It’s not Trump’s fear of being a loser that keeps him from conceding that he lost the election. He’s lost lots of times before. His Atlantic City casinos, one now scheduled to be detonated for charity. All his now defunct business scams: steaks, Trump University, water, etc. Hundreds, maybe a thousand legal suits lost or settled. Settlement allows the charlatan to claim he has lost through a “no admission of guilt” clause, the legal double talk that reframes law breaking by white criminals into unjustifiably low financial payments. The financial and emotional damage to victims goes unheeded, less important than the well-being of fat cats who can ultimately become donors to electoral campaigns. The wealthy get away with a lot of shit, so what else is new?
Losses can be reframed simply by the turn of a phrase. Trump’s losses were easily converted into seeming wins by a combination of media spin, memory lapses with time, leaving them out of the narrative altogether and outright falsification. Fake news; fake news! His administration and its radical right media flank have flooded the airwaves with the stuff. Now the Donald confronts the biggest loss of his life, the presidency of the United States. All that power, slipping through his fingers. The national spotlight veering off his orange face. The fear that the adulation may cool if he is not daily in front of his flock. None of his spin or conspiratorial imaginings is working with the larger public. Biden’s 8 million plus voters aren’t falling for it and we’re in the majority. Unfortunately, it’s been incredibly successful with Trumpology cult members. That’s to be expected of a cult. However, the fringes may flake away with the stress of living in COVID19 mayhem. At least we can hope so.
As power is slipping through the RealityTVPresident’s hands, his motive has shifted to the future, his come back in 2024. Sure he’s lashing out at foes, real and imaginary. And he’s trying to torpedo the Biden administration by tying his hands in the military and diplomatic arena. By withholding information from the transition team, he’s obstructing the scope of the investigation into the largest US government hack in history by Russian intelligence. He’s undermining the economic recovery, first threatening to veto the COVID relief and omnibus spending bill to keep the government open and then finally conceding. Attention grabbing, of course. A reminder to the party that he holds their fate in his hands with a touch of revenge against politicians who have not supported him unswervingly. Pigeonholing Republicans to vote on the record against $2000 individual support bill passed by the House. He wants them to see that he can continue to spread chaos. He wants the public, or really just his cult, to believe that only Trump can fix what he has broken. Well, he says the government broke it, but he is the government. Trump likes being the government when his actions feed his cult’s worldview but not when the responsibility for the country’s populace requires action.
Trump is pardoning his allies uncovered in the Mueller investigation, his warped mind believing that he can erase history. Pardoning is the payoff that will keep them silent into the future, the last acts in his continuing obstruction of justice. Upcoming pardons will protect his children and Jared Kushner and probably loyalists like Faith Hicks from future federal prosecution in hopes of deterring Democratic investigations into his administration’s actions. They don’t believe Democrats have the stomach to recreate the multiple Benghazi farces, particularly when they will have to fend off multiple Republican investigations to propagandize the lost cause of the stolen election and demonize Biden through his son Hunter if McConnell remains in place. Democrats are further burdened with Biden’s hunt for bipartisanship, a fool’s errand to work with disingenuous, dishonest politicians who are wedded to one party rule. Investigations will inevitably uncover their roles. Devin Nunes, Ron Johnson, Lindsey Graham, are you listening? My bet is that 45 will relinquish his office to Pence in the wee hours in order to receive his own pardon and quietly slink off to Florida to avoid the ceremonial impact of the peaceful transition of the office.
And that’s the point. Donald J Trump can’t concede this election because he has to implant the idea that a peaceful transition of power need not always apply in the country that originated it. That too is a tradition, not codified in any document. A ripe target for the BullyPresident’s machine gun. He is working overtime to firmly plant the notion that election results, even those filtered through the electoral college, do not automatically determine the presidency. He has introduced a whole chief executive toolbox for election interference. Bullying local election officials, state election board members, governors and state legislators to override the will of the voters in their states. Every position now represents a potential pressure point to overturn election results in the future.
His last and most desperate move is to line up a bunch of Congressional and Senatorial Trumpophants to challenge the Congressional certification of the Electoral College vote. This maneuver has been used in the past, primarily as symbolic protest. It seems now that at least one pair of clowns will take the bait and they will dish out at least a couple hours of KGB propaganda showcasing a passel of conspiracy theories. It’s a play for mainstream media dispersion of their crap.
