Journal of the Plague Years

May 14, 2020

     We are watching Trump disintegrate before our eyes, erupting in racist tirades directed at journalists; peevish and alarmed that anything has begun to dent his poll numbers.  Yet, any of us tempted to take grim solace in the thought that the escalating death toll might cause his defeat have not been paying attention. In case we have forgotten the knife’s edge on which we’re poised, three developments yesterday should serve as a stark reminder.

      Yesterday, Republican Mike Garcia trounced Christy Smith, 55% to 46%, in the special election in California’s 25th Congressional District.  This marks the first time in 22 years that the Republicans have been able to flip a California Democratic Congressional district, (Source:  “GOP wins special election in California after Democrat concedes,” by Ally Mitnick, Politico.com, 5/13/20).  The DCCC’s decision not to invest heavily in the race probably contributed to the lopsided result, where turnout skewed older and whiter in a district that is 53% Latinx, Asian and Black.  It is critical to remember that this special election was only necessary because the far right wing media forced Rep. Katie Hill from office by weaponizing revenge porn released by her estranged husband. Continue reading “Crisis…or opportunity?”

May 6, 2020

      After weeks of watching white men draped with Nazi and Confederate regalia, armed to the teeth march on state capitols and emerge unharmed and unmolested, we understood the message.  After seeing them get so close to state troopers that you could see the spittle in the corners of their snarling mouths, we hardly needed a reminder of the gulf between what passes for lawful behavior for white people vs. lawful behavior by Black people.  After one after another Republican governor defied science and ignored escalating infection rates to “open up their states,” knowing full well that it would be Black and Brown people forced to choose between their lives and their livelihood, we didn’t need to be told that, to them, our safety doesn’t matter and our deaths don’t even register. Continue reading “Freedom?”

April 30, 2020

Exhausted by isolation, we vainly scour the media for glimmers of good news, whipsawed by stories that alternately induce hope and despair. The hospitalization and death rate in New York State has continued to decline and Governor Cuomo has announced a tentative plan for beginning to re-open the state, starting with the North Country (Source: “Cuomo Details Plans For Reopening New York, Says NYC Needs ‘Summer Activities’ Open For Residents,” by Lisette Voytko, Forbes.com, 4/26/20). Conversely, New Jersey’s Governor Murphy cannot predict when the stay-at-home order might be lifted.

The “President” publicly muses that bleach and disinfectants could be injected or ingested as a possible cure for coronavirus and not only is he not dragged from the podium in a straight jacket, but poison control centers in New York, Maryland and Michigan reported a spike in calls to their poison control centers the next day, from people following Trump’s advice. Continue reading “Down, but not out”

April 22, 2020

      Seemingly not content with the wave of deaths directly attributable to his malignant incompetence, Trump has spent the last several days looking for novel ways to increase human suffering.  Yesterday, his administration announced that undocumented students would be ineligible for emergency assistance for food, shelter and childcare, (Source: DeVos bars undocumented students from emergency aid,” by Michael Stratford, Politico.com, 4/21/20).  This comes on the heels of his announcement of a 60 day ban on immigration, although just how refusing to issue or renew green cards will help combat the virus is anyone’s guess. 

These “policy” moves come after Trump spent the weekend tweeting “Liberate” Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia, encouraging insurrection against democratically elected governors for following federal government guidelines aimed at combating the disease. His exhortations were in support of Astroturfed protests by a ragtag assembly of armed, knuckle dragging racists who want Black and Latinx folks to risk death so that they can go to Applebee’s (h/t Patton Oswalt).

      Meanwhile, Trump is slow-walking the thing that would actually enable the economy to open up, ramping up testing capacity, (Source:  “Governors call Trump’s bluff on testing capacity: ‘The President Is Simply Lying,’” by Igor Derysh, Salon.com, 4/20/20).  None of this is surprising.  Trump has always been a one trick pony who defaults to whipping up hatred whenever the focus threatens to shift to the consequences of his abject unfitness for office.  What is alarming is the number of white voters who still support him, despite evidence that his inaction is directly responsible for the deaths of significantly more Americans, (Source:  “The Huge Cost of Waiting to Contain the Pandemic,” by Britta L. Newell and Nicholas P. Jewell, The New York Times, 4/14/20).  The number of American dead now exceeds the number killed in The Korean War, yet the imbecile governors of Florida and Georgia are opening beaches and bowling alleys.

       We have to face the repugnant truth that fully 43% of Americans believe that their comfort and convenience are more important than the lives of frontline healthcare workers, the Black and Latinx people disproportionately represented in essential jobs and the elderly people trapped in long term care facilities.  All of this is evidence, as George Packer eloquently detailed, that the United States of America is a failed state, (Source:  “We Are Living In A Failed State,” by George Packer, The Atlantic, 6/2020).

