Weekend Update: The Reckoning

The past week was remarkable for the number of polls released on the 2020 elections, and their nearly unanimous conclusions.  In one poll after another, Joe Biden was ahead by double digits nationally, as many as 14 points in several. There were some 20 polls of battleground states--and Biden was ahead in all of them (though not necessarily all of the states.)

The conventional wisdom is that polls tighten closer to election day.  The prominence now of mail-in votes is prompting the caution also that election night this year may not name a winner.  The logic of what's happening says that both of these could well be wrong.  Biden's lead may even increase.  And if so, it would be a landslide that might well yield enough "called" states that Biden will be President-elect by midnight Pacific.

And nothing less than a landslide will suffice to overcome the obstacles being placed by Republicans in the administration--particularly Barr at Justice--and in the states, including practically inviting more Russian disinformation and interference.

A landslide will turn the Senate, perhaps by a lot.  In any case, the first thing a Democratic majority will do is jettison the 60 vote threshold for lawmaking.  So even if Moscow Mitch is re-elected he won't be able to wreck things so easily anymore.

For this to happen, Americans are going to have to do more than exhibit a little buyer's remorse.  Certain voters and especially non-voters are going to have to face up and own up to their responsibility for Trump, and try to make up for it by voting this time.  These polls show signs this is starting to happen.

Events in the real world as well as polls have weakened Trump considerably, and people may be listening to the very clear message that is being provided about what 2016 placed in motion.

For instance, Ezra Klein: "Trump has spent the past three years and 158 days playing president on TV and social media. But he has not spent that time doing the job of the president. A strong economy that carried over from Barack Obama’s presidency hid Trump’s dereliction of duties. But then a crisis came, and presidential leadership was needed, and the American people saw there was no plan, and functionally no president.”

As Klein points out, all the insider accounts as well as professional external observations support this view.

Former Republican campaign operative Steve Schmidt wrote this week: “Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office.

“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.  It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States."

And as others have pointed out, other Republicans aren't much better, particularly the leader of the Senate.  The result is the most destructive cult in this country since the Civil War.

This cult has inspired, accommodated and to some extent been part of violent rabid right militants who (according to the new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies) accounted for 2/3 of the terrorist plots in America in 2018, and 90% of them in 2019. 

And it's Trump and the Republicans who are warping the lives of everyone in the country, causing fear, suffering and death.  With one or two possible exceptions, only in the US is the covid crisis so out of control. "This isn’t happening in every country around the world," Schmidt points out. "... The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

But it's not Trump alone. There are his minions, the AlwaysTrumpers and all the crazies who have latched onto his cult and used social media mob violence against those earnestly trying to save lives.  Paul Krugman: “I keep seeing statements to the effect that Americans were too impatient to stay the course, too unwilling to act responsibly. But this is deeply misleading, because it avoids confronting the essence of the problem. Americans didn’t fail the Covid-19 test; Republicans did.”  

The most recent Pew poll as well as other polls bear him out.  Apart from Republican officeholders in Washington and the states, most of those who refuse to wear masks and take other precautions are AlwaysTrumpers.  However, those who were merely variations of naive or stupid--who held and attended parties or clubbed and barhopped without masks and distancing--are likely responsible for much of the current infection.

Because of Trump and his Republican cult, surviving until election day, surviving past the Inauguration in January, continues to be an iffy thing.  Towards the end of the past week, several states began throttling back on their re-opening plans.  The horrendous numbers in Florida, the terrible numbers in Arizona and Texas and southern California, are reflected elsewhere to a lesser degree.  We've even had a surge here in Humboldt--we went from 2 active cases to 20, though it appears most of the new cases are related to travel or contact with a known case.

The conventional wisdom at the moment is that the surge everywhere is among people between 20 and 40 or 50.  So hospitals in places like Arizona and Houston, Texas are frighteningly stretched, but generally the hospitalization and death rates aren't climbing as fast as infections.  So we'll see whether the pandemic itself can be controlled.  Even so, Black and Latinx communities are suffering disproportionately.

Meanwhile, the first cases of infection by people who attended the Tulsa disaster now include a local reporter. This early it's not possible to say he was infected at the rally.  Six members of Trump campaign staff and two Secret Service agents were previously reported as testing positive after being in Tulsa, though not all of them were at the rally. More staff and dozens of agents have self-sequestered.

 CNN reports that another White House staffer has more recently tested positive, and that while Trump refuses masks and disdains distancing for others, measures to protect him from the virus have been considerably scaled up though out of public view, while less care is taken for his staff.

Not This Year

from Trinidad Head a few summers ago

Obviously a lot of events have been cancelled this year, and they continue to be.  But in this case the reason varies a little.

