Month: July 2020
Just Say “No” to “Make America Sick Again!”
The new administrative order that excludes the CDC from directly receiving data from hospitals around the country that is reported to the Federal Government is a clear attempt by a desperate individual in an ill-conceived plan to improve his political fortunes at the expense of the nation’s health and safety. By controlling the data being reported by hospitals, Trump expects he can hide and manipulate the data for his own personal benefit to spin the narrative in any way that he sees fit just like he’s always done. The truth is Trump’s enemy and just like the Devil, Trump will do anything he can to hide the truth from you by painting you a fluffy, Sharpie picture or a safe secure wall to show you how he is most able to so keenly keep out the invading hordes of foreign body antigens even if it means injecting disinfectant to do it. His objective is to deceive you into believing his many fanciful lies that will, ultimately, only lead to your own doom in the end. The story is all too common and all too familiar. It’s the story of a despot.
Meanwhile, the CDC doctors and other medical doctors around the country are left handicapped. Without access to this vitally critical information required by health professionals to aid in their efforts to stop the spread of this virus as quickly as possible, they are prevented from effectively doing their job as they work fervently around the clock to help reduce the tragically increasing number of deaths that keep occurring each day because of this pandemic. Hiding that data increases the risk faced by health workers and it also increases your own risk in being counted as a victim of this pandemic.
Trump’s disturbing self-serving, ego-centric pursuits are destroying this nation and its people by the hundreds of thousands as ICU beds fill up and places to put the bodies of those who have succumbed to this disease dwindle. Trump’s unacceptable behavior is not only becoming a more deadly menace to the effectiveness of our health system but it’s beginning to compromise our national security too. As we continue to become sicker, we are distracted from other nefarious players in the world who are already working to take advantage of the precarious situation. For example, consider the bounties placed on the heads of our military personnel in Afghanistan. The failure to act on that bit of intelligence is further indication of Trump’s inability to recognize dangerous, adversarial threats to our nation from nefarious foreign sources when it contradicts his own fanciful notions of how “he wants it to be.”
Had Trump prepared our nation like he should have months ago, had he not tossed the Pandemic Playbook prepared by the Obama Administration in the wastepaper basket when he took office, had he not fired the Pandemic Response Team in 2018, had he listen to his intelligence agencies, had he listened to the pandemic experts, had he not thought it a hoax and used his hoax story as a less than clever tool to make fun of the “Left” for the benefit of his political reelection campaign, there is every reason to believe we could have avoided the extreme shelter-in-place measures that local governments were forced to take because of Trump’s incompetence and failure in leadership. Then, later, after it appeared things were looking better, had Trump taken the advice of his experts at the CDC by not promoting the opening of America too soon and by not ignoring his responsibility to set a good example by wearing a mask, we could have avoided this sadly predictable but entirely avoidable resurgence of the virus. The unnecessary and economically destructive epidemic mess we are in is entirely the fault of Trump and his anti-science politically corrupted cronies who place their faith in ignorance and made-up tabloid conspiracy theories rather than science and reality.
Trump’s new campaign slogan seems to be: “Make America Sick Again.” It is apparently working in disturbing ways and in ways not too dissimilar from the actions that the Kremlin and/or other comparative totalitarian states might take. I’m sure the idea to control the data has nothing to do with Trump’s inexplicable peculiar fondness for Putin?
With reports about unmarked, unidentifiable Federal Agents kidnapping protestors in Portland, Oregon, questioning them, not charging them and then letting them go, we are left to grapple with yet more incomprehensible un-Democratic actions and abuses of power by a President who just does not seem to have a grasp of how democracy or the rule of law works in America. These unacceptable Gestapo like tactics are right out of a despot’s handbook. They are meant to intimidate the less powerful and used only as a means to deny citizens a voice; tactics a tyrant in a banana republic would embrace without a second thought. But, in America, it’s a violation of our Bill of Rights and of our Constitution. Is this an indication of how CDC personnel and other doctors who promote advice regarding how to decrease the risk of COVID-19 and/or other pandemic disease will be dealt with in the not too distant future when their advice contradicts the advice Trump wants to promote?
Dangerous despots are easily recognizable. We have thousands of years of history to reference in order to learn how to spot them. And this is a sure sign of one. In banana republics or in Russia, it would be a common, everyday occurrence to keep medical data intended for public review and public safety hidden from the masses. But, whoever thought it could happen in America where we are supposed to have safeguards in place to prevent this type of thing from ever happening?
This is a dangerous and an alarming turn of events that should have all Americans, regardless of Political Party, very concerned. Every American citizen who believes in freedom and liberty and the health of their loved ones should be demanding that this unacceptable and un-American self-serving action by Trump be properly reversed and corrected immediately. There is no excuse for threatening the public welfare or our stability as a democratic republic in this irresponsible way.
Freedom of information needs to be preserved. That is the American way and it’s the only way to fight this virus effectively. The CDC and the public needs to have direct access to this hospital data restored now. It’s time to just say, “No,” to “Make America Sick Again!”
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-coronavirus.html
https://gizmodo.com/white-house-tells-hospitals-to-skip-cdc-and-send-corona-1844385250
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cdc-covid-19-data/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wMlgEWZnN8
https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/trump-administration-wants-all.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-obama-coronavirus-pandemic-response
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-18/portland-protests-federal-agents
The 4th of July and the Proper Response to “Black Lives Matter”
Black Lives Matter not because other lives don’t but because other lives are not targeted for the color of their skin in the same way black lives are targeted. Other lives don’t garner the same automatic prejudicial suspicions nor do other lives need to worry as much about being mistaken for being a dangerous perpetrator that immediately justifies the use of excessive force against them by law enforcement officials. That latter presumption too many times has resulted in unnecessary and unjustified tragic deaths. Saying “All lives Matter” against this context then becomes an offensive remark if not as great as someone who had employed the use of an unspeakable derogatory word in their smug response to this legitimate call for justice then something very close.
Only the naively ignorant or people who have white supremacist sentiments buried in their subconscious think that “All Lives Matter” would be an appropriate response to the idea that “Black Lives Matter.” Perhaps this response that “All Lives Matter” might be said without ever realizing how dismissive they are being of the just cause that is so appropriately and passionately articulated by the “Black Lives Matter” movement. But make no mistake, responding with the statement that “All Lives Matter” is an offensive refutation of the notation that the equality and respect that is granted to all other American lives is also required to be granted to black American lives too.
The message that “Black Lives Matter” needs to be properly heard. It needs to be properly respected. It needs to be properly understood. And real reforms towards that end need to be properly implemented.
“Black Lives Matter” is not exclusive. “Black Lives Matter” is an inclusive call and, indeed, it is the God given American right to be included in the contract specified in our Declaration of Independence that emphatically states: “all men are created equal.” Along with the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is the inference that all have the right to be treated equally without prejudice in the eyes of the law, to be recognized and respected as human beings that matter
But this contract has fallen severely short when it comes to Black Lives as demonstrated time and time again when tragedies at the hands of law enforcement are more often experienced by Black American lives and less often experienced by other American lives. That’s why the only response to “Black Lives Matter” is, “yes, they absolutely do matter.” No other flippant, dismissive, knee-jerk unthoughtful, foolishly un-clever counter response can ever be acceptable if you truly believe in the rights of all people regardless of skin color, if you truly believe in the words in our Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and if you truly want to celebrate our nation’s independence today as a proud American dedicated to the self-rule and the rights of all people.
So, let’s celebrate our 4th of July, our Independence Day, 2020, in a social distancing safe way but also keeping this in mind: “Black Lives Matter” so that all lives can share in our inclusive American contract defined in our Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”
The Polarity Resistance 