I learned from a friend in Massachusetts on Saturday that I’m not welcome in Cape Cod because my home state of Pennsylvania is on a list of unacceptably risky states. I found that depressing, especially because I monitor the rate of infection in my county very closely, and it’s currently at a very low level. We had approximately 15 deaths in the whole month of July, and my local community averaged about one new case every six days. Things have improved enough that we’ve allowed my son to resume some outdoor sporting activities. I’m concerned that I may have to pull the plug on that soon, however, because our president is a monster.
The coronavirus is spreading at dangerous levels across much of the United States, and public health experts are demanding a dramatic reset in the national response, one that recognizes that the crisis is intensifying and that current piecemeal strategies aren’t working.
This is a new phase of the pandemic, one no longer built around local or regional clusters and hot spots. It comes at an unnerving moment in which the economy suffered its worst collapse since the Great Depression, schools are rapidly canceling plans for in-person instruction and Congress has failed to pass a new emergency relief package. President Trump continues to promote fringe science, the daily death toll keeps climbing and the human cost of the virus in America has just passed 150,000 lives.
“Unlike many countries in the world, the United States is not currently on course to get control of this epidemic. It’s time to reset,” declared a report released this week by Johns Hopkins University.
Another thing I learned on Saturday is how my son’s travel soccer team is preparing to operate in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was very impressed with the protocols they developed, which are much stronger than those used by my son’s baseball league. I have to take my son’s temperature before every practice, and the team will train in pods so that any infection is perhaps contained to four people rather than taking out the whole squad. If I ravel out of state to a list of at-risk states, my son has to quarantine for 14 days even if he didn’t join me. I’m not allowed to be on the sidelines at practice, but must remain in my car. The precautions took me ten minutes to read, and they make a lot of sense. But none of this will help if the federal government continues to do nothing. We all have to be prepared to just shut everything down, because no community can keep this virus out by itself.You all know that I hate this president with the heat of a thousand suns and called for the Electoral College to exercise its discretion to refuse to seat him because he is so manifestly unfit for office. The Supreme Court has since taken that discretion away from our Electors, but we have an election coming up where we will select new Electors. I know there are countless people in this country who are trying to navigate sports and school for their children and are just as frustrated and fearful as I am, and we’re all eager to take it out on Trump. I think places where the virus was contained are then came back are going to the worst for the president, because there’s a sense of loss and an obvious source of blame.
I’m already banned from Massachusetts. I’ve visited my friends in Cape Cod for several years in a row every August, and now I cannot go. I can blame other parts of my state for that, but I also blame the leaders of other states who followed Trump’s wishes and did none of the things my governor did to get the virus under control.
On Monday, I’ll find out what my son’s school district has decided for the upcoming year. I am 99 percent sure I won’t be sending him back to the campus even though he really needs to be with his friends. Sports has been great for him because he’s finally with people his own age, but I am not optimistic that our infection rate will remain where it is, and we’ll probably lose that too.
The fury I feel is volcanic, and that’s just based on how this has impacted my family. When I consider the unnecessary loss of life, the sickness and bodily harm of millions, the broken dreams of shuttered businesses, the people losing jobs and access to health care, I am ready to form a frickin’ militia.
I think Trump’s polls are about to take another huge dip. The energy he has built against him is comparable to Vesuvius.
I vacilliate between anger and sadness. I can’t visit my mom who turns 83 this October as I don’t want to put her at risk. She’s depressed as she feels isolated and my daily phone calls only goes so far. I lost my dad last year. I live alone. At this point I’m living and working from home. Lucky to have income. But life is joyless. In January I ran into an old friend in Manhattan. That’s the last time I’ve hugged anyone. Every Trump utterance is a knife in my soul. I’m 51. Is the last 1/3 of my life going to be in a world of pandemics, climate destruction and my country’s disintegration as I struggle to survive alone? I’ll vote for Biden and make some strageic donations to down ballot Dems. But I don’t know if anything will truly change our national trajectory now. My mom said to me a few phone conversations back she hopes she lives long enough to see Trump incarcerated. Ironically, a year ago before he died and well before the pandemic, my Dad expressed regret that he wouldn’t live long to see Trump held accountable for his crimes. We’ve got to have more to look forward to than that.
There is hope. One of the things that might be fortunate for us is that presuming a vaccine comes next year, and Biden is in office, then there will be perhaps very substantial improvement in the economy before the next midterms. People will remember what it means to have competence in the government again. The contrast will be striking , and we may be able to squash the Republicans as they are now forever under this trajectory. That is my hope anyway.
