Six ways Trump botched response to coronavirus

As the current coronavirus pandemic began to take the world by storm and head towards the U.S. there was still time for the Trump administration to act to prevent significant suffering and death. Unfortunately, not only did Trump fail to act he actively downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic for his own political gain. On the other hand, it was not just his selfishness that caused him to fail to act, it was also his sheer incompetence which has been characteristic of Trump’s entire time in the White House. 

Regardless of the reasons, the failure to respond has caused significant unnecessary suffering and death. Approximately 90 percent of deaths from the first wave of the epidemic could have been prevented if Trump had put social distancing policies into effect two weeks earlier than he actually did, according to a recent study from Britta and Nicolas Jewell of Imperial College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Acting just a week earlier would have saved 60 percent of deaths.

The following are six ways which the Trump administration botched the coronavirus response, resulting needlessly in increased suffering, sickness and death:

Trump fired CDC expert assigned to detecting pandemic outbreaks from China

Although Trump continues to assert that there was no way he could have seen the pandemic coming early enough, he foolishly took actions that prevented the administration from being able to foresee the beginning of the health crisis starting in China. Trump eliminated an essential American public position in China which was designed to detect potential disease outbreaks. The disease expert, Dr. Linda Quick, left her position in July after being embedded in the Chinese government’s disease control agency. If Dr. Quick had continued her assignment in China, which was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), world leaders would have definitely been able to act sooner, according to Bao-Ping Zhu who had served in the same CDC role between 2007 and 2011.

Trump dismantled NSC pandemic response team at the exact wrong time

In another example of poor foresight and incompetence Trump dismantled the National Security Council (NSC) department designed to deal with biodefense and global health security. An official from the Obama administration who served as the senior director of the NSC department Trump had eliminated, strongly criticized Trump’s decision to give the department the axe. The Obama official claimed Trump’s decision resulted in the administration losing valuable time which could have been utilized to more adequately respond to the crisis. 

Denying seriousness of coronavirus resulted in people dying needlessly

Even when Trump did mention the oncoming health crisis he continuously downplayed the severity of the situation. He even attempted to characterize the concern over the oncoming health crisis as a “hoax” created by his political opponents. Trump used this point to rally his supporters at his live campaign events, spreading misinformation which undoubtedly caused some people to not take necessary precautions to protect themselves from infection, resulting in more sickness and death.

Many media outlets and organizations have criticized Trump’s reckless misinformation campaign for political gain. The Washington Post published a video which detailed 34 times Trump had downplayed the seriousness of coronavirus. Also, Priorities USA and The Recount produced their own videos on Trump’s disinformation.

Europe travel ban caused mass chaos, endangered travelers

When Trump finally did start to take the health crisis seriously one of his first actions actually made the situation worse. Trump continued to display his profound incompetence during the rollout of his travel ban on Europe as a reaction to the spreading of the pandemic. In his communication via live video from the White House, Trump completely botched the facts of the ban, resulting in disastrous consequences. 

Trump announced a ban on incoming travel from European countries saying from the Oval Office, “We will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.” The President continued saying, “These prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing.”

Unfortunately, Trump was completely unprepared as usual, and had misunderstood his own administration’s policy. He was later required to correct the factual errors of his live address. Apparently, not all travelers were banned from entry into the U.S., American citizens were still allowed entry. However, the chaos from Trump’s misinformation was already unleashed with hoards of American travelers crowding into the airports fearing they will not be able to return back home to the U.S. 

This resulted in putting Americans in situations that were unsafe for their health with travelers unable to implement social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Also, airports were ill-prepared for the sudden and unexpected onslaught of traffic. Therefore, travelers with symptoms were not properly separated and workers were not equipped with protective gear.

Promotion of hydroxychloroquine unhelpful, deadly and fueled by self-interest

In yet another instance of consequential spreading of misinformation, Trump has taken to publicly promoting the drug hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for COVID-19 despite no scientific evidence proving its effectiveness. He even said he may take the drug himself and has suggested that others should do so as well. Unfortunately, this has resulted in people self-medicating with hydroxychloroquine resulting in many of these individuals dying. However, it turns out that this particular instance of spreading misinformation was not just the usual incompetence which has defined Trump’s tenure in the White House. Trump actually has a financial interest in a hydroxychloroquine manufacturer. Essentially, Trump was putting his own self-interest over the health and safety of everyday Americans.

