore a mask.
“I do want to advise our media friends before they write stories about how we didn’t wear masks and we didn’t possibly socially distance adequately, that you saw to it that we had tests, and that nobody in here had the coronavirus unless it’s somebody in the media,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, during the meeting.
“So the only reason we would wear masks is if we were trying to protect ourselves from you in the media. And we’re not scared of you. So that’s why we can be here like this,” Gohmert continued.
Putting aside the very real possibility of false negatives, this is not the traditional way American leaders have behaved during times of deprivation. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you President Franklin Roosevelt’s ration book:
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
I assume FDR didn’t use the coupon book personally, but at Eleanor’s insistence the White House adhered to the same rationing during World War II expected of everyone else. The White House chef served up gourmet items like “noodles and mushrooms with chicken scraps.” Eleanor also planted a victory garden on White House grounds.
Of course, this was the same war that featured Princess Elizabeth engaged in auto mechanics. I can’t imagine Ivanka doing this.
But the Roosevelts were old-school aristocrats with genuine class. Trump has less class than a carnival sideshow. Clearly, in Trump’s World only the little people suffer ill effects from disasters. Lead by example? Are you kidding?
Last Friday we learned that Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller — also the wife of distilled banality of evil Stephen Miller — tested positive. There was a quick flurry of news stories saying the vice president would self-quarantine, quickly followed by another flurry saying he wouldn’t. And he’s not. (However, the Governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, is doing a “modified self-quarantine,” whatever that is, as Mrs. Miller was present at a White House meeting the governor attended recently. Where is her faith?)
Another administration might have insisted on setting an example by quarantining. Not this one. Clearly, the message they are trying to send is that only the little people — not Trumpers — have to put up with inconveniences because of the pandemic.
But let us go back to the testing Louie Gohmert spoke of in the quote above. Everyone around Trump gets tested daily now, we are told, and their contacts are traced to check infection spread. That’s the sort of test-and-track procedure used by all the other countries that are getting the pandemic under control now. But not the U.S., because Trump doesn’t want widespread testing, because the numbers would make him look bad. So he’s letting the quickly rising death toll (officially 81,225 as of this morning) make him look bad, instead. I’ll come back to this.
The news that the novel coronavirus has invaded President Trump’s inner circle — and that the White House is implementing aggressive testing and tracing to combat it — is a devastating story on an obvious and immediate level, but also on a deeper and longer-lasting one.
Most palpably, it has revealed the sort of glaring double standard that’s catnip to political media: The White House is taking extensive steps to protect Trump and his top advisers with resources that are largely unavailable to the rest of us, in part due to his own dereliction. …
… The problem isn’t just that this story is revealing that Trump and his advisers benefit from testing and tracing that the rest of us mostly do not enjoy, though that’s damning enough.
It’s also that this shatters the larger illusion Trump is trying to weave with his magical reality-bending powers — that the coronavirus has been so tamed by his stupendous leadership that it’s now safe to reopen the country, setting the stage for an equally spectacular Trump-marshaled comeback.
I don’t think the illusion is shattered just yet, but if someone closer to Trump — one of his offspring, Jared Kushner, Melania, or Pence — came down with covid-19, that would put some cracks in it. I suspect it would take Trump himself becoming seriously ill to really shatter it, though.
Back to the death count. Jonathan Chait wrote last week that Trump has gone into death-denier mode, claiming the official count is inflated.
The next step, reports Axios, will be to begin publicly questioning the listed totals of coronavirus deaths. “Trump has vented that the numbers seem inflated,” it reports, as have several people around him who believe the same.
This is not just a matter of public spin, like Trump’s campaign to pressure the news media into reporting that his tiny inauguration crowd was larger than it was. The news source he trusts, Fox News, has been running hours of programming questioning the death totals. One Fox theory has seized on changes to official tabulation by the CDC. Another misinterprets the categorization of pneumonia deaths. Axios reports that Trump himself has repeated yet another theory, which raises questions about an increase in previously uncategorized nursing-home deaths in New York.