In recent years I've made a ritual hike up the Trinidad Head on my birthday.  The next one is next week, and I've been undecided about it.  We haven't been restricted here from driving and walking where we could safely distance from others.  That's even more true in recent weeks.

One of my favorite spots over the years, taken last June on a foggy birthday.

But the trail to the top of the Head is narrow for most of its length, with a few widely spaced turnouts, usually where there are benches facing the sea.  It would be impossible along most of it to pass someone going in the opposite direction with more than a foot or two between you, and sometimes less.

But with masks and the light risk of getting much virus passing someone for a moment in the open air, I was still considering it.  Even after my car battery died again.

Until Tuesday, when I read a story in the online Lost Coast Outpost, a report of a Zoomed meeting of county supervisors and the public health officer.  All the supervisors talked about questionable activities and noticing hostility about any covid crisis restrictions.  Then there was this:

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone spoke urgently about an inundation of tourists in his district. “We’re being overrun in Trinidad, literally,” he said, “by hundreds and hundreds if not thousands” of people he described as “arrogant” and defiant, refusing to wear face coverings even when asked.

“So we’re gonna see a major outbreak out of Trinidad — that’s my prediction,” Madrone said. He asked the sheriff’s office to get involved. “Frankly, we need help in Trinidad right now. It is out of control, literally. … Please, give us some daily patrols that are highly visible.”

A couple of paragraphs down, the story read: "During the public comment period, several people expressed frustration, skepticism and outright defiance toward public health measures."

These included extreme and abusive comments towards public health officials, accusing them at one point of "borderline child abuse" because of restrictions on ball games.

It is true that Humboldt County has few covid cases (though there has been a small surge this week) but nobody seems to credit public health officials with contributing to the smallness of that number.  Nationally there is such disgraceful and violent behavior towards public health officials that dedicated and experienced leaders are quitting.

Apart from the self-defeating behavior that is more and more leading to a self-created epidemic, there is that arrogance of those who refuse to take precautions, endangering others as well as themselves and their families.  The fundamental respect for others that is signaled by wearing masks is disdained, and the social contract is visibly broken.

The social contract is more specifically broken with seniors.  The cant that seems to be more and more quoted is to the effect that people have a right to take the risk of getting infected, but that those who are especially vulnerable, especially old people, "should stay the hell home."  Presumably forever.

Even more than that, masks and common sense distancing have been demonically transformed into political/cultural statements.  If I wear a mask as I pass someone, do I want to invite hostility and arrogance on an isolated trail?  Believe me, there are times when the answer is yes.  But I'd rather not go there.  In any case, there might be more danger from attitude than infection.  Both are profoundly uncomfortable.

So I won't be going to Trinidad this birthday.  I won't even be driving up there anymore (assuming I get my car fixed) because I'm a bit leery of my own anti-social tendencies.  I'll be staying the hell home, which is not hell at all, as a matter of fact.

Meanwhile, the self-induced epidemic spreads, with record hospitalizations in seven states as well as surges of new infections in many others.  And infections (like climate crisis effects by the way) are a lagging indicator, meaning that the causes are in the past.  According to Johns Hopkins’s Erik Toner, “It’s basically the same reason for all these states: It was Memorial Day.” And we've had some three weeks of post-sequestration activities since then.  It's no wonder that Dr. Fauci said Tuesday that the next two weeks will be crucial in getting control of the epidemic.

But the federal government is not only ignoring the epidemic (reportedly considering withdrawing the state of emergency officially) but the Republican candidate who holds the title of President angrily denounces anyone who recognizes it.  There happens to still be a majority in the country who do recognize it, but those numbers are slipping.

And the rest of the world is noticing that it's out of control here, and the government seems to have stopped trying to do anything about it. Accordingly, as of Tuesday, the European Union was considering banning visitors from the US to protect their own citizens.  (Canada already does that, but quietly.) That's not exactly transitioning to greatness.  That's an historic humiliation.

But perhaps this is all because nobody is smart enough to understand the advanced thinking of the very stable genius in the White House.  Evidently, when he talks about the virus he is discussing it on the quantum level.  It's a demonstrated fact that indeed on the quantum level you might have to observe a particle in order for it to exist.  Therefore, if you don't want the virus to exist, you just don't look at it.

Poetry Monday: Tracks in the Sand

Tracks in the Sand

For anyone, I am a substitute.
When you were five, kicking the leaves
for a fire, I was you, and the leaves, and the fire.

Or you watch a bomb test--how it mushrooms
over the flat--I am an atom
with the others, and mark you and am your scar.

For anyone else I take the next step
and another, become the road and the sky,
and look back where we were, those tracks in the sand.

For anything lacking--for trees, for rain,
for salvation--I am learning both sides
of the window, and standing between, turning to glass.

--William Stafford