Pandemic Politics and Its Failure

“President Trump and his bold actions from the very beginning of this pandemic stand in stark contrast to the do-nothing Democrats and radical left who just complain, criticize and condemn anything this president does to preserve this nation.” -- Disinformation from the radical right White House spokesman Judd Deere blaming others for White House failures in dealing with the pandemic

“But their ultimate goal was to shift responsibility for leading the fight against the pandemic from the White House to the states. They referred to this as “state authority handoff,” and it was at the heart of what would become at once a catastrophic policy blunder and an attempt to escape blame for a crisis that had engulfed the country — perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.” -- New York Times commenting on the White House plan to shift responsibility for the pandemic from the president and federal government to the states

“Only in Washington, D.C., do they think that they have the answer for all of America.” -- Ideological disinformation spin from the radical right White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to help shift responsibility from the Trump administration to the states

A New York Times investigation looked into the details of why the federal pandemic response was so poor and why we are still in such deep trouble. The story is disgusting and tragic, but not surprising. In essence, the White House response was being run by political operatives with no public health experience. The one real expert, Dr. Deborah Birx, was sincere but wrong about projecting the pandemic would ease and the economy could reopen. She was blindsided by the president's actions that undercut the effort to keep the virus in check. The political operatives were taking their cues from the president, not from public health experts. It turned out that there really was one answer for all of America, but the White House ignored it, or psychologically could not accept it, for purely political reasons.

The deadly mistake came in a period beginning in mid-April when the president and his team convinced themselves that the pandemic was going away like magic. They also falsely believed that they had given state governments everything they needed to contain it. In their minds, it was time end the lockdown.

The NYT writes:

“Even as a chorus of state officials and health experts warned that the pandemic was far from under control, Mr. Trump went, in a matter of days, from proclaiming that he alone had the authority to decide when the economy would reopen to pushing that responsibility onto the states. The government issued detailed reopening guidelines, but almost immediately, Mr. Trump began criticizing Democratic governors who did not “liberate” their states.

Mr. Trump’s bet that the crisis would fade away proved wrong. But an examination of the shift in April and its aftermath shows that the approach he embraced was not just a misjudgment. Instead, it was a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans.

Dr. Birx was more central than publicly known to the judgment inside the West Wing that the virus was on a downward path. Colleagues described her as dedicated to public health and working herself to exhaustion to get the data right, but her model-based assessment nonetheless failed to account for a vital variable: how Mr. Trump’s rush to urge a return to normal would help undercut the social distancing and other measures that were holding down the numbers.”

It took until early June for the White House to begin to realize that their assumptions were wrong. According to the NYT article, people in the White House are still debating how publicly honest to be about the seriousness of the situation. Obviously, there is be no acceptance of responsibility for failures by this mendacious president or his mendacious enablers. The president was trapped by his own upbeat but false statements that things would turn out just fine very soon and it was time to reopen the economy.

The president did extend the lockdown period in April, but during that time he and his aides worked to build their case that the federal government had done its job very well and the president had no responsibility for the failed response.

The rest of the article describes the purely political mindset that drove the president and his White House into needless failures and unjustifiable denial of responsibility. The rest of the country is now paying a very heavy price for politics as usual.

Trump Fact Checker Update

The Washington Post keeps track of the number of false and misleading statements the president makes. The team makes its database available to the public so that people can see for themselves how statements are analyzed and assigned one of four levels of falsity or deceit. On July 9, the president hit 20,055. The cumulative number over time is shown above, and the monthly number is shown below.

In an accompanying article, the WaPo comments:

“Just as when Trump crossed the 10,000 threshold, an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News helped Trump breach the 20,000 mark. Trump racked up 62 claims on July 9, about half of which came during the Hannity interview: Trump’s statements cover a substantial range of his bogus attacks, conspiracy theories, boasts and inaccurate information:”

The evidence of the president’s mendacity and immorality speaks for itself.

The Trump Horror Story Continues

Many articles from professional media continue to show how incompetent and corrupt the president and his administration are. The Washington Post writes about the $517 billion in small-business loans the Small Business Administration has made with relief funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program. That program was intended to help people stay at work and be paid during the pandemic. The taxpayer-funded program has been swarmed by crooks, liars and thieves who blew the loan money for new cars, trips to Las Vegas and so forth. WaPo writes in an opinion piece:

“Those anecdotes are sketches of the problem involving the Trump administration’s handling of the PPP. They are small tales in a larger emerging horror story.

