An alarming scenario ahead
It turns out it helps to know what you’re doing.
With coronavirus deaths in the U.S. rapidly approaching 15,000, we are now learning that the federal government’s national stockpile of medical supplies is almost depleted. Meanwhile, the failure to ramp up testing to the needed degree remains a “signature failure,” as the New York Times puts it.
One person who is well positioned to shed light on what all this means is Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state. His state was an initial epicenter, but there are signs the curve is flattening, which means Inslee both has extensive experience of how federal failures hampered the response and is already contemplating what comes next.
Signs the curve is flattening. Go us.
In an interview, Inslee, a Democrat, shared fresh details on how President Trump’s lack of “urgency” is directly contributing to equipment shortages hobbling response efforts — and hinted at an alarming scenario ahead.
Gathering up the swabs necessary for testing and similar details were delayed for weeks because Trump was interposing his useless ass between them and us.
Inslee asked one CEO if her company could do double shifts to increase production of the transport medium for tests.
“She said, ‘Well, maybe — we have to find a way to finance that,’” Inslee told me. This surprised him, because it seems like something the federal government should already be communicating with such manufacturers about.
“I would have thought the federal government would have talked to every single manufacturer in the nation who either makes this, or could make this, by this point, and said, ‘Look, we’re going to finance a double shift,’” Inslee told me. “That hasn’t happened.”
Look, Trump just doesn’t have time, ok? He’s got to devote all those hours every day to the press briefing rally, and the rest of the hours are hardly enough to keep up with Fox-watching and tweeting.
The alarming scenario is one in which certain states do very well and others do poorly, and the well-performing states put up essentially international-style borders between themselves and the poorly-performing states. That will quickly lead to a true constitutional crisis from which your Republic may not recover.
We’ve actually had dozens of those in the past three years; this may be the straw that broke the camel’s back, or it may be the result of the camel’s back already being thoroughly broken. I suspect the second.
I’ve been a fan of secession/nullification since Lord Cheeto got elected so I’m mostly ok with that sort of thing… but unfortunately there are plenty of good people on the other side of that theoretical wall (including iknklast obviously)…
Yes, there have been many, many instances of Trump violating the Constitution and, with a normally combative Congress, any one of these could have been a “crisis” that should have toppled the administration in a Nixonian manner. But, because the Congress was at first wholly and then half run by the bootlicking Republicans, they could simply ignore those violations and keep coming into work.
Disuniting the States is a crisis that will have real and lasting consequences. At best it will be a de-facto secession which is papered over as best as can be managed by an increasingly-irrelevant federal government, until the United States of America is as united as the Holy Roman Empire was, but I imagine it will not be able to develop so organically. Especially given all of the nukes you all have floating around.
You would think that coordinating with private sector CEOs is the one thing that President Serious Businessman would be competent at. (That is, if you actually believed that he was competent at running a business.)
BKiSA, I am not in fact in favor of retaining the Union at all costs. I have been wishing for nearly thirty years now that we could break this country down into something(s) that were actually governable. Get rid of the idea that somehow we all are part of one big group of people joined by a common goal, a common culture, and a common language. We do not have that, have possibly never had that (even the 13 original colonies didn’t really have that, which is probably why the Articles of Confederation were such a disaster), and I suspect we will never have that.
If I thought the current situation would lead to a more sane approach to government, I would be down with it, but the monstrosity is likely to continue. Even my most liberal and open minded friends back away, brandishing garlic and crosses the moment I mention such a thing. We have been brainwashed to believe this is the only way to be.
Well, to be fair, up until the last seventy years, the US would have taken its example from Europe, which regularly fell apart every generation or so into brutal wars in which far too many people were thrown away for not very much gain. It is entirely unclear that a Disunited States would be able to avoid that cycle of no-longer-internecine violence simply by sharing a language and a common heritage.