TheRealityTVPresident is planning an extravaganza. The call has gone out for demonstrations in the streets, centered on Capitol Hill but not necessarily limited to DC. The potential for violence is palpable. This crowd doesn’t roll without AKAs. The Proud Boys will be “standing by”; the white nationalists will be out in full force. Where those groups go, Antifa isn’t far behind. Short fused MAGA hatters will be posed to combat progressives and Democrats standing up for democracy. Police and possibly the national guard will be mobilized by the administration whether Mayor Bowser requests them as required by law or not. Law enforcement will wink at the gun toting radical right and unleash all hell on progressives. And when night falls. . .
Not since the days of Rutherford B Hayes’ deal that sealed the Jim Crow police state into existence has the backroom wheeling and dealing of political parties been so destructive. As in all things, Trump does his deals out in public although it’s ruining his reputation for artful deal making. It’s not about that. His is a perverse nod to human mental foibles. It boils down to this, we think when people do something they know is wrong, they try to hide it; so if they’re doing it out in the open, it must not be wrong. Given the dearth of understanding about the conduct of government and its attendant ethos, even the outer circles around Trumphants are not sure that his moves are completely illegitimate and anti-democratic. People can only accept that the votes of the majority of Americans are invalid if they believe that the only valid votes are for their candidates. There is no notion more authoritarian than that.
Having set this precedent, which will be worked and reworked through the authoritarian right wing media bubble over the next 4 years, by 2024, an attempt to turn a close or perhaps not so close election into a Republican Party coup, whether he is on the ballot or not, will surface again. The Republican Party has been driving for one party rule for three decades; Trump brought them closest to their goal. Using their control of state legislatures and 2020 census reapportionment data, the party will move next year to disenfranchise larger swaths of voters that they know won’t support them in preparation for the midterms. They will reengineer districts to further consolidate their hold on state legislatures by packing democratic votes into districts and creating Republican dominant zones where elected officials no longer have to respond to the needs of their voters. Dixiecrat tools used to create all white one-party rule across the south have been spread across the country through their heirs, the Republican Party of Nixon and Reagan. They simply swapped party names and rode that Southern block to power before working on states in the Midwest and the west exclusive of the coast. Trump added the formerly industrialized northern states and voila, the movement to provide the leader who can reaffirm the superiority of the dominant white caste was consecrated. The means and methods to maintain that dominance are far less important to them than the outcome. They believe they need a strong leader primed to strong arm the nonwhite (and nonheterosexual) into submission even if it sacrifices the basis of their own independence.
Photo by Denise Raynor
Yes. Donald J Trump can’t concede the election because he’s an emotionally damaged, narcissistic megalomaniac. But we must widen the lens to the wider danger. Wealthy supporters of the Republican Party know what they want: small to nonexistent government at all levels and minimal regulation. Trump did a fine job of deconstructing the federal government, much to our chagrin as we have been unable to battle the first of undoubtedly a century of new plagues. Slashing federal and state regulations has allowed workers to suffer unprotected from the virus, to struggle to feed and house themselves and communities to drown in poisons and pollution. The country will be unable to meet the challenge of climate change as the robber barons accumulate more and more wealth beyond what they can spend. Unlike their earlier counterparts, this crop of barons has little penchant for charitable support of communities except through organizations that propagandize their message of the individual above community. They will be Neros watching as the world burns, hoping to catch a space flight to some other destinations, if simply a space station rather than a planet.
From the Equal Justice Initiative calendar 2020
On December 29, 1900, Harvard professor Albert Bushnell Hart tells the American Historical Association in Detroit Michigan that states where lynchings are prevalent should legalize lynching to maintain order.
Smacked by the reality that more citizens voted for the other guy, Joe Biden, than their guy, the anti-maskers are seething with emboldened energy. They will be more defiant. They will arrive armed with automatic weapons to demonstrate their resistance. And they will not wear masks!
Recently, when I stopped at a gas station, I realized I forgot my mask as 3 people with bare faces spilled out the door. I wear a mask out of fear for my own health as much as spreading disease to my family. I am a healthcare professional versed in public health as well as infectious disease. I understand this diabolical virus with rapid asymptomatic spread represents a serious threat to the country at large. So I hightailed it back to my car to get my mask. During my whole time at the store, only the store clerk, one customer and I wore a covering over our nose and mouth. Not an encouraging sign in Rockdale county Georgia where cases have increased 84% over the last 2 weeks hitting a total of 541,086 in a population of about 11 million.
COVID19 is potentially deadly in multiple ways. It’s fatal for many individuals stricken by severe disease, even as physicians understand the disease much better and have developed treatments that were unknown early in the pandemic. This is what we should expect the practice of medicine to do, evolve and adapt, just faster because there were so many patients to work on.
