Read Chapter 17 here
Here it is April and the number of new COVID-19 cases continues apace. Almost two months – at a February 10th rally in New Hampshire, to be specific -- Trump proclaimed that once the weather warms up in April, it’ll all be over. A miracle! Well, it’s warming up a bit in Pennsylvania, yet the state reported just over 1400 new cases. today. Here in Wisconsin, we’ve enjoyed a week of pleasant weather, yet our numbers continue to move up consistently. In Louisiana, temperatures are rising as we move into Holy Week and the number of new cases is doing likewise. And then there’s Florida and Georgia, where their respective governors pretty much spent all of March throwing logs on their COVID-19 fires.
So far we feel fortunate to live in Wisconsin, where our governor, Tony Evers, responded quickly to the threat. No piecemeal moves. The order to close schools was statewide, as was a later ‘stay-in-place’ directive. Milwaukee has been the hardest hit location, particularly the African-American community, which is segregated on the city’s
north side. The impacts of poverty, joblessness, limited housing options, underfunded
schools, lack of access to health care, poor nutrition — overall, the lack of a sturdy safety net — have been magnified by the pandemic. Not that they’re the only one suffering. The sudden spike in unemployment has forced hundreds of thousands of American families who live paycheck to paycheck to make their first visit to a food pantry. The pandemic put an abrupt end to the so-called longest economic recovery in U.S. history and demonstrated how fragile and uneven it was. Prosperous times for the velvet rope economy.
The Trump administration’s response continues to be woefully inadequate, downright inept, a bungling of criminal propositions. Too many people, feeling a need to ‘rally around the
flag’, are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, some even going as far to say that he’s doing the best job he can under the circumstances.
Such as Justin Penn from Pittsburgh, who was interviewed by a New York Times reporter.
Headlines: New York Times, 2/28/2020 (top left), Daily Beast, 3/17/2020 (top right)
Market Watch, 3/16/2020 (bottom left), CNN, 3/24/2020
When I first read this quote, I decided that Penn is (a) not paying attention of (b) in complete denial. Or, like a high-school classmate who spends much of her time sharing MAGA posts on Facebook , spends hours a day watching coverage of the government’s response to the pandemic as filtered through Fox News, where propping up the primary goal, even at the cost of losing your job. Actually, in the Pittsburgh TV
market, viewers don’t have to rely on Fox News to distort the news. The conservative Sinclair Broadcasting Company, the great debaucher of local news with nearly 300 stations in its Trump-friendly operation, was able to circumvent Federal rules and purchase two television stations there. As Sinclair’s executive chairman David D. Smith told Trump at a meeting in 2016, “We are here to deliver your message.”
All I can say is that I’m glad I’m 70 and not 30. I try not to worry too much about the kind of future Andy and Eddie have in a world where buffoonish blowhards like Donald Trump, Britain’s Boris Johnson, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and Australia’s Scott Morrison get elected as leaders of their respective countries.
Read chapter 19 here
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