Of course, many of us have suspected this for some time, but were too complacent, comfortable or afraid to actually do anything about it. After all, if we were doing well, pushing for big structural changes seemed like an indictment of our own success. Where has that left us? With a planet irreparably damaged by climate change and a country beset by shocking levels of inequality, ruled by a tiny cabal of hideous old white men with no other desire than to amass personal wealth and subjugate the masses.

When this is over and we emerge, timidly and tentatively, from our homes, we will face a choice. We can spend our time rebuilding our 401ks and renovating our homes to “maximize” our children’s inheritance. Or we can spend every waking moment dismantling the structures that immiserate so many and rebuilding this country into a society fit for our children to live in. What will be your legacy?

April 15, 2020

      Each day, we ask ourselves, “how will we get through this? Each day, we wonder when this will end and what lies on the other side of an unprecedented crisis that has wrought incalculable human and economic loss. We feel as though we’re living in a dystopian version of “Groundhog Day,” each morning marked by Governor Cuomo’s somber accounting of the increasing number of positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths, each afternoon marked by the mind numbing effort to feed the gaping maw of Trump’s pathetic ego in the White House daily coronavirus “briefings.”  Those of us with the stomach for it watch Trump spout dangerous misinformation, hog the cameras and try to bully and bluster his way through this crisis, as he has every other challenge in his “presidency.”

        Yesterday, we got a glimpse of what may lie ahead.  Over the weekend, The New York Times published a damning expose detailing exactly how Trump’s determination to ignore and downplay the threat posed by the coronavirus turned what could have been a manageable public health challenge into a full blown nationwide crisis that may send our country into an economic crisis that rivals the Great Depression , (Source: “He Could Have Seen What Was Coming:  Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus,” by Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mozzetta and Julian E. Barnes, The New York Times, 4/11/20).  Continue reading “The Tenth Amendment”

April 7, 2020

These are dark times. The unceasing toll of illness and death and this administration’s unrelenting determination to bungle the response and lie about it, saps our ability to remain hopeful. In the fourth week of our domestic Coronavirus crisis, a grimly predictable pattern is beginning to emerge. As with all other social ills in this country, the brunt of this frighteningly virulent contagion is being borne overwhelmingly by Black, Brown and Indigenous Americans, who are disproportionately poor and are concentrated in low wage jobs where they are unable to telecommute and effectively socially distance themselves.

     As Ibram X. Kendi details in The Atlantic, the racial data available is alarmingly clear.  In Michigan, 40% of those who have died from COVID-19 are Black, despite making up only 14.1% percent of the state population. In North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, Black people are 32.9% of the population, but 43% of the positive cases.  In Milwaukee, Black people are only 26% of the population, but 43.9% of the cases and 81% of the deaths! (Source:  “What the Racial Data Show,” by Ibram X. Kendi, The Atlantic, 4/6/20). Continue reading “Dark Times”

March 28, 2020

     Earlier this week, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves issued an executive order which closed all but “essential businesses,” but defined them so broadly that most businesses, including department stores, factories and offices, were deemed “‘essential’ and thus exempt from social distancing requirements,” (Source:  “Governor Orders Limited Gatherings, Declares Most Business ‘Essential,’ Supersedes Local Safety Efforts,” by Nick Judin, Jackson Free Press, 3/24/20).  Despite Reeves’ protestations that he was not a “dictator” after being savaged on The Rachel Maddow Show, his order explicitly prohibited localities from imposing more stringent restrictions on businesses in order to protect public safety, (Source:  ibid).  

    Similarly, Alabama’s Governor, Kay Ivey, ordered “non-essential” businesses to close, but declined to issue a statewide “shelter in place” order. Ivey explicitly voiced her concern that “government can choke businesses” and stated that Alabama was “not Louisiana…not New York State…not California,” as if the Coronavirus checks partisan i.d. at the state borders, (Source:  “Coronavirus: Governor Ivey orders temporary closings of businesses in Alabama. Read the order,” by Brian Lyman, Montgomery Advertiser, 3/27/20).

      These edicts fly in the face of science, privileging a robust economy over public health. They fail to calculate the cost of lost lives and an overburdened healthcare system on that economy.  After all, dead people don’t buy things and can’t come to work. These head-scratching decisions are merely the Republican philosophy made manifest— that profits are more important than people.

      Trump began last week lamenting the “cost” of prolonged social distancing, tweeting that “the cure can’t be worse than the problem itself.”  Rather than thinking about the toll a prolonged shutdown would have on low and middle income workers, Trump made clear that his primary concern was the impact of the shutdown on the stock market.  The theme was quickly picked up and repeated as a Republican talking point.  Texas Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick opined that grandparents would willingly risk death in order to salvage the economy for their grandchildren!  Soon, a chorus of pundits on Fox News were regurgitating the morbid idea that it was noble to die for the Dow, (Source:  “Right Wing Media is All Aboard Trump’s Coronavirus Death Train,” by Caleb Ecarma, VanityFair.com, 3/25/20).