Trump resisting use of Defense Production Act put frontliners and patients in danger unnecessarily

In the midst of the pandemic the Trump administration failed to prepare the American medical system for the serious supply shortages of medical supplies essential to protect frontline medical workers fighting the spread of coronavirus as well as items critical to treating patients infected with COVID-19. One of the ways Trump could have immediately alleviated this supply shortage is through use of the Defense Production Act which empowers the President to command private corporations to modify their supply chains to focus on providing, at a reasonable price, items needed during an emergency, such as face masks and ventilators. 

Despite pleading from state governors across the nation, Trump was resistant to using these broad powers, unnecessarily endangering frontline medical workers and patients. It turns out the reasoning behind Trump’s resistance is that he wanted to ensure corporations are able to make massive profits from the pandemic. Trump expresses this when he says in a press briefing, "If I don't have to use - specifically we have the act to use in case we need it, but we have so many things being made by so many, they have just stepped up... like Hanes - I brought that up as an example, General Motors... They're going to go on the open market. We want them on the open market from the standpoint of pricing." Essentially, Trump is admitting he wants the corporations to be able to price gouge as much as the "free market" will allow. In other words, once again, Trump put the profits of Trump's political supporters, corporations, over the health and safety of the American people.

Do not fall for the gaslighting

As the fallout from the incompetence and selfishness of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic become clearer, Trump will undoubtedly attempt to distract and place blame on anybody other than himself. It is important for voters to remember the facts of how Trump intentionally downplayed the seriousness of the health crisis while also purposely misinforming the public for his own political and financial self-interests. When casting a ballot in November voters should remember that the administration’s poor response to the pandemic was fueled by what has defined the entire Trump tenure in the White House: extreme incompetence and obscene self-dealing.

Remaining Trump supporters lost cause, base turnout essential for 2020

In the aftermath of the 2018 midterm elections, one thing became clear. At this point there is no such thing as a “moderate” or “sane” Republican. Perhaps there were some, suffering under the oppressive weight of capitalism, during the 2016 election cycle who were duped by the fake ring-wing populism espoused by Donald Trump. However, after two years of corporate giveaways at the cost of everyday people, unapologetic white nationalist pandering, brazen misogyny and unhinged attacks on the LGBTQ community, anybody who is still supportive of Trump and the complicit Republican Party are bigoted scum bags or conspiracy-brained, alt-right morons who obsess over decoding QAnon messages. These people cannot be saved within a two-year election cycle. The only way the left will win in the upcoming 2020 election is through turnout of the base via grassroots organizing.

Trump and GOP lean hard into culture war racism

During the recent midterm election Trump and the Republican Party summoned the most vile aspects of American society in order to cling to power. Trump, despite a strong American economy, campaigned on mostly fear-mongering about the asylum-seeking caravan of impoverished families traveling on foot. He described this group of brown-pigmented people as an “invasion” and even claimed there were “terrorists” within their midst, a claim he made without even the slightest shred of evidence. The only purpose this served was to galvanize the right-wing base through racial resentment and fear politics. Also, it was not just Trump who delved head first into the culture war messaging, many racist Republican candidates followed suit, exposing the GOP for what it has always been about at its ideological core: unbridled bigotry and hatred.

The left must utilize electoral infrastructure created during midterms

Given that remaining Trump supporters cannot be flipped at this point, the only thing left to do is turnout the moderate, liberal and progressive base through newly created electoral infrastructure. The current social upheaval caused by the Trump election has galvanized an unprecedented political awareness and broad-based activism. This has resulted in record numbers of people becoming involved in political campaigns on the left via organizing, canvassing, phone banking, text banking and other various activities. The culmination of this is electoral infrastructure which must be taken advantage of by Democrats and those on the political left during the 2020 election cycle.

Even for those elections which Democrats lost during the midterms, the newly formed electoral infrastructure, such as fully-trained and experienced campaign organizers, funding mechanisms and a base of now-experienced campaign volunteers, can provide the push for Democrats and those on the left to win those same seats in the next election cycle. One example of this is Georgia's 6^th congressional district. This historically safe Republican seat experienced an unprecedented Democratic challenge in a special election in 2017, fueled by outrage against Trump. Despite the Democratic candidate narrowly losing in the special election, the infrastructure and base enthusiasm created enabled the Democrats to capture the seat in the recent 2018 midterms.

Florida will be crucial in 2020, galvanizing base essential

Although it is important Democrats fight hard for all 50 states, Florida will be particularly important for achieving success at the ballot box. Florida, which has historically played a pivotal role in deciding presidential elections, is now legitimately a possible swing state with the closeness of the recent governor's race between Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis which has now been forced into a recount. Also, with the voting rights of those with felony convictions reinstated in Florida, the potential Democratic base has been greatly increased. Therefore, Florida organizers must begin outreach to this newly enfranchised population and register as many of them as possible to vote. However, this also means candidates on the left must present policy proposals which help empower this population of voters.