All of these theories are pure crankery. Indeed, the official recorded death count is lower, not higher, than the actual coronavirus death toll. People who die at home from the virus without receiving medical attention have not been included in the official totals. But the fact that Trump and his allies have developed so many different pseudo-statistical objections shows how desperate they are to cast doubt on the official numbers.
The propaganda campaign has worked. The percentage of frequent Fox News watchers who believe that the official coronavirus death counts are exaggerated has risen from 45 percent last month to 61 percent this month.
You might recognize that all this follows yesterday’s post, about how less-educated whites, especially those who live outside of urban areas, still believe the pandemic is mostly a hoax and that there is no sensible reason they can’t all return to life as normal right now. And that follows the post from the day before, on how a disproportionate amount of the pain of the pandemic in America has fallen on nonwhites. Bobbleheads on the teevee keep saying we’re all in this together. We may all be in this, but we’re not together.
Oh, and today Illinois Governor JB Pritzger and his staff are working from home after a colleague tested positive.
More Stuff to Read
Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, The Folly of Trump’s Blame-Beijing Coronavirus Strategy
Gabriel Debenedetti, New York, Biden Is Planning an FDR-Size Presidency
Robert Shapiro, Washington Monthly, The Real Unemployment Rate Is Worse Than Trump Will Tell Us
David Atkins, Washington Monthly, Republicans Want to Sacrifice Your Social Security But Not Their Tax Cuts
David Atkins, Washington Monthly, Trump Was Never on a Glide Path to Re-Election Even Before the Virus
Trickle Down Economics is one of those zombie ideas. The plumber's rule of excrement goes downhill is a hard and fast truth. It has been more than a trickle how fast the rich have infected the poor world wide. The link to an LA times article belongs in the reading list me thinks.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-08/how-the-coronavirus-began-as-a-disease-of-the-rich
The invasion of England by Germany never happened because the Brits would have cut the vessels to pieces from the air in the English Channel. I bring this up to point out strategic interdependency.
Trump has five months to weave a tale that the death toll is a hoax and the economy is rebounding gloriously. The move to avoid face masks in public meetings is an essential part of the strategy to convince Trump loyalists to shun CDC advice and resist state restrictions. They are doing so in large numbers without face masks, sometimes with guns. (Keep an eye on Lansing.) Trump needs to have a narrative that we're back to work and all is on the path to normal. It can't be normal until there's a vaccine or very effective treatment. That's VERY unlikely so Trump is in reality-show-mode – lying his ass off.
Go back to the five months. The real growth and spread has happened in only two months – mid Feb to mid-March (100 dead 03/15) established the base end of an exponential curve that took off in mid-April (32,000 dead 14/15) and is flat in mid-May (80,000 dead – relatively constant 12K dead weekly) If nothing changed, we'd chalk up 50K fatalities per month, an additional 250K before the election. But things are changing – we're abandoning social distancing for political reasons in red states with more than enough time for an explosion of fatalities not just in swing states, but in states Trump considers safe.
Using the NY Times, watch state-by-state trends but if science works, the states that flaunt CDC guidelines will see an increase in deaths – a lot! I think it's inevitable because NYC proved what enforced social distancing can do. States with a high-density in terms of stupidity and low-density in humans per square mile, will still see an increase and it will be devastating in smaller towns with no medical infrastructure. I think it's statistically certain where they do campfires, mega-church gatherings and sing-a-longs just to own the libs the virus will spread. Certain they can ignore science, they'll infect each other and kill their parents. No one knows yet, but if the virus incubates thru the summer (like the flu), it will spread and wait roaring back in October.
EXPECT a miracle-vaccine announcement in October. Until it's cleared trials, it's a hoax by Trump.
Yes, a pathology, but which? Denial? Hubris? A death wish? All of the above?
Reality-show fraud. Presenting to the audience as 'fact' that which the host knows the audience wants, even if there's no actual foundation for the outcome you claim the audience is supposed to be seeing.