      By week’s end, the depth of Trump’s depravity was made shockingly evident.  After doubting the veracity of New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo’s impassioned plea for 30,000 ventilators, Trump stated that disbursement of critical medical aid was conditioned on governors treating him well. On Friday, Trump upped the ante, savaging Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, saying that if he were VP Mike Pence, he wouldn’t return their calls, (Source:  “Trump just raged at Michigan’s governor.  Here’s what is really behind it,” by Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, 3/27/20).

      We should all be long past the point where we are shocked by Trump’s cruelty and vindictiveness, but we should sear this moment in our consciousness and never forget that Trump was willing to let the people of New York, Michigan, and Washington die unless their governors paid him sufficient tribute.

      From the moment Trump was elected we could have seen this coming.  Those of us who mourned in November 2016 knew just what kind of calamitously unfit reprobate 63 million of our fellow Americans had thrust upon us.  We sifted through endless streams of claptrap about “economic anxiety,” but we knew the truth was that Trump’s election was a reaction to the existential crisis precipitated by the election of President Obama. Obama’s intelligence, integrity and urbanity was a constant rebuke to the sniveling mediocrity of many people that exposed the lie of white supremacy.  As revenge they elected his polar opposite- a vain, overstuffed gasbag with the vocabulary of a 5th grader and the impulse control of a toddler. Their message, trumpeted loud and clear, was that the worst white man was better than the best and brightest Black man, and now we are all paying the price. I will never forgive them for that and I will never forget.  You shouldn’t either.

#StayHome

March 21,  2020

      It is hard to comprehend the speed with which the coronavirus pandemic has brought the country to its knees.  Here in the New York metropolitan area, the lucky ones among us are hunkered down in our homes working remotely.  The subways and the streets are eerily quiet, like a scene from “The Day After.” Pockets of defiance – weddings with more than fifty guests, young people crowding bars – make the evening news.  We wonder how long we will have to live like this – our friends and co-workers reduced to grainy video images on our laptop screens, only venturing out for groceries or medicine. We watch the numbers of positive diagnoses rise exponentially each day, wondering if, or when, the tsunami will hit us.

      We are the lucky ones.  Unlike thousands of restaurant or hotel workers, we still have jobs.  Experts are predicting that 4.6 million people could lose their jobs this year in the travel industry alone, (Source:  “Coronavirus layoffs surge across America, overwhelming unemployment offices,” by Rebecca Rainey, Politico.com, 3/17/20).  With Trump tanking the markets every time he opens his mouth, erasing the gains of the last three years in the last two weeks, even Senate Republicans recognize that dramatic measures have to be taken immediately. Wednesday, the Republican-led Senate passed a House bill providing two weeks of paid sick and family leave, free coronavirus testing for all, including the uninsured, increased federal funds for Medicaid, SNAP and increased unemployment insurance benefits, (Source:  “The growing coronavirus stimulus packages,” by Alayna Treene, Axios.com, 3/19/20). Continue reading “An American Tragedy”

      Four years ago, when Donald Trump was elected, I felt compelled to start chronicling his daily assaults on public integrity, civil rights and the Rule of Law on Facebook.  When I launched the stand alone blog a few months later, I chose the title,“Journal of the Plague Years.” The name was a nod to Daniel Defoe, of “Robinson Crusoe” fame, who chronicled what it was like to live in London during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1665 in his historical novel of the same name.

At the time, I quipped that Trump’s presidency would be like the plague in Defoe’s novel, a brutal disease that sweeps through society,causing rampant suffering and destruction, but for a short time. As one of the 94% of Black women who voted for Hillary Clinton, I had no doubt that Trump would unleash a plague of racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and anti-semitism on this country. I anticipated that his crude prejudices would embolden violent white supremacists and allow casual racists to the police the mere presence of people of color in “white spaces”, from public parks to a Yale common room. Under Trump, hate crimes have reached an 16 year high, (Source: “Hate Crime Violence Hate-Crime Violence Hits 16 Year High, F.B.I. Report Says,” by Adeel Hassan, The New York Times, 11/12/19). Tell me that isn’t a plague. Continue reading “Journal of the plague years”

March 9, 2020

     Like characters in a Steve Soderbergh movie, we are all trapped in a miasma of dread.  There are coronavirus cases in 30 states, Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency in light of the 143 people who have tested positive in New York, (Source:  “How Many in Tri-State Have Tested Positive For Coronavirus? See Latest Cases By The Numbers.” nbcnewyork.com, 3/9/20).  The stock market has been plummeting, with trading halted today after stocks dipped 7%, the largest one day drop ever.

     Trump set the stage for this two years ago by firing everyone in the National Security apparatus charged with responsibility for managing global pandemics, (Source:  “Trump cuts to national security staff may hurt coronavirus response, former officials say,” by Laura Strickler and Ken Dilanian, NBCnews.com, 2/26/20).  The Trump administration’s response has been depressingly on brand.  The combination of mendacity, incompetence, ignorance and callousness has turned what could have been a manageable situation into a full-blown crisis. Continue reading “Contagion”