week 7

I couldn't do it this week. I just couldn't take all the evil, stupid, hateful stuff being perpetrated by Trump and the Republican party. It's just too damn depressing. Infection and death tolls still rising, lies, partisanship, gaslighting, fomenting insurrection, threats, juvenile name calling, silencing anyone who disagrees with Trump's take on anything, prematurely ending safety precautions, character assassination, more lies, hoarding necessary supplies, the ridiculous political posturing like Ted Cruz wanting Bill Barr to investigate the repression of religious freedom because large gatherings are temporarily prohibited to protect the general population, American Nazis out in full force storming legislative houses while the police stand there and do nothing. Where's the fucking SWAT team?

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All these people out there protesting armed to the hilt, you know the ones, wanting another civil war because that's their fantasy, seeing themselves as big heroes, screaming in people's faces, holding signs with the phrase Nazis put over the gates of their death camps. I'm thinking these people failed American history since apparently they don't know how the first Civil War ended. The insurgents lost. All those wannabes who play at being in a militia and doing their cosplay drills, the way they present themselves shows just how ugly and dark their hearts are, so full of hate and barely restrained violence. They claim that they are not posers but ex-military. So I have to wonder if they still want to play soldier, they still want to protect America, why are they ex-military? Why aren't they still in the military? I'd like to see their discharge papers and the reason they are ex-military.

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This is so not the America I grew up in. Well, the racism, yes, but we were proud of being the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, a country of immigrants looking for a better life, where our founding document proclaimed that ALL men are created equal and deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We aren't that country anymore. Now our politicians and citizens are proclaiming that segments of our population are disposable...the elderly and the sick, the poor, the blacks and browns, the homeless...because when all those old, sick, poor people die there will be more housing available for themselves, less money being paid out for SS and Medicare and food assistance so they can funnel those funds to the rich. Just let them die so I can get my Big Mac and my haircut and my manicure. So when all the old people die with their accumulated knowledge, when all the poor people and the people of color die, who are they going to ask for advice, who do they think is going to pick their vegetables, pack their meat, clean their houses, do their yard work, their laundry, cook that Big Mac, give that manicure? When all the real essential workers are dead, then what?

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Heather Richardson's Letters this week were all depressing but none more so than yesterday's. I weep for this country, for the country that was and the country it has become. I no longer have any faith that we can boot Trump out. The fix is in, even the free press is cowed refusing to call him out, letting him control the narrative and without a free press we are doomed.

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There's a woman in this town, a tea partier or libertarian, who has been incensed from the beginning at the stay at home orders and the closing of her struggling restaurant, one that wasn't open every day anyway and mostly just for lunch, a restaurant that is founded in good principles...organic and locally sourced...a restaurant that she sunk a ridiculous amount of her own money into a building she does not own (I want to say $30K but I really have no idea in addition to the grant she got), renovating and restoring it and they did a fabulous job on a building she does not own. It's struggling because she opened this upscale restaurant in this town, a religious republican rural town of less then 9,000 people. She can't keep a chef because once they move here and discover the nature of this mean little town where there is absolutely nothing to do and is controlled by the original five founding families, they leave. She has railed on FB about the safety measures, it's repression, it's tyranny, let the people use their own common sense and personal responsibility. She points to Sweden's 'success' in controlling the virus, never having issued a lockdown but that's not entirely true. Gatherings larger than 50 people are banned so no sports, no concerts, high schools and universities are closed, social distancing is recommended, work from home if you can. Add to that the culture of Sweden is vastly different from that of the US. Swedes trust their government, their institutions, and other Swedes to do the right thing and because they are well educated and have a social conscience, they care about their community. Here in the US, we are uneducated and the national spirit is freedom for the individual to do whatever the fuck they want no matter who it harms. And Sweden's success is still iffy and they have a high death rate, as of April 8 7.68% of those tested positive have died.

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Current US statistics as of today 5/3/20, 16:29 GMT (last six weeks' totals in parenthesis): cases – 1,168985 (976,403, 741,230, 534,494, 312,223, 123,958, 38,757); deaths – 67,954 (54,965, 39,103, 20,637, 8,483, 2,231, 400); recoveries – 174,017 (118,633, 68,610, 30,548, 14,828, 3,238, 178). Infections and deaths are still rising, no state that is reopening this week has achieved Trump's own guidelines of decreasing infections and deaths for 14 days before reopening. And Trump himself and his Republican toadies are praising these reopenings because he is tired of the whole pandemic thing so he's changing the narrative, just like he always does, demeaning anyone who speaks the truth.