Trump knows (correctly) that people want OUT of the reality they are in – pandemic and recession. Trump's going to offer a Matrix-like reality that's no reality at all, but if you believe, you can have it tomorrow.
I think the pathology is that Trump has no other options than to leverage the frustrations of the public. The same dynamic he used to get elected in the first place. By exacerbating those frustrations and then offering an alternative method to alleviate those frustrations by following his example he provides a psychological balm that validates their frustrations and targets anybody who speaks or act counter to Trump's understanding as a sucker or a sap.
Remember…"The whole world is laughing at you, America". "We've been suckers" It's the same dynamic, but expressed non verbally for covid-19.
Not wearing a mask by the leadership in this country – is the same thing as Trump expecting his followers to work in unsafe circumstances – because they all are required to believe in Trump's reality. It's a loyalty test.
Recall early on, that session of the cabinet where, one by one, they all verbally bowed before Dear Leader. It's the same thing.
Oh, yeah. The Exaltation episode. That was one of my favorite episodes of the Trump show. Reince Priebus knocked it out of the ball park with his elaborate praise of Dear Leader. He hit just the right notes in a masterful delivery of both adoration and praise. I often wondered if Reince's praises flowed naturally from an abundance gratitude and awe or whether Reince was given a heads up and it was rehearsed beforehand knowing he'd be called upon. In any event Reince certainly nailed it.
If tRUMP gets the tRUMP Plague, he'll blame Obama, black/brown people, immigrants, China, the Democrats, the MSM, Mexico, his son, Eric, and a plethora of others on his shite list.
But, as the presiDUNCE's minions are getting sick around him, while the White House is morphing into Bleak House, there may be a tiny beacon of light in all the doom and gloom for the rest of us.
Tomorrow, the SCOTUS will begin hearing oral arguments on whether tRUMP will have to release his tax returns!
I think that SC CJ John Roberts will be the tie-breaking vote in favor of their release!
Why? Because he cares about his and his court's place in history. That, and I think he believes tRUMP's chances at reelection diminish with every passing day.
And so, to build-up some nona fides as a "moderate," he'll toss tRUMP under the bus.
And that by doing that, he can then work to screw every legal progressive initiatives the coming Democratic POTUS, Senate, and House sign into law..
We did not prevail in this crisis due to providence as some have suggested was our destiny. Nor by following the gut instincts of the anointed Donald are we or the rest of the world led anywhere but deeper into the morass. Even the preachers with a big church and a private plane find only a floundering flock without a plan. Nowhere in the gospel of greed is there the necessary references to understand why you might be the group chosen to be smote upon. The ranks of the loyal faithful dwindle as the bog deepens and only the zealots plod onward.
The pandemic has given us a bit of time to ponder a few things. One would hope that our mixing of politics and "religion" is undergoing some critical reflection. One recent poll found a third of the population of the US agreed to the idea that a vaccine to the virus already exists and is being withheld. I would bet a poll taken a year ago would have almost half of the US population agreeing with the idea that Trump was God's agent of divine providence for the United States.
Most have backed off a bit and did not drink the bleach. In this fact we might find some hope that the age of delusion and idiot worship is coming to an end. Still a third of the population thinks somewhere a Trump plague vaccine exists and it is being withheld. What kind of illogical thinking would it take to support such a notion? How would anyone know that a fact unless they themselves were privy to the development of the vaccine and it's withholding? All I know is we are still a long way from an age of enlightenment. Poll shows, way too many still thinking poorly.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/24/coronavirus-one-third-us-believe-vaccine-exists-is-being-withheld/3004841001/
WH testing may be both more and less than it appears. As understand it all visitors get tested before entering and all staff gets tested daily.
But, the WH being a manifestation of Trump, they selected the testing method that was most convenient. Speed and ease of use were held high. Accuracy, not so much. False positives are problematic and undermine confidence. False negatives could be disastrous given that no PPE or distancing measures are being used.