David Corn at Mother Jones reminds us that "the GOP's war on government paved the way" for our current President's incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, leadership during a pandemic is one of the things we deserve to get for the taxes we pay, but we've been hearing for so long that government is corrupt and incompetent that we've forgotten that this is our government, and the proper response of a citizen isn't to destroy the government that belongs to you, but to reclaim it. I'm doing my best to teach this lesson.
I never watch our President on TV before bed, but the thing that most struck me about his address to the nation about the coronavirus pandemic is what a masturbatory, narcissistic exercise it is. A leader wouldn't call the things he's doing that other folks have done before and better "unprecedented" or brag about TEH GREATESTZ ECONOMIEZ EVAHZ!!!! in the midst of explaining how he'd lead us through this crisis, but this clown does. And I would invite anyone who tabulated all the "I"s in Barack Obama's State of the Union speeches to explain how our President's actual and constant patting himself on the back isn't far worse.
You know what else a leader doesn't do? Grasp at straws to blame his predecessor for his problems, as our President also did last week. But I suspect calling Mr. Obama's handling of the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic a "disaster" won't resonate with folks -- particularly the ones who didn't get sick! That's before we get to the fact that the Obama Administration had H1N1 tests ready within two weeks of the first reported case, whereas this Administration still won't have one for at least six weeks, as our CDC is reporting over 1,600 cases of coronavirus in America.
My first reaction to the sight of Administration Treasury Secretary/man who wears glasses so people don't punch him in the face Steve Mnuchin calling the pandemic "a great investment opportunity" was and they wonder why we hate them! Then I realized that he was saying this on CNBC, an all-business news channel that (like all other cable news channels!) doesn't use all that time it's on the air to report actual business-related news, but spends all its time bloviating about drama and cheerleading some crony or other's business interests, and so my second reaction was: and they wonder why we hate them!
Finally, Peter Wehner at The Atlantic tells us that our President's term is effectively over and that most Americans are now on to his con game. Mr. Wehner's tabulation of our President's multitudinous errors in managing this crisis is edifying, and I would like very much to believe that this is an "inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation," but you know, I've read this obituary so many times now that I won't believe it until we humiliate this President in the manner he deserves. And with right-wing Democrat Joe Biden about to be his anointed challenger in November, he may not get that humiliation for a few more years.
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