You may want to see this:
I present this without comment.
On a different note, an upcoming story in The Atlantic magazine (We Are Living in a Failed State: The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken), is a must-read.
Scheduled for June, 2020, this exceedingly well written piece by staff writer George Packer dissects the Trump regime’s blundering approach to COVID-19 - an approach for which Trump claims to bear “no responsibility.” Quite so. In my opinion, the President’s only responsibility appears to be his derelection of it.
An excerpt from Packer: Trump came to power as the repudiation of the Republican establishment. But the conservative political class and the new leader soon reached an understanding. Whatever their differences on issues like trade and immigration, they shared a basic goal: to strip-mine public assets for the benefit of private interests. Republican politicians and donors who wanted government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all, and they made themselves Trump’s footmen.
Like a wanton boy throwing matches in a parched field, Trump began to immolate what was left of national civic life. He never even pretended to be president of the whole country, but pitted us against one another along lines of race, sex, religion, citizenship, education, region, and—every day of his presidency—political party. His main tool of governance was to lie. A third of the country locked itself in a hall of mirrors that it believed to be reality; a third drove itself mad with the effort to hold on to the idea of knowable truth; and a third gave up even trying.
Trump acquired a federal government crippled by years of right-wing ideological assault, politicization by both parties, and steady defunding. He set about finishing off the job and destroying the professional civil service. He drove out some of the most talented and experienced career officials, left essential positions unfilled, and installed loyalists as commissars over the cowed survivors, with one purpose: to serve his own interests. His major legislative accomplishment, one of the largest tax cuts in history, sent hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations and the rich. The beneficiaries flocked to patronize his resorts and line his reelection pockets. If lying was his means for using power, corruption was his end.
Given the times in which we find ourselves, have a semi-great day.
Given the times in which we find ourselves, have a semi-great day.
© Nicole Parton, 2020
