Can anyone tell me what is the White House’s official position on the virus? Is it a deadly virus and national security threat or no biggie, like a flu that kills lots of people too? If it’s not a big deal, then how were the Chinese government and WHO underplaying its significance?
If the virus is not so deadly – at least not for White people or those with optimal health like the Healthiest President in History™ then why does the president say he needs to undergo an experimental preventive treatment that has yet to be approved by the government that the president himself administers?
Do we need more testing to be safe or not? If we don’t need testing, then why is everyone who works at the White House tested on an ongoing basis? Is that for their protection or for the president’s? Why should White House personnel be tested and not, for example, workers at meat packing facilities?
And if the virus’ threat has been over-hyped by the lame-stream media, then why must the U.S. close its boarders. Are we supposed to be afraid or not?
So if 90,000 dead isn’t such a big deal, we don’t need to wear masks or be tested, and we should drop all these silly restrictions, then:
China and the WHO did not do anything wrong
White House personnel don’t need tests either
Trump does not need to take preventative medication
Hypocrisy from a politician, especially from Trump, should come as no surprise. And now after three years with Trump, we’ve seen that whenever Trump’s poll numbers look real bad or when Trump has almost no excuses for his own incompetence, misdeeds, or misuse of power, Fox News will always run headlines about Obama or Hilary (or accuse his rivals of felonies. This is to remind Republicans that even though Trump may be scum, the reason they support him is because they hate Obama and Hilary.
So with the Covid-19 death toll now exceeding 80,000 with no plan or end insight, Fox News and Trump are – you guessed it — focusing on Obama. But what I find most interesting is how all of Trumps’ defenses to his own misdeeds are a direct contradiction to every allegation he makes against his rivals.
Trump has two defenses:
those who accuse him are partisan, and therefore per se those accusations are illegitimate (unfair, no due process and fake news), and
as his entire legal team argued before the Senate, a president is essentially above the law. A president does not commit a crime or engage in wrongdoing as long as he believes it is in the country’s best interest, and if the president believes it is in his own political best interest then it is per se in the country’s best interest.
So if Trump and Republicans are accusing Obama or Biden (in the case of Ukraine) of having acted improperly shouldn’t we then have to apply #1 above and disregard these accusations as being political motivated and therefore illegitimate? How is there due process and impartiality in leading crowds with “lock her up”? Furthermore, if Obama believed it was in his own political interest to have Flynn investigated (or if Obama and Biden believed it was in the White House’s best interest to have Hunter on the board of Barisma), then according to Trump’s own defense in #2 above, it was 100% kosher.
Next you have the Trumpsters telling us that Americans should be extremely concerned that if the government can spy on Flynn, they could be doing it to you too. I would definitely agree that from Bush to Obama to Trump, the unfettered surveillance of American citizens is appalling. So are Trumpsters now calling Edward Snowden a hero or demanding an end to the Patriot Act or FISA? Of course, not. In fact, Mitch McConnell is expanding the Patriot Act to make it easier to do exactly what Trump is accusing law enforcement of having done to Flynn.
And finally, the epitome of hypocrisy here is Kenneth Starr. Remember Ken Starr? Ken Starr who just a few months ago was part of that entourage of Trump lawyers arguing tooth and nail in the Senate that presidents can do whatever they like. Now Starr suddenly thinks those novel rules would not apply to Obama and just as he previously believed they didn’t apply to Bill Clinton. Ken Star who — together with none other than Brett Kavanaugh — deliberately orchestrated a series of salacious questions about sex acts to entrap Bill Clinton into perjuring himself (knowing it would be a major personal and political embarrassment) because they didn’t have enough evidence to get him on the underlying crimes they were investigating. Now that same Ken Starr is arguing that the FBI improperly entrapped Mike Flynn into perjury, and therefore Flynn’s guilty pleas should be withdrawn, and all charges dropped. Like magic!
Absolutely everything that Trump, his Republican henchmen and Fox News have excused Trump and his entourage of doing, they now accuse their rivals of doing. You cannot make this stuff up !
At the beginning of confinement back in March, one of my first thoughts was that lockdown was going to be a lot like Ramadan, just instead of not eating, we wouldn’t be able to go outside. One clear difference, though, was that with Ramadan at least you knew it would last no more than 30 days.
This is only my third year observing Ramadan, but my wife who has celebrated it her entire life always says (and I can now corroborate) that the first week is hard because your body is adjusting. The last week is hard because of the anticipation of it being over. During both the first and last weeks, you are very vocal. You spend a lot of energy speaking to friends and family, first about what you are preparing for evening meals, and then later about what you will do when Ramadan is over. It is that middle period – the in-between days where no one is as excited about what they are cooking and no one sees the light at the end of the tunnel – that is the hardest. Things get real quiet and fasting becomes tedious, losing its celebratory luster.
When confinement began, I switched what I was reading at the time and re-read Camus’ The Plague. One of the things that struck me the most was this comment from one of the characters:
At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there is always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth. In other words, to silence. So let’s wait.
That is exactly how I have felt during this prolonged period of confinement. At first, it was about adjusting to the staying inside, and now it is about what the new normal will be like as we try to slowly reopen. In the middle, it has been real quiet and tedious.
Today is day 15 of Ramadan, so I am in the midst of the silence, routine and grunt of it (and also the secondary effect of lots and lots of hunger-induced typos and grammatical errors). On the bright side, I have shaved off a couple of pounds/kilos.
One of the most newsworthy but least reported stories to come out of Covid-19 is the geopolitical irrelevance of the US on the international stage, signaling the demise of Pax Americana and the US’ role as the indispensable nation.
I have already written why I believe that China will emerge as the new global leader in the same way that the US did after World War II. Surely the Chinese government has its degree of responsibility for this outbreak (without getting into a debate about the virus’ origins). Nevertheless, China is now taking advantage of the vacuum in US leadership to wield soft power in ways that the US used to. China is sending supplies, experts, and aid throughout the world. The US is at home, making a fool of itself.
Think about every major geopolitical and humanitarian crisis since World War II and how the world has looked to the US to lead. But now for this first time since World War II, the US is playing absolutely no leadership role in alleviating the global crisis, and quite frankly, no one is asking.
Some of this makes perfect sense. First, right-wing populists have always played the anti-multinationalism and isolationist game. This has generally been lip-service. A huge part of US hegemony has been making sure the world is absolutely dependent on our disproportionate military, financial and commercial muscle. So while we may whine about the US having to play global police or subsidize more than our fair share, it has always been in our selfish, best interest to pay that price and maintain our dominance. But because Trump has mainstreamed populism – ignoring the leverage that we have had, pulling out of treaties and threatening to pull US financial and logistics support to NATO and international organizations – the rest of the world is simply moving forward without us.
Second, the US failure to take the lead globally with Covid-19 relates to the fact that this is the first time in our country’s collective memory that we have faced a sustained and significant threat on U.S. soil. Even Pearl Harbor and 911 were one-time attacks and we were able to mobilize against them by fighting abroad with the vast majority of fatalities occurring abroad. Ironically, a small group of Americans are protesting the lockdown, social distancing and confinement as unduly hindering their personal freedoms without considering that what they are living through is a mild peaceful version (without constant bombings) of what people in Iraq and Afghanistan have had to endure when the US took revenge on the wrong people after 911. The US has always been able to fight its battle without feeling the imminent threat at home, and Covid-19 has changed that.
In her recent article, “The Rest of the World is Laughing at Trump,” Anne Applebaum describes how Trump has left a “leadership vacuum” being filled by China and how we have becoming a laughing stock. Even in Spain which has been one of the hardest hit countries with dismal numbers, the Spanish vice president was able to defend her administration’s response by contrasting it with a “country who was recommending ingesting bleach.”
Most of the world still remembers the lies and fraud leading to the Iraq war, so imagine how those in the rest of the world perceive the absurdity of Trump’s press conferences, binge tweeting and more importantly the total absolute lack of an American plan even after months. This may likely be the nail in the coffin. Applebaum writes:
I wish I could say for certain that a President Joe Biden could turn this all around, but by next year it may be too late. The memories of the prime minister at the airport, welcoming Chinese doctors, will remain. The bleach jokes and memes will still cause the occasional chuckle. Whoever replaces Pompeo will have only four short years to repair the damage, and that might not be enough.
And if Trump wins a second term? Any nation can make a mistake once, elect a bad leader once. But if Americans choose Trump again, that will send a clear message: We are no longer a serious nation. We are as ignorant as our thoughtless, narcissistic, ignorant president. Don’t be surprised if the rest of the world takes note of that, too.
Most likely the geopolitical impact of Covid-19 will be that countries tighten borders – as the biggest threat to countries that have best controlled the virus will be from those entering the country from abroad – meaning more domestic travel and trade, less transboarder transactions, and increased nationalism. This sounds very much like Trump and his supporters worldview.
But as I wrote previously, the world didn’t want American style democracy after World War II because of its ideals. They wanted to live prosperous American lives with big cars and big houses. They wanted to live in a country not destroyed by war. When a country — especially a developing country – looks at who is prospering and who they want to become, they will see two models. One will be where there is lots of political bickering, childish insults, partisanship, gridlock, nepotism, gerrymandering, inequality, and social unrest. The other will be a utilitarian and authoritarian regime that prioritizes the economic growth over individualism and was the first out of running. And most likely, they’ll remember the airplanes full of supplies, not the conspiracy theories from the one that sold them WMDs even before their Reality TV star was pushing miracle cures.
Not convinced? Yes, everyone is hoping the US quickly develops a vaccine or treatment, but dozens of other countries are also hard at work. But in the meantime, the red phone in the Oval Office isn’t ringing, and no one is knocking on the White House door to come to the rescue. That in the past 100 years is unprecedented.
Last Sunday was the first day that my children’s feet touched the street in forty-five days. Tears came to my eyes as I watched them sprint down the sidewalk. Freedom, albeit limited.
On the Monday, we went out when there were much less children and found a quiet path beneath some trees. At first, I felt like I was living in a chapter of The Road, but then I had my own feeling of freedom. In Spain, there is a saying when things are bad: “Esto no es vida” or “this is no life”. But this is our life. It is the only one we’re living, so we have to enjoy it. Who knows what will happen next? Right now we are healthy, tomorrow that may not be the case. Let’s enjoy the small freedoms and all the other ways life is worth living.
During the past 50 odd days living under the strict confinement rules here in Madrid, Spain, I have often looked out from my balcony towards the horizon where I would have previously seen a constant flow of airplanes landing. These days I have only seen empty skies. When I look down towards the streets where I would have previously seen traffic and people walking around, now the streets seem liberated of human activity save for the stray dog-walker and the occasional empty bus with its lone driver. Except for birds chirping in the early hours of the day and the 8pm applause of neighbors, more than anything else confinement in Madrid has been defined by silence.
And each day, I have thought about Pablo Neruda’s “Walking Around”. Sure, I want my kids to leave the house, go to school, soccer practice, and play with their friends. They need other kids more than anything else right now. And sure, I would love to be able to go to the grocery store or walk out the front door and not fear that inhaling or touching my face were life threatening. I do not want to live in fear. I do not want to breath into a piece of cloth. I do not want to question if and when I will see family again.
But I am not ready to go back. I don’t have any need to ride the bus to work or get into a crowded elevator. I don’t feel nostalgia for the office, for meeting rooms, or dropping by someone’s desk. I don’t want to share the same door handles or bathroom. I don’t miss button-down shirts or proper pants. I am getting along with out them very well. I could use a haircut, but like Neruda’s man who is sick of being a man, I don’t want to walk into a barbershop.
But then today, after seven weeks of silence, adults have been allowed out of their homes, albeit on a limited basis. And suddenly, I look over my balcony and finally everywhere there are people … walking around.
We live in Spain, one of the countries hardest hit by Covid-19 and with some of the strictest confinement rules around. Covid-19 has affected people here in many different ways from
the health care works living through war-like conditions with war-like causalities,
to sick and dying wondering whether they will leave this earth without ever seeing the face or feeling the embrace of a loved one again,
to the family-centric Spaniards watching from a distance as their parents and loved ones die without being able to do anything to comfort them or even bury their bodies,
to those single people who haven’t had a physical human interaction (other than at the grocery store) in over 50 days,
to families like mine trying to juggle work and homeschooling with their children’s extreme cabin fever.
My family has been very fortunate that we haven’t been sick yet and that as non-Spaniards we haven’t had to suffer the predicament of elderly relatives. So while I recognize that Covid-19 has been much harder on other people here than on us, watching the impact on my children’s mental health and not knowing how to help has been worse than the sleepless nights, the worrying about the future, or when I will see my parents again.
Even when the government lifted the strict restrictions on children leaving the house after 45 days of total confinement, the one hour/day walk they’re now permitted to do isn’t doing the trick. I still witness my children unravel – from one moment to the next – before my eyes. And it terrifies me. More than going outside, they need to interact with other children their age. The need space from their brothers and sisters, from the parents. They need to be with other people that do not live in their same home, and they need to be with them in 3D, not on a flat screen with a blue light.
Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening any time in the near future. More than wanting my life back, I want theirs back.
Can anyone tell me what is the White House’s official position on the virus? Is it a deadly virus and national security threat or no biggie, like a flu that kills lots of people too? If it’s not a big deal, then how were the Chinese government and WHO underplaying its significance?
At the beginning of confinement back in March, one of my first thoughts was that lockdown was going to be a lot like Ramadan, just instead of not eating, we wouldn’t be able to go outside. One clear difference, though, was that with Ramadan at least you knew it would last no more than 30 days.
During the past 50 odd days living under the strict confinement rules here in Madrid, Spain, I have often looked out from my balcony towards the horizon where I would have previously seen a constant flow of airplanes landing. These days I have only seen empty skies. When I look down towards the streets where I would have previously seen traffic and people walking around, now the streets seem liberated of human activity save for the stray dog-walker and the occasional empty bus with its lone driver. Except for birds chirping in the early hours of the day and the 8pm applause of neighbors, more than anything else confinement in Madrid has been defined by silence.
Grave Error 