But the wider circle of mortality encompasses the chaos in facilities overwhelmed by volume. Bad things happen when providers are overwhelmed by demands on their skills; they can only provide good care to a finite number of patients at a time. As the number of patients assigned goes up, the quality of care goes down. That is a proven fact. As the number of specialists becomes inadequate, the quality of care also goes down. Medicine is highly specialized and while over time, providers can become more familiar with areas that they haven’t worked in, they still lack the instincts so important in anticipating critical turns in patient status that go with being immersed in that area of practice.
Also proven, providers fatigued from working long hours, struggling with inadequate supplies and reeling from the emotional turmoil of daily fatalities make medical errors. Some errors may kill the patient; others may be termed near-misses, resulting in complications that may become debilitating; others will have little impact and still other mistakes will be caught by system checks and not reach the patient. In addition, overwhelmed departments can’t take time to review bad outcomes as they normally would, a process designed to systematically improve care.
The same conditions that lead to increased medical errors will only worsen racial disparities in outcomes. Understaffing, extended shifts, provider fatigue, time crunch, unclear protocols, fear of infection and the staggering number of deaths when providers are used to saving lives are the same conditions where implicit racial biases thrive, quietly creating different standards of care by skin color. This too is proven fact. Other administrative and structural elements in healthcare enhance the impact of implicit biases. All this is over and above the risk factors for severe COVID19 disease in marginalized communities.
The wider circle includes those left waiting to receive care because the staff is occupied or the beds are full or they must be transferred out of the facility to a different intensive care unit. In the critically ill patient, minutes ticked away before the required treatment can mean death or significant injury.
The next rung in the circle are people with other diseases whose treatment is delayed or unadministered; the diabetic coma or case of ketoacidosis that goes undiagnosed and untreated ends in death. The heart attack and the stroke that go undiagnosed, causing potentially irreparable damage or death. And the people with cancer whose chemotherapy is modified or delayed, allowing their cancers to spread. Or the people awaiting surgery to diagnose a cancer whose procedures are cancelled until hospital conditions improve while their cancers keep growing. Many of those people will have their lives shortened by COVID19 even though they are unaffected by the disease itself. From there, the circle extends to the family and friends of all these people, forever affected by the loss of loved ones, seen or unseen suffering and a loss without a final goodbye.
Photo by Denise Raynor
In sum, the death rate climbs as the number of hospitalizations go up simply because the ability to care for sick people is compromised on all sides. But these concerns are unimportant to the freedom from face mask warriors. In fact, some may see the differential toll on minorities as a plus. Like their Pied-Piper-soon-to-be-ex-president, they lack empathy, the basis of any appeal to consider other people around you. They believe that their freedoms are unbounded, not even limited by our Constitution. There is the proverbial crying fire in a crowded theatre, not specifically stated in the founding document, but included as pronounced by the great Constitutional interpreter, the Supreme Court. The Court is not unbiased, but it’s all we’ve got.
Freedom warriors are probably more familiar with the concept of loyalty to the flag, American or Confederate take your pick, than they are with the text of the Constitution, much like their fearful leader. They don’t know that the Constitution places armed uprising in the category of treason, treason to the red, white and blue flag that they claim to hold dear, equally as treasonous as the Confederacy that flew the other one.
It should be no surprise with the evolution of consecutive “me” generations, the “me” has become increasingly elevated above everything else. That “me” has gotten increasingly threatened by the loss of the most central tenet of American life, white superiority. As the economic prospects of the lower rungs of the dominant white caste continue to fade, their inclusion in the caste becomes their salvation. The fuss about religion’s slide from a central part of American life and the policing of social behavior by white Protestant sectarian bullies are all part of the bluster that is meant to mark the boundaries of the dominant caste. The proof that caste surrounds the religiosity of evangelicals is the large number of Latinx and Black evangelicals who have the same beliefs as the white ones, but are not only unwelcome in their churches but are routinely attacked as nonhuman by them. The spirit of God can’t trespass the color line.
Caste membership is the placeholder that means whites can never be considered the lowliest by the higher income levels of the caste. There are two tiers below, the lowest rung being dark skinned Afro-Americans, Caribbeans and Africans and the middle tier, Latinx, Asians, Native Americans and those from predominantly Muslim countries. Whiteness, as the calling card of the dominant caste, provides access to the kind of treatment received by no other skin color in the nation. This then is the appeal of the Make America Great (White) Again movement, essentially the upper parts of the dominant caste mobilizing the lower parts to defend the highest level’s grasp on power by invoking the superiority of whiteness, the central tenet that delineates the caste system.