A Post in-depth analysis of data on $517 billion in emergency small-business loans handed out by President Trump’s team at the Small Business Administration uncovered errors so numerous that White House boasts of the PPP’s economic impact are nothing more than spin and hot air.

The analysis found the SBA claimed that many companies had ‘retained’ far more workers than they actually employed. ‘In some cases,’ the article said, ‘the agency’s jobs claims for entire industries surpasses the total number of workers in those sectors.’

Looking closely at more than 875,000 of the borrowers, the analysis found that “zero” jobs were supported, or no information was listed at all.

So Trump’s claim that 51 million jobs were “supported” by the PPP is unsupported by facts. 

Trinity Episcopal Church outside Houston retained, praise the Lord, more than 500 jobs, thus saith the SBA. The church says it has 12 paid staffers.

And according to the SBA, the manufacturer International Dunnage of Thunderbolt, Ga., saved more than 500 jobs. Not so. The company said it has just seven employees and two owners. “I don’t know where you got the 500,” owner David Crenshaw said in an email to The Post.

The Trump administration is where, Mr. Crenshaw.”

Believe it or not, the crooks, liars and thieves actually include team Trump’s ‘best’ people in the Small Business Administration itself. Sometimes, the SBA just makes stuff up about saving non-existent jobs. Some of the saved jobs are fake, but the tax dollars aren’t.

But wait, there is even more -- we’re lost in the ether!

The WaPo article goes on to point out that it is even worse than just this. Analysis of the loans indicate that nearly all are going to white-owned businesses, in part because banks already have these people as customers. Apparently, banks are not interested in helping business owners of color with the complicated paperwork.

As WaPo puts it, “what makes this spectacle all the more galling is the lack of effective oversight and accountability by either Congress or federal regulatory agencies. Business complaints and critical reports such as The Post’s analysis are lost in the ether. .... As Congress unleashed $2 trillion to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and questions were being raised about the steps needed to prevent fraud and abuse and how to track the money — to know where it is going — Trump royally declared, ‘I am the oversight.’ That’s it. Pray we make it to Election Day.”

Other sources in addition to WaPo are reporting on fraud in the PPP program. The scope of the fraud is not yet clear, but it is beginning to look to be widespread.

What are they thinking, or are they?

By now, who and what the president is should be clear. He is a chronic liar, a crook, stunningly incompetent, completely immoral, an extremely powerful enabler and defender of corruption and lies, and probably a traitor working for Putin. All of that, maybe excepting the Putin treason allegation, should be clear to most people by now.

Despite that, most of the president’s supporters believe that little or none of it is true. If they did, many or most supporters presumably would no longer support him. This seems to reflect reality. The relentless propaganda, spin and lies from the president and his enablers about himself and his actions has created a fake reality that millions of people actually believe is true. To them, truth is lies and lies are truth.

That is how poisoned, deceived and dangerous that a significant slice of American society has become.

PERSISTENT INTERNET TROLLS

AH, we all have to deal with them, whether here, other platforms, Facebook, what have you.

WHAT has always struck me as ODD, is that trolls seem to be oblivious to the fact that they can easily be spotted and that they make themselves laughable by being SO obvious.

HOWEVER, for the sake of those who still can't recognize trolling in themselves or in others:
What is trolling?

https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/thenow/what-is-trolling/1/

HIGHLIGHTS:

A troll is Internet slang for a person who intentionally tries to instigate conflict, hostility, or arguments in an online social community. Platforms targeted by trolls can include the comment sections of YouTube, forums, or chat rooms.

Trolls often use inflammatory messages to provoke emotional responses out of people, disrupting otherwise civil discussion. Trolling can occur anywhere that has an open area where people can freely post their thoughts and opinions.

When trolls sense that they’re getting an emotional response out of someone, they usually won’t stop until they’ve gotten their victim sufficiently riled up.

Trolls are also known for their outlandish and outrageous claims. They will often make ridiculous statements about the subject at hand, again with the expectation that they will get an emotional response out of people.

Typically, the best thing to do is ignore the troll. 

(as an aside, something some of us are very poor at doing, we feed them by responding)

On well-moderated forums, an administrator will catch trolling early and ban the offending user or delete trolling comments, depending on how offensive they are.