I hope you’re right. The damage is so extensive though. FDR did a lot of good things but the economy was still a slog until WWII.
I’m about your age. My parents are 76 and 74, still healthy and living in 4 hours north of me at the top of the Olympic Peninsula. I haven’t been able to see them and they are really adrift at an age where they had hoped to do more before their health makes that impossible.
I have had many moments of despair as I think about what they are missing out on and at risk of. I think about all the major problems this world (our country) must grapple with immediately in order to head off a very dystopian future.
I’ve also had moments where I think about the exciting possibilities of changes that can and might be made in our political system, people’s stances towards hopefully formerly intractable problems, and maybe being part of planting the tree, so to speak, that will help the next generation finally resolve the most urgent of these problems.
I have my job still and my health and I wonder how it is all going to turn out. Vacillating between these two perspectives. I guess I would just say you are not alone. There are many more like you out there who want something better for our country. We must and will be a part of making that happen.
I feel you about your parents. Its daunting and herculean. And I’m scared. Its hard not to feel helpless and depressed. A decade ago when I was actively blogging, I wanted to believe we were on the cutting edge of a progressive reformation. But America wasn’t ready yet and Dems have never been good at holding onto and exercising power. But Biden just might have the slogan that captures the zeitgest of the moment: Build Back Better. That’s what we have to do now. Its not sexy. Probably won’t do our parents any good. May not do us any good either. But hopefully we can get it done for when the next generation takes the reigns.
Don’t just take out anger out on Trump – the whole GOP needs to go down with him.
Yes!
Once schools start opening back up in person and sending previously unaffected kids home to quarantine with their families, his polls will likely get worse. For a lot of folks, COVID has remained an abstraction. They haven’t been personally affected, and don’t know others who have been affected. That’s going to change really, really quickly. Hold onto your hats, folks, you ain’t seen nothing yet!
Man, I hope you’re right about the polls. I’ve notice him ticking back up a hair of late. Still within a small range and it may be just noise. But I’d so love to see him take a nosedive. Ideally, by the time November 3 rolls around, I’d love to see him testing the 27% barrier.
There’s no precedent for a major party presidential candidate testing the 27% barrier (unless you go back to Teddy Roosevelt’s 27% in 1912 when he split the Republican party, or former president Millard Fillmore’s 22% as head of the Know Nothing ticket in the wake of the Whig party’s implosion). Among the closest are George McGovern in 1972 (38%) and Herbert Hoover in 1932 (40%).
Right now, Trump’s hanging in around 42% in 538’s national polling averages. If he takes one more big hit (say, down to 40%) that sticks, *then* we’re looking at a landslide—with Biden winning states like GA, OH, TX, and accumulating over 400 electoral votes. We’re also probably looking at Democrats retaking the Senate, possibly with a net gain (starting from -3) of 6-9 seats.
Folks who pay more attention to state races could weigh in on the impact at that level, but my guess is it would result in several states where Democrats would win enough races to have a seat at the table for redistricting.
All the parents I talk to are apoplectic about the schools. They know full-well it didn’t have to be this way. Anger meter = ready to form a militia.
Anxiety, frustration and anger is indeed very high: it’s slowly sinking in that things are NOT going to get back to what we used to consider ‘normal’. It’s not all Trumps fault but his abject, self-centered incompetence has made it many many times worse than it should be.
And there can be no sympathy here for “a decent man in the wrong place at the wrong time”. After eluding accountability for a lifetime of grievous offenses, he now must face furious justice
As always, a fantastic analogy; “the opposition is volcanic”.
Don’t have much to say these days, the national collapse is total, national and personal isolation is total, and the federal government has been destroyed. It has pretty much gone as I expected, and the country is now reaping the full whirlwind that the incompetent white electorate saw fit to sow.
While the monstrous Trump does all he can to delegitimize the coming election, the reality is that the states are not ready (either with staff or funds) to process the type of absentee balloting that is bound to occur as a result of a pandemic, and it’s highly doubtful that the results will mirror what those who tried to cast a ballot wanted. Of course the one red line of the Gravedigger of Democracy McConnell in the ongoing “stimulus” negotiations is absolutely no money to the states for the increased cost of this election, or for more mail-in balloting. And absolutely, positively no money for the US postal service, which is already blowing the whistle on its current inability to handle the expected tsunasmi of ballots. Making sure the democracy cannot function is always Job One of the “conservative” movement.
So in the end, the incompetent white electorate got their unqualified imbecile prez and he (and McConnell) wrecked the country, a country which will never be or look the same again. If Biden takes office, he’ll likely have his first briefing and drop dead, aghast at the actual situation…