Thus the white man is free to carry a gun, the Black man not. Ever see the NRA defend the right of a Black man with a licensed, permitted gun to simply carry it, with no intention to discharge it? Freedom demonstrators overburdened with automatic firepower are allowed to not very peacefully demonstrate or shoot the allies of people of color peacefully demonstrating, both free from interference from law enforcement. Anti-face mask demonstrators meet no opposition from law enforcement while jackbooted, helmeted, shielded, tear gas and rubber bullet wielding police/troops aggressively attack more peaceful and orderly BLM demonstrators. The right wing has a special place when the upper caste battles the demands from the middle and lower castes to break the chains of the American caste system.
When “what I want” becomes central to an individual’s thinking, other people in the larger environment recede. Thought devolves into a contest to assert one’s self over others. A sense of the greater good is lost; even the existence of something greater than one’s self crumbles. A sense of the whole, a larger society disappears. Their higher power grants them license to dismiss other mere mortals.
Interestingly, a central tenet of capitalist economies, private property is a casualty in the mask wars. “I-won’t-mask” warriors are usually staunch defenders of private property and yet they continue to attack retailers, restaurants and grocery stores for requiring masks to enter their establishments. It’s not different from no shoes, no service, another public health caution. Property owners can determine criteria for entry without any government direction, except when it dictates differential treatment of specific groups. No trespassing is real.
But current notions are far from how the Founders thought about the concepts of freedom and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence. Jon Meacham in The Soul of America argues that Jefferson drew on the philosophers Aristotle, Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers. For Aristotle, happiness was the whole point of life and because human beings are social animals, other human beings are bound up in the happiness of any one individual. For Jefferson, that “evokes virtue, good conduct and generous citizenship”. Happiness was as much about the public good as it is individual satisfaction. For the Framers, the good of the whole was essential for the good of the individual. John Adams said, “the happiness of society is the end of government”. Generous citizenship requires that individuals inform themselves and participate in responsible debate which becomes the basis of politics that form national opinion.
The distance the country has strayed from the original intent is the road taken with Reagan into government-is-the-problem land where the individual is elevated above the whole. Individual liberty unfettered by a big bad government wolf became the cry as more areas of inalienable rights emerged. The right to bear arms for the Founders was the right to raise militias for defense when the country had no standing army. Through its decisions, the Supreme Court transformed it and the NRA boosted the second amendment into the right to build a home armory in every basement. Conservatives have created a religious freedom with the right to rub out any group that doesn’t hold their specific set of protestant beliefs without granting similar power to Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews or atheists. And now, the right to resist common sense public health regulations acting for the greater good of the population overwhelmed by an invisible enemy killing a 9/11 equivalent number of people every single day. The flip side of this expansion in rights is the constriction of the rights of the marginalized and the lower castes, courtesy of SCOTUS as well. To repeat, the Court has never been unbiased, always placing its thumb on the side of the scale that favors the upper echelon of the dominant caste.
The other factor in the rise of today’s “me” freedom warriors is that society has literally lost its mind. Up is down, down is up. The Trumpology cult members’ brains are pockmarked with drill holes that can only be filled with the words of their leader stitched into conspiracy webs that keep the cerebral hemispheres from splintering into pieces. Immune to any countervailing narratives, not even the death of friends or family can reshape their attitude. “We are strong; we can gut our way through; most people aren’t gonna die; how likely is it that I give it to my friends or family and they die. To hell with the healthcare workers trying to keep people from dying because that’s not me.” Somehow, the link between the invisible virus and the economic disruption has escaped them. Demonstrating to keep their local watering hole open can’t generate the kind of consumer activity that can sustain our consumer based economy. The only thing it can do is spread the coronavirus.
Politics has diverged from the participation of informed individuals in responsible debate. Informed and responsible have been exed out, substituted with dissembling, falsification and rumor mongering. What emerges is a cacophony of detritus spinning around whirling dervishes as duplicitous as the devil himself. Slogan slinging and name calling earmark electoral campaigns with very little effort to discuss issues and policies. Opacity in candidate speeches is carefully crafted from catch phrases to avoid a definitive position. From the right, catch phrases dog whistle or broadcast racial denigration. The obvious exception to the opacity is the soon to be ex-RealityTVPresident who was definitive in his flip floppiness with a general trend toward extreme cynicism and hate. Divide and conquer! His best friend became his worst enemy after a single word of disagreement. But he is only the latest in a long line of cynical politicians searching for the best sound bite to capture the gullible supporter without regard for the public good. This trend is not new in the country’s history but the creation of subsets of separate, rapidly communicating silos is new and has brought our democracy to the brink of extinction.
Let’s face it, ignoring coronavirus is easy. A stubborn determination to maintain as many things as possible the way they used to be confirms that all is well. If you plug into the alternative reality media, your view of the world is confirmed. Maybe it will work out eventually. Some of us will get the vaccines shown to lower the chance of contracting COVID19 and hopefully, they will prevent the spread of the virus, not yet established in the preliminary data. But we will continue to mask, social distance, etc. The vaccinated will present a wall to numbnut anti-maskers who will continue to spread disease in their circles, hopefully acquiring some immunity if only short term. That group will eventually supplement the vaccine acquired immunity group, establishing a platform to finally control the spread. Unfortunately, there will be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands more deaths in the interval until extensive vaccinations can be administered.
How exactly does wearing a mask to protect oneself and others from a potentially deadly infection tread on one’s Constitutional rights? It’s not free speech or free press or religion or assembly or the right to petition the government. Perhaps it’s the freedom to act stupidly. But that’s not guaranteed by the Constitution, or the Declaration, not even in the pursuit of happiness. Here’s an idea. Exercise free speech by printing your views on a mask and keep it on your face.
On December 20, 1986, a white mob chased Michael Griffith, a 23 year old Black man onto a highway in Howard Beach NY where he was hit and killed by a car.
The vaccine is here! The vaccine is here! Normal life is right around the corner….. Hold on. The flood of media attention about the start of the UK coronavirus vaccine distribution program and FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine feels like we’re turning a corner. This false impression is being fed by a media that probably thinks it’s bringing hope to the dismal prospect of an unknowable future stripped of everything we think is normal. Their efforts are likely a combination of the media’s desire to attract eyes to their products as well as the idea of a public service push back against the vaccine skepticism that is closely associated with mistrust in government. That mistrust is particularly acute among people skeptical of the soon to be ex-president, on the one hand, and Trumpology cult members who believe that the deep state is out to get them, on the other. And then there are the descendants of the enslaved. Having had their bodies experimented on in the past, the differential treatment they have received during the COVID19 pandemic has confirmed a cautious approach to a medical system riddled with implicit racial bias until it is absolutely necessary.
We are not turning a corner. We still have a long slog ahead. The vaccine will not help us as the country is being overwhelmed by the surging spread of coronavirus in the midst of the dystopian landscape that the RealityTVPresident has foisted on it. Many more people will die before January 20, even as vaccine distribution gets underway. Even more will die after Biden takes office, handicapped by the heavy handed sabotage meted out by his despotic predecessor and the rear-guard action by the autocratic party dominating the Senate. Biden’s officials will be thrown into any snafus in uncoordinated distribution networks manned by overtaxed state authorities. Disarmed by the lack of data from the outgoing administration desperate to impede any Biden successes, it will just take time for the new administration to connect the dots remaining after the erasures and burials by the dishonest band of thieves and crooks exiting the government. The vaccine is the future, not the present.
What then is the vaccine distribution plan? The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) guidelines which the CDC has adopted created priority tiers that individual states are now charged with actualizing. The ACIP identified 4 groups to possibly recommend for early COVID-19 vaccination– healthcare personnel, workers in essential and critical industries, people with underlying medical conditions at high risk for severe COVID-19 illness and people 65 years and older. Before making an official recommendation, the ACIP agreed upon goals to adjust prioritization of specific groups in the event that vaccine supplies are limited. Those goals were to 1) decrease death and serious disease as much as possible; 2) preserve functioning of society and 3) reduce the extra burden the disease is having on people already facing disparities and 4) increase the chance for everyone to enjoy health and well-being. Notably, these goals do not include stopping the spread of the disease. As supplies will certainly be limited, the ACIP selected as the priority group for Phase 1a healthcare workers and residents and employees of long-term-care facilities because the latter accounted for 6 percent of cases and almost 40 percent of deaths from covid-19. There are about 21 million health-care workers and 3 million residents and staff in long-term-care facilities. The advisory committee has agreed that the likely order for the next three groups to receive immunization should be in Phase 1b, the 87 million essential workers defined as workers in meatpacking and other food-processing facilities; police and firefighters; teachers; and the transportation industry (buses, trains), among others. People 65 and older who number around 53 million and adults with underlying medical conditions at higher risk for severe disease, about 100 million, will comprise Phase 1c. Obviously, there is overlap between these groups as some health-care and essential workers have underlying conditions or are over 65, but the unadjusted total is 240 million. Using the ACIP rationale, vaccination of essential workers maximizes the overall functioning of society and promotes access to the vaccine for communities of color, which have been worst affected by the pandemic.
Clearly, the initial shortage is going to be even more acute than it first appeared. Once again, the Trump administration, flying without the interest or participation of the chief executive, artfully screwed up the deal. It locked in 100 million doses, enough for 50 million people, but passed on another 100 million doses. Subsequently, Pfizer completed a deal with the EU for 200 million doses. After that commitment, the company may not be able to provide more doses until spring 2022. But all is not lost. By then, several other vaccines may be available and hopefully, the Biden administration rather than Operation Warp Speed will be handling the negotiations with companies that have received federal financial support, unlike Pfizer which declined assistance.
Like most things from the current administration, the directives sound strong but the devil is in the details. Operation Warp Speed began distributing an initial supply of 6.4 million doses, enough for 3.2 million people, on December 13, the new DDay. The first stumbling block is the HHS decision to allocate doses based on the total population of each state rather than follow the ACIP recommendation that distribution be based on the high risk population in each state. A state like Florida, with a large number of senior citizens, will have to prioritize which facilities receive vaccines first. Given the state’s long history of discrimination against African Americans and poor people of color, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision who will be last in line.
As with all elements of the pandemic response, the implementation has been farmed out to the states, whose healthcare facilities are currently overwhelmed with caring for victims of the pandemic and public health departments are overwhelmed with testing. They’ve had to create their own plans, with very little guidance from the feds, a formula that will result in massive variations across state borders subject to individual political environments. State governments are all reeling financially, hit by the double whammy of loss of tax income and extraordinary expenditures associated with the pandemic response. Republicans in the Senate have put the kibosh on funding state governments, despite the fact that many of their state colleagues are the most in need of dollars. If and when they decide, whatever they allocate will be inadequate from the start and even more so, in light of the complicated cold chain distribution required for the Pfizer vaccine and the Republican party’s penchant to punish the most populated states led by Democrats.
With 24 GOP dominated state governments, many still holding on to the fiction that COVID19 is a liberal plot to destroy their very own Pied Piper, one wonders how aggressively they will pursue implementation. In addition, they are under no obligation to follow the CDC guidelines. As coronavirus deniers, it also seems unlikely that they will mount the kind of intensive public service campaign that will be essential to broad uptake of the shots. Because these governors will remain in office after Biden enters the White House, the battle to convince even some healthcare providers to be vaccinated will be ongoing amid reports that they too don’t trust science or are anti-vaxxers or in some cases don’t trust any process that the BullyPresident continues to intervene in. Surveys show that as few as 50% of nurses will accept immunization. It seems difficult to fathom distrust of science in physicians, but I myself have witnessed the transformation of physicians, who are by-in-large more clinical practitioners than actual scientists, into irrational boobs when seized by the cult of Trumpology.
The battle to get people to accept vaccination will ultimately compromise its effectiveness. Polls suggest that over 40% of Americans say they will not get immunized, which is less than the minimum uptake to achieve herd immunity. But again, whether a wider immunity will accrue from previous infection is unclear. The number of skeptics should fall as more people get the vaccine without serious complications or experience the illness or death of a loved one. On the other hand, even small discomforts after inoculation magnified on Facebook pages and the generation of disinformation from conservative forces can easily torpedo immunization efforts. The constant drumbeat of forces who refuse to acknowledge coronavirus as a matter of political allegiance will continue as well. Let’s hope that any allotted doses refused in one location can be rerouted to others in a different location or even those in a lower priority group as one phase overlaps into the next.
That brings up a different issue about priority groups. In view of the current climate of inequities in wealth in the US, where “money talks” and “it’s who you know” seem to apply universally, it is only a matter of time before the rich, famous or well connected will find their way to a couple of shots out of priority category. We’re lucky the Republican crowd are COVID19 deniers and the vaccine wasn’t available for the first round of White House holiday parties or they might have been administering shots as Christmas or Hanukkah swag much like the pardons 45 plans to hand out over the next weeks. They may do it quietly until it leaks to the press, but the most likely candidates are CEOs, celebrities, politicians and Trump allies who believe that they stand outside and above the gal or guy in the street. Wait for it. . . .
Where are Senators, Congressmen and Cabinet members in the priority tiers? Given the disruption in government function from multiple superspreading events centered around White House staff, the urgency of the transition seems to dictate that immunization is indicated. In addition, the White House residence staff would seem to be good candidates, just as the Secret Service, many agents having been stricken by the Corona-careless President already. On the other hand, many may already be immune by virtue of previous exposure and vaccination after a COVID19 antibody test should be used. My best guess is that there is already a reserved pool of doses unmentioned by the CDC and the press for our highest tier of government officials, which is, I think, as it should be.
I am reassured that GOP legislators will likely refuse to participate for political reasons, a voluntary act that substitutes as small retribution for their part in creating the disaster at hand and their continued refusal to acknowledge it. On the other hand, given their duplicity, the old guys like McConnell will probably be the first in line and given their clout, they can continue to do whatever they want while saying the exact opposite without any penalty.
One of the disadvantages with the current vaccine rollout is the inability to tailor vaccine administration for maximal impact in specific groups. This data is not yet available and may not be during the rapid rollout. Because they are based in different technological approaches, some may be more efficacious than others in particular subgroups. This is particularly true of the elderly who have more blunted immune responses as a result of the aging process itself. For instance, the flu vaccine is less effective in the elderly and a different dose is now available for them. But it may also apply to particular ethnic groups, just like specific anti-hypertensive medications control blood pressure better in African Americans than others.
Already there is news that the GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi vaccines, the latter planned to provide over a billion doses, are being delayed after trials showed an inadequate immune responses in those over 65. AstraZeneca’s data has shown some confusing results around different dosing amounts in trial populations outside the US, but the US portion of the trial with standard dosing is still ongoing. These delays are not unanticipated during normal vaccine development. This area of research has been littered with failed attempts. The fact that no vaccine for Ebola has been forthcoming after decades of research is just one example.
While both these vaccines hit the typical target of an overall 60% efficacy, this goal has been overshadowed by the 90% efficacy for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. These differences may lead to squabbles over preferences for a particular brand, disrupting orders from various entities or creating backlogs of one type or another and perhaps provide individuals with an excuse to refuse. There is little practical difference between 60% and 90% efficacy; there is also a plan B for inadequate response, try an alternative brand.
In the midst of the vaccine hoopla, there are still lots of questions, not unexpected with a novel viral disease agent and new technologies for vaccine production never tested in clinical practice. In view of the shortage, the question of previous COVID19 infection should loom large. Whether infection confers ongoing immunity and for how long is still unknown, even as there are anecdotal reports of recurrent infections after a first one. Because of asymptomatic spread and limited testing, there are probably millions who have had disease without knowing it. With all those factors, it would seem prudent to test vaccine candidates for the presence of COVID antibodies and deprioritize them for those who have no antibodies present. That comes with a whole other set of complexities, given the continuing limited availability of tests, although it may assist in the effort to slow the spread of infection. But because the goal of vaccine distribution is to lower the death rate, these considerations have taken a back seat. The most recent CDC recommendations include a suggestion that people previously infected delay immunization for at least 90 days, a move that allows others who haven’t been infected in the priority tier to get vaccinated. The chance that the recommendation will filter down to public health officials and the physicians administering the vaccine is probably about 50-50.
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While on the face of it, it seems reasonable to vaccinate healthcare workers first, it’s probably not the most efficient use of vaccines in short supply to stop the spread of disease. Primarily, hospital acquired COVID19 infections in healthcare workers occur in the absence of adequate PPE or disregard for infection protocols. Some investigations have shown that the majority of healthcare workers acquired their infections in activities outside the hospital, not during work hours. Unfortunately, as hospitals are once again being overwhelmed, shortages of PPE are cropping up again, so the vaccine may be necessary to continue to provide adequate medical care. Just as important, healthcare workers deserve some recognition for the enormous mental and emotional sacrifices they are making to treat the sick. They do deserve special treatment, all the way down to the hospital cleaning staff. Unfortunately, they will continue to be slammed unless the wider population integral to the spread of the disease is vaccinated, particularly in light of the politicization of simple preventative public health measures. That resistance is only growing as GOP partisans become increasingly agitated over the failure of a conspiracy-based fantasy to achieve Trump’s dictatorial coup.
The initial release of vaccines for 3.2 million healthcare workers is literally a drop in the bucket considering the vastness of the pool. A mid-sized hospital in a moderately densely populated state will get supply for maybe 200 providers, not enough for the whole medical and nursing staff. That amount will not even cover the whole nursing staff. All the intensive care, emergency room, anesthesiology physicians and nurses and respiratory therapists may not be covered, let alone other specialties. Hospitals will have to prioritize personnel using institution specific processes that can be influenced by a host of considerations that are often not fair or equitable. The length of time it will take to adequately complete phase 1a without any delays is longer than most of us can imagine.
Adequate immunization of the population or even healthcare providers is still some distance away. The Pfizer vaccine requires 2 doses, 21 days apart. The data on the level of antibodies and when they effectively prevent infection is not available; for other viruses it is 2-3 weeks. Unless a large swath of the population studiously observes hand washing, mask wearing, social distancing, good ventilation in indoor spaces, limits gatherings and stays home for the holiday season, flattening the curve to decrease hospital admissions seems elusive. Whatever the number is today, it represents a two week lag for cases and 4 week lag for deaths, so there is nowhere to go but up. There are still 6 weeks until Biden enters the White House, and the rapidity with which he can make an impact is still unknown. Just for perspective, the current schedule, as predicted by experts, means that it will take at least 7 months before the general public will have access to a vaccine. In other words, July 2021 is the first time the man on the street can hope to acquire immunity to COVID19 infection.
In any case, this is not a strategy to prevent spread of infection. Long-term care residents are far less likely to spread the virus than a younger population. They have less contact with people outside the facility, even if you consider visits from family members which have been curtailed. Many residents have outlived friends and family or they live some distance from them so they have no visitors. They don’t shop or go out to eat.
In comparison, the typical grocery store clerk comes into contact with hundreds of customers and fellow workers a day. Many can’t afford to stay home after a positive test because they don’t have paid leave. Of the two groups, the store clerk poses the greatest threat to spread infection. And yet, essential workers are not scheduled until Phase 1b, theoretically 44 million doses or 23 million people into the program. Realistically, that’s sometime next spring at the earliest.
A preventative spread strategy should target asymptomatic spreaders who can only be determined by testing. But the current testing program is completely inadequate for that. The reliance of PCR testing with prolonged reporting times and the unwillingness or inability of testees to isolate until results are reported renders it useless for preventing disease spread. The delay in even obtaining a test after exposure means that many are past the peak infectious period before they ever get the result. The current circumstance makes that proposition eminently clear contrasting with other countries like South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. In contrast, people go get a flu shot at the beginning of the flu season because they understand they are susceptible to infection. But with COVID19, no one knows if they are susceptible unless they have a negative test, so we simply assume we are negative unless we develop symptoms or test positive. Even worse, we don’t really know if infection is protective or how long that protection may last. Unlike chicken pox, which is very contagious, infection provides immunity for life, even in a mild case, although shingles is the result of a viral reactivation in later life.
The truth is, without rapid at home COVID testing, there is no way to target people who are susceptible to infection. Without a better understanding of immunity to this coronavirus, there is no way to know if everyone might be at risk of infection, even those who have already had the disease. And as the pandemic drags on, the possibility of mutant strains capable of reinfecting individuals only increases. Is it possible that with the very high positivity rates of COVID19 testing, the rapid spread of the virus during this winter and the unknown pool of undiagnosed infections that the illusive goal of herd immunity may be playing out before our eyes? No such luck. If immunity to this coronavirus is permanent, the almost 17 million cases to date is only 5% of the 329 million US population.
From the Equal Justice 2020 calendar
December 15, 1922, Harvard President Albert Lowell this week defends ban on Black students from residence halls and dining rooms, saying “we do not owe to them inclusion in a social system with white people.
Scattered across the media of late has been a call to “our better angels” nestled next to the claim that Americans “are better than this”. President elect Joe Biden is counting on better angels to knit the country back into one. Barack Obama as seen in numerous interviews about his book, A Promised Land, too believes that people care about their fellow human beings with whom they have more in common than differences.
But do better angels exist outside literary imaginations? Are they buried deep inside the 74 million people who voted for Trump? For many, I fear, the angels have been squeezed out like paste from a flattened toothpaste tube, if in fact they ever existed. Under a cold spotlight, the cult like nature of the GOP emerges, enveloped in fantastical conspiracy theories that defy logic. The Donald is the Charlie Manson of this flock, engaged in helter-skelter against democracy itself. But he is merely a beacon; the shimmering bobble that hypnotized a larger audience.
The RealityTVPresident believes that he has blackmailed the party into capitulation, but his crusade of self aggrandizement only echoed the goals of the billionaire robber barons of this new Gilded Age. The two intersect in the understanding that dismantling the federal government, the problem in Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric, and eliminating federal regulation would allow them to do whatever they damn well please. Members of the Trumpology cult have been convinced that all government regulation restricts their freedom. To some extent, they’re right because it does limit their freedom to discriminate and indulge their ethnic and racial prejudices, all illegal or at least they are for now. They’ve been bamboozled into denying climate change so as to oppose the dismantling of the fossil fuel industry’s hold on government and economic markets. They’ve been duped into denying the very existence of coronavirus and in effect been asked to commit mass murder.
With all that going on, they barely had time to notice the steady siphoning of wealth from the working and middle classes upward to the 1%. Instead their financial insecurity had already been attributed to the rainbow colored descendants of immigrants and the always evil dark skinned descendants of the enslaved. The potential united uprising of these middle and lower castes in the summer BlackLivesMatter protests further insulted