In closing, there is no time to tune out, the political left must not miss a beat and immediately begin strategizing campaigns on a grassroots level in all areas of the country. There were still millions of eligible left-leaning voters who did not go to the polls. These are the people grassroots activists must turn out in order to defeat Trump and the Republicans in 2020.

Why Thomas Paine would shoot Donald Trump if he were alive today (Part 3 of 3)

Written by Igor Goldkind

Continued from Part 2 of 3

Paine conceived of autonomous democratic nation-states forming alliances of mutual aid. Mikhail Gorbachev has said that we ought to have a balancing of interests, not a balancing of power on the global stage. Internationalization, with the primacy of nation-state alliances, is a major alternative to the trends of corporate economic globalization. In the myth of a "flat" world of economic globalization, where the world is made safe and frictionless for capital expansion, citizens and nations did not vote for the corporate-influenced governmental-military-industrial-media alliances and trade agreements which establish "the rules of the game," subtly conditioning the thinking of the masses. 

These are not ancient words. These are the principles America was founded on and without which we would have early on taken the road to the same form of despotism and autocracy that Donald Trump is trying to lead us into. Trump only wants power. Power to control what is true and what is not. Power to determine the fates and existence of as many people as he can. This is why he loves the idea of a wall, the decoration of undocumented long-term residents and the border checks at airports that targets people of the Muslim faith, as well as people that white people think look like Muslims!

In his own way, from his visionary perspective, Thomas Paine was what the right-wing calls a “globalist” or even more bizarrely a “statist.” Of course the founding fathers were statists, they constructed the blueprint for the United STATES of America.

Bernie Sanders was right. Trump isn't conservative or moderate, much less liberal; he's an autocrat who has no respect for the Constitution and has failed as commander-in-chief to protect this country from a foreign antagonist.

Back to the curb where Paine is holding Trump hostage to the imperatives of history and the gentle squeezing of Thomas’s trigger finger, because Donald Trump is a traitor to his state. He has been under the influence of a foreign antagonist, Vladimir Putin, since at least 2014, shortly after he first announced his attempts at the presidency. He needed money to run a campaign for President and he didn’t have any.  No bank would loan him money because Trump always welched on his debts. So he had to turn to Deutsche Bank, the same bank that Putin and his oligarchy use to make money disappear and reappear wherever is most expedient. In this case it was the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. This will all become very shortly apparent as soon as the next wave of indictments are issued by the DOJ. Trump is in a jam that he can’t get out of. Mueller’s investigation on behalf of the federal Department of Justice is very far from being a witch hunt. Read the indictments, all the evidence is published there, enough to hold up in federal court. Mueller, if you recall, is a conservative Republican of impeccable integrity.

By the way, I don't detest conservatives; some are my best friends. But Trump isn't really a conservative, he's a conman playing the GOP for whatever he can get away with. I don't hate conservatives, I hate liars who shamelessly lie every day they open their mouths. I hate incompetents who can't even keep one national security advisor on board during his first year and whose family and campaign advisors were meeting with Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign.

At this point in the event, Donald Trump moves his head slightly. Thomas steadies his hand. Testing Thomas, Trump slowly turns his head enough to glimpse Thomas’s steely stare. As unflinching as Mueller’s investigation. Once again Trump pleads, begs for his life. “What do you want Mr. Paine?  I’ve got money tons of money. What about women? I can get you the most beautiful models in the world. What about an audience with the Queen of England, she’s easy.” Thomas pauses and for the first time speaks to Donald J. Trump:

“I want my country back. I want the nation myself and my brothers built out of reason, compassion and equality back. I want what this nation is meant to be, not what you have defiled it as.”

Trump knows his goose is cooked. He can’t repair the damage he’s caused. It will take others, long after he’s gone to rebuild our country. Others who are younger than a 70-year-old patriarch. Others who have grown accustomed to being one nation in a physically interconnected  world. Others who aspire to rise above the fumes of spiritual superstition to the level of what Paine called “our living awareness of the Infinite Presence” by means of reason, science, the arts, the cooperative nature of our fellow hairless apes.  The high school students who have stood up and proclaimed “enough is enough.” The women who no longer cover their mouths and stifle their words when being subject to interpersonal tyranny. These are the children of Thomas Paine. These are the people he fought for and wrote for.

As a species we survived and dominated this planet by virtue of our complex means of cooperation, not competition. That complex is what we refer to as a society and those who reject the notion are, well, just antisocial.

Donald Trump speaks to Thomas Paine one last time.

“Please Thomas, I promise to be better, I promise to live up to your virtues, I swear I’m a changed man.  Look in your heart Thomas, look in your heart, Please!….”

Thomas speaks his last four words:

“I have, you traitor,” and pulls the trigger.

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Why Thomas Paine would shoot Donald Trump if he were alive today (Part 2 of 3)

Written by Igor Goldkind

Continued from Part 1 of 3

But going back to the pistol Thomas Paine is holding against Donald Trump’s head; no, I didn’t forget my premise. Imagine it with me. There’s Thomas Paine, his hand steadily holding the cocked pistol, fully powdered and loaded with a small lead ball. Tiny, but big enough to leave a good sized hole at such close range. And there’s Donald Trump on his knees, shaking. He’s already wet the pants of his suit. He tries very hard to hold back his urging defecation and finally fails.

Now Donald Trump is soiled. Soiled with the same feces he’s been feeding to the American voters for years. Soiled by his indifference, his empathy deficit, his reckless, unfeeling impulses, his sociopathic disconnect from the human race. Remember, Donald, to say “I hear you.” It fools them every time and leaves plenty of time for self-gratification at the expense of others. Trump is soiled by his own inhumanity, his unbridled carnal greed to accumulate wealth, power and women. He assaults women not because he can get it up anymore but because they have power he wants to dominate.

Look at his wife. I haven’t seen such a blank dead look of a hostage to circumstance since Patty Hearst. It was the money that bought her and like some particularly gruesome episode of “Black Mirror,” she got exactly what she paid for, with her integrity, her self-respect and herself. Imagine the morning she awoke to the dawning denouement. Sure she could leave any time, with her child. But where would she go? What would she do? In the afterlife of existence everyone writes a book and sells it. When things go badly; when the world seems to be against me; when I lose; I always remind myself - it could always get worse and at least I don’t have to fuck Donald Trump.

The thought makes me feel better but my heart tears up when I think of her suffering. It is the suffering of the affluent. The ones who have accommodated everything they were told they needed to be happy. Everything they worked hard to acquire in lieu of happiness only to find that very object eluding them. That’s the horror of the denouement, you reach the summit of your life’s ambition and now the only thing left to do is jump off. Because happiness is not an object or an objective. It flits effortlessly in and out of our lives like a butterfly, briefly lingering on a flower and moving on. Ever try to chase a butterfly? Exactly.

Back to Donald Trump having shit and pissed himself while one of the fathers of our country held a pistol to his head. Perhaps at this point Donald would beg for his life like the scene in “Miller’s Crossing,” “Please, Thomas, Please. Look in your heart, look in your heart. You don’t want to do this. You’re not that kind of man. Look in your heart, for god's sake !”

God is a natural place to go. After all, the divisions we are now facing in our country are by no means recent. They’ve been brewing for decades. The divisions are not entirely geographic although the three states that assured Donald of his electoral victory do have a concentration of post-Calvinist evangelicals. Nor are they solely cultural; after all, Donald Trump is the epitome of the urban gangster. A smooth talking, wheeling dealing property developer soaking in the comfort of Manhattan luxury. He should be anathema to his base of supporters. But he’s not, instead he speaks their language; the language of PT Barnum and Charlie Chan both as fake as a wooden nickel but master showman to a 'T' (Only white actors played Charlie Chan which ironically was invented by Earl Derr Biggers as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes and villains like Fu Manchu).

And Trump talks about God. He doesn’t so much talk about his beliefs (if he has any), but about the threat that nonbelievers and other religions pose for Christian evangelists, particularly targeting Islam. Trump runs his own circus of fear and the punters are more than happy to pay to be scared or at least have their irrational fears affirmed. Donald Trump should be played by the late Robert Mitchum (if he were still alive. Hey, we brought Thomas Paine from two centuries ago; a zombie Robert Mitchum should not pose too many difficulties). To be exact, Robert Mitchum in his role as the greed-laden preacher in the classic American Gothic “The Night of the Hunter” in which he plays a psychopathic man of the cloth bent on money and murder (in that order). He pursues two children who hold the secret to a hidden fortune down a river in the south, riding a donkey and singing hymns. A fake, a demon, a creature of merciless malice.

So is Thomas going to shoot Trump in the head for using religion to accumulate power? Of course not. Thomas was a believer but not in God, in reason. “It is by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything.” The reason Thomas Paine is holding a cocked pistol against the back of Donald Trump’s head is not God; Trump hasn’t blasphemed against faith; he’s blasphemed against reason. Trump has spent his entire career disseminating the appearance of things, not the truth. Truth is the enemy of Donald Trump, because in truth, he is an insignificant man in the scheme of things just as we are all beholden to the significance we manufacture and some of us have made peace with that. Donald Trump has not. Like a “hungry ghost” in Chinese Buddhism, Donald is compelled by desire, call it lust, a lust for significance. This is why he builds towers, not to house offices or hotel rooms, but to prop up as high as he can his name: Trump.

At the start of this year we had a crisis in authority due to the steady lies being pumped from the White House by Trump. The first rule of autocracy is to shake people’s belief in authority, so that they only can believe in you. Donald Trump is attempting to destroy the pillars of the Fourth Estate. Now we’ve entered a period of crisis in competence. When the very ability to address real world problems by Trump and his stooges is dubious at best. 

Remember that the balance of powers in the Constitution is all beholden to having a free press in which people can report the truth and express their opinions of their government. That’s what Thomas Paine counted on in drafting our rights. Each right has a corresponding duty. Paine said our first duty is to be kind to others. Paine also said that a person's corresponding duty is to allow the same rights to others as we allow ourselves. From this basis we can use our abilities to promote mutual understanding. These expanding circles of reciprocal duties and rights weave a tapestry, built on democratic norms, of liberty in the context of societal interdependence. It’s called a society based on equality.

Did you know that Thomas Paine was the very first American abolitionist? In 1775 he wrote, "To Americans: That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, Christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of justice and humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.

Our traders in MEN (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness of that SLAVE-TRADE, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts; and such as shun and stifle all these willfully sacrifice conscience, and the character of integrity to that golden idol."

Thomas Paine was like the first white citizen member of Black Lives Matter. He and his pal Thomas Jefferson originally included an amendment to the Constitution ending slavery. They wanted to create a revolutionary society in which ALL men are created equal. As usual, women would have to wait. Of course this amendment was vetoed by the southern slave owning states. The same states suspiciously from which Trump derives the concentration of his base support. But the point being that the Founding Fathers, if not all, enough, wanted to establish an egalitarian society in all respects. Paine referred to this, as did the other Framers, as ‘the common good,’ something the alt-right abhors because they understand it as: control by somebody that isn’t them. Nonetheless, contrary to Constitution literalists the "common good" involves a mental posture taken by citizens in their deliberations where they account for, yet transcend partial interests to look at the good for each and all in their decisions.

Even in business, Trump’s claimed turf, the right of commerce was seen as transforming the mindset of feudal, dependent relations between men and their government. It helped transform subjects into confident citizens. Trade was viewed not as laissez-faire, but in a web of social interdependence. It was seen as a major modality for individuals to use their reason (not faith), to develop better mutual understanding of others' interests in society. While aware that too much indulgence in commerce could lead to the decline of spirit and patriotism, making reason subservient to commercial interests, Paine felt that man would use his religion of reason to place commerce within a broader quest for lifelong education in the arts, sciences, engineering and philosophy in order to progress to a universal society and universal happiness.

Paine believed that man's highest spirit of reason is its motives and applications such that it does not have to be concentrated solely in pursuit of commercial interests. Art, science, and commercial enterprise can be placed in service to humanity and universal happiness. Moreover, each individual deserves minimal dignity and a minimal economic base to pursue their natural rights. Like Paine and Edward Bellamy advocated two hundred years ago, some form of guaranteed minimal annual income ought to be adopted for each citizen, regardless of wealth or other distinctions. Imagine what Thomas Paine would make of the modern day commercialized medical establishment!

Sounds like a socialist that Thomas Paine, don’t he? Not at all really, just your average post-Enlightenment philosopher and thinker. Or perhaps he's a socialist only as far as socialism is dedicated to the fairer distribution of resources so that everyone might enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness more equally. Paine wrote, “Some men and women, through greed or disproportionate natural or social advantages, will contribute to others being systematically impoverished in the imperfections of man-made civilization:

The earth is the common property of the human race; thus each human being is equally entitled to have dignity and minimal share of the earth's bounty, including clean water, air, and access or rents from land. Thus, men and women must discover those laws operating in society which will create a greater harmony of overall interests. Democratic communities will have to choose to redistribute some minimal baseline of societal resources to those at least most vulnerable not as charity, but as a right in the name of social harmony.”

Continued at Part 3 of 3

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Hillary Clinton ad attacks Trump

This will be the beginning of a large blitz of advertisements Clinton is expected to release.