Freedoms and liberties
Herman Caine is in the hospital with COVID-19; I wonder if South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is having any second thoughts. I wonder rhetorically; in reality I figure she’s being obstinately stupid to the end.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Monday that attendees at a July 3 event at Mount Rushmore where President Trump is set to speak will not be required to practice social distancing.
This at a time when infections are rocketing up in this country.
“We will have a large event on July 3. We told those folks that have concerns that they can stay home, but those who want to come and join us, we’ll be giving out free face masks, if they choose to wear one. But we won’t be social distancing.”
In other words, “We will be doing everything we can to make the situation worse. We will actively prevent people from taking measures to try to prevent infection. We will use this political event to cause more disease and death. That is our intention. We are proud of it.”
“We’re asking them to come — be ready to celebrate, to enjoy the freedoms and the liberties that we have in this country,” Noem added.
The freedoms and liberties to spread a fatal disease.
Two points.
1) Asymptomatic spread. Talk to the governor of Georgia about tha one. He finally grasped this concept months into the pandemic. You have not.
2)These people who think they’re all “tougher” than the virus aren’t at the apex of a pyramid, they’re each the first domino in the next chain of infection. Not a roadblock, but a pipeline of contagion.
It’s disturbing how much pride they take in their wilfull ignorance and aggressive stupidity.
You’d think if nothing else cold political calculation would make these idiots urge people to do the right thing. But instead they act like they want their voters to die.
If you’re a certain type of leader, it’s always a good thing to have a % of your followers prepared to die for you.
Willing to die to own libs, too. It’s a loyalty test, an act of faith, and a declaration of “strength,” and “defiance” all rolled into one.
Though I can’t imagine why anyone would want to die for that rancid puddle of pudding in the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, my boss says “CAN’T require masks”, even though every other college in the state is doing so. “We will suggest masks”. Some classes can’t socially distance – in my classroom, to remain the required distance apart, you could only have six students in the class. So they are saying “we may move your classes to a different classroom”. Where, may I ask? We have a total of four places in the entire school that could hold more than eight to ten students with appropriate distancing. For all our classes – four places.
They did tell me today that I could work from home doing remote teaching if I get a statement from my doctor that my health requires it. While I doubt I will have a problem with that (he’s struggled to keep my asthma from doin’ me in this summer, without COVID on top of it), I should not have to. No one should have to report to a job that can EASILY be done from home (okay,, only moderately easily, but since we were doing it for the last two months of the spring semester, most of us have worked out most of the kinks) when we are in a pandemic. But…our governor will not mandate masks. Our president will not mandate masks. And a large majority of the people in our region voted for our governor and our president, and remain loyal to the end. Meanwhile, cases are increasing rapidly, and this time it doesn’t appear to be meat-packing plant spread.
I was talking with a colleague yesterday who’s booked a trip to the US for September to celebrate her wedding anniversary, but is having serious reservations; we were talking about other places she might go instead. ‘USA doesn’t look very appealing now,’ she says, even though they got married there and would like to have their anniversary in the same place. I haven’t followed closely enough, but at this rate it has to be only a matter of time before the US borders are closed from outside.
Rob, YNNB,
But the thing is, Trump etc. aren’t asking people to be willing to die for them, they’re telling people that they won’t die. And as a direct result, many of their would-be voters will die.
From a purely political perspective, that just seems perverse. (From other perspectives, of course, it’s worse than perverse.)
Right at the moment, I’m ready to see Canada close its borders to the US. We may not have done a wizard job containing the virus, but several orders of magnitude better than the US.
By the way, is the mindlessness of Trump and his votaries typical of conservatism in the US? Talk about a closing of the American Mind? From some evidence one begins to wonder whether — and of course I know there are vast exceptions, but you can’t blame people for taking their cue from how government and society seem to be functioning just now — there is a US mind at all. One thing that I think needs looking into is the US Constitution. If a president like Trump is a possibility — and the Senate Republicans should have seen to Trump long ago — there is something wrong with the constitution. I keep rereading Tim Snyder’s On Tyranny just to assure myself that there are minds at work in the US besides the madness of Trump and the GOP.
How is one to understand the GOP, by the way? I know there have been madnesses in the past. Indeed, in my own estimation most Republican administrations have been — well, perhaps not complete disasters, except for … but — for the most part, a bit on the incoherent side, especially when it comes to the disparity of rich and poor, the absolute lack of a social safety net, the rather mad assumption that the rich are not dependent on the poor, and their wealth is somehow self-earned, etc. I spent a school year in Hartford, back in the early fifties, and the US seemed to be a healthy society, rich, relatively just, happy, etc., though I was looking at it with pre-teen eyes, but now it doesn’t feel like that at all. In fact, whenever I enter the US now I feel a vague sense of misgiving. On the other hand, a cop was in Calgary a few years ago, and he felt insecure, because he didn’t have his gun in his pocket. Still, despite the occasional burst of senseless violence — as we recently had here in Nova Scotia — for the most part Canada is a gun-free peaceful kingdom.
Eric, as for the presence of an American mind, keep in mind that America is so non-monolithic that it is impossible to have anything like “The” American mind. We don’t think alike, act alike, or in many cases, speak alike. Also, remember, Trump lost the popular vote. His opponent (I think I remember someone. Let’s see…female, maybe? Intelligent? Flawed, but not a buffoonish corrupt clown?) won more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, save one – that one was NOT her opponent, it was Obama in his first election campaign.
As for the GOP, I long ago figured them out. They have two basic things that are musts, and will accept all manner of evil in a candidate who promises those. For the pro-business wing, it is all about cutting taxes and regulations. This has been a requirement in a Republican candidate ever since Grover Norquist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist). Promise to cut taxes, we don’t really care much about the rest.
Then there is the religious wing, where the main dog whistle is abortion, but prayer in schools (and by this they mean mandatory prayer where you can force other people’s kids to pray to your god, because their kids are still allowed to pray, to carry their bible, and to worship as long as it doesn’t disrupt class – they are even allowed to bully other kids on the playground about getting right with god or accepting Jesus) is also a big favorite. Sing a song about how you are going to end persecution of Christians, and you are their man. (And persecution is cast in a very broad manner, often meaning nothing more than other people being allowed not to believe in your god).
These two coalitions made peace some time ago. They realized if they each brought their constituents into the mix, they would stand a chance of winning most elections. It sort of started with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, where he set out to bring all the southern Democrats (most of whom were pissed at the Democrats because of the Civil Rights Act) into the Republican Party. It really got going with Ronald Reagan, who was more than willing to kowtow to the religious right while actively doing the legwork of the pro-business right. Trump is the inevitable outcome of this unholy alliance.
The Constitution allowed it to happen because there is no real way to enforce the strictures against it happening; it has been mostly by gentleman’s agreement. That has been eroding for a long time.