Heather Cox Richardson, in her latest installment in her excellent online series “Letters from an American,” recounted the president’s experiment in social Darwinism in Tulsa yesterday, writing ”he told the audience falsely that the recent spikes in infections are because there has been more testing: ‘When you do more testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases. I said to my people, Slow the testing down, please.’”

In what moronic universe would logic like that find traction? One far different from that most of us inhabit, I reckon, and one, judging by the diminutive size of the turnout, far less populated, a rare sign of hope in a largely hopeless time.

When confronted with information like this, it becomes clearer why the president’s popularity continues to remain higher among the less educated, because anyone with signs of brain activity ought to be able to comprehend the abandonment of reasoning, the absence of logic necessary to draw such a mind-numbing conclusion. Only a three-year old could find assurance in such a word construct; any reflection would immediately shatter the illusion. And that is precisely what defines this man and is the sum and substance of not only his being, but his every doing.  

To say the president is clueless fails entirely to adequately describe the chasm of ignorance from which he proffers his poisonous propaganda, basing his entreaties on nothing more than the rabid rumblings of a man who senses his impending downfall but views doubling down on his failed messaging as his only path to redemption. As the deer-in-the-headlights stage of his decompensation draws nearer, as his already loosely hinged presentation loosens further, a picture comes slowly into focus of a nation whose government has been hijacked by an unreality star, a vision of what it looks like to have a truly crazy person, a bona fide lunatic, in charge of the fort. And, with a nutcase in charge, and one too distracted by his shifting fates to pay attention to what his underlings are up to, what mischief may occur in the gaping shadows thus created?

As difficult as the trump presidency has been up to this point, the next six months will likely pose challenges to our democracy the likes of which we’ve only dreamed of up ‘til now. The rule of law under our corrupted attorney general is experiencing a most pernicious assault at a time when we are engaged in a fundamental re-thinking of the role of authority in redressing rampant racial injustice. Common sense health advice is under assault by a president so obsessed with his lagging poll numbers he can’t manage to do much besides tweet incendiary comments that further fuel the growing fires of social unrest set alight by years of unchecked police brutality. The virus rages unchecked thanks largely to the anti-science stance trumpeted so ineloquently by the unmasked bandit in chief whose blustering buffoonery at the Tulsa Covid-Fest bore greater resemblance to the yipping of an aroused terrier than it did the commanding bark of a big dog.  And meanwhile, the movement to slow global warming languishes.

As the pace of revelations quickens with each successive news drop, the president’s sickness is made more manifest, made all the more alarming by the revelation that we—all of us—are not the unwilling observers we fancy ourselves to be; we are, by virtue of our membership in the social zeitgeist in which we find ourselves, a part of it, a part of the problem, a part of the reason this man was able to attain his position. His sickness is, in a real sense, our sickness, and the way out of our dilemma depends not on external forces aligning themselves to influence the outcome; it depends on each and every one of us and what we do, not just between now and election day, and not just on how we vote when that day arrives, but on each and every day for the rest of our lives.

Our lives are shaped not by external events, monumental or otherwise, but by the little moments in which we continually redefine ourselves, by the choices we make, throughout each day. The pessimist in me says, “we get what we deserve,” while my eternal optimist says “our fate is in our hands.”

Meanwhile, reason dictates, “choose wisely.”

Tim Konrad

2020.06.21

George Conway III notes in his latest op ed piece in the Washington Post that, faced with two serous crises—the pandemic and it’s economic damage and the social unrest following the George Floyd killing—the president is “lacking in humanity (and) has had no idea how to handle either one.”

“The virus of self-absorption,” notes Edward J. Lavin, “is deadly and has only one cure-compassion.”

But when compassion isn’t on the menu, what, then, remains to quell the beast raging inside this singularly insufficient would-be titan of anything monetizable?

One thing is crystal clear: giving him the power he has been given is NOT the correct thing to have done. His very physical presence in the White House itself is a mockery of everything reasonable people hold sacred. The senators who had it in their power to relieve him of his powers during his impeachment failed us miserably. Whether they hold any reservations in their heart of hearts at this point is impossible to detect, given their continued obeisance to this careening car wreck of a standard-bearer, but their silence tells us all we need to know about the “standards” their party has come to represent. We need look no further than the emerging Nazi party of the 1930s to see a fitting parallel, and everyone knows how that turned out.

It is painful to observe the continuing unravelling of this damaged and unhinged man as his tweets grow more desperate, his utterings more erratic and his pronouncements more ridiculous. It is perplexing to witness the growingly absurd explanations his spokespersons devise while attempting to temper his excretory blurts, blathers and boastful buffoonery. Each new bit of “messaging” only serves to further clarify what we all have come to realize all too well— at this point we’ve gone far beyond “the emperor has no clothes.”  It’s now become a five-alarm fire, a crisis of leadership calling for the men in white coats to appear and take him away to some undisclosed location where he can be held for his own protection—and for ours!

Sadly, the Founders never anticipated the need to 5150 a sitting president. It is to our peril that they did not, and it provides a fitting argument against those who hold that the Constitution must be interpreted literally rather than as a dynamic document capable of reinterpretation when the old rules have become outdated or insufficient to deal with developments not envisioned at the time of its creation.

In that regard, the mindset of Constitutionalist “purists,” inflexible, rigid and closed to new ways of thinking, bears comparison to that of fundamentalist Christians, thereby illustrating the wisdom of the Founders in seeking to separate religion from the workings of government.

In fact, the only reason I can see for why anyone would want to interject religion into politics is to attempt to force people to follow religious ideals and rules of conduct they don’t agree with and with which they wouldn’t otherwise comply. When a nation starts to go down that road, it ceases to be a democracy, becoming instead a theocracy, where the interests of the many are sacrificed in favor of the interests of the few. Come to think of it, isn’t that what the current administration is attempting to do?

Tim Konrad

2020.06.06

When did the term “Thank God it’s Friday” become “I can’t believe it’s Friday already?” Since we entered the “shelter in place” phase of our existence, time seems to have speeded up practically exponentially. I would have thought, with less places to go and fewer things to do, that time would have slowed down in the new paradigm, not accelerated the way it has. But no, the days now race by as if they were engaged in a contest to see which one can beat the others to the finish line. Daily routines have now become almost automatic, thanks to their accelerated repetitiveness. Mornings now slide stealthily and silently into afternoons with nary a notice while evenings arrive seemingly shortly after lunchtime.  At this rate, I might be called to that great roundup in the sky much sooner than I had anticipated, if not in real time, at least in perceived time, given the rate at which things are moving these days. If only trump’s remaining time in office could be similarly shortened, the abbreviation of existence afforded by this turn of events would have a decidedly rosier shine to it. Always look on the bright side, I say.

Tim Konrad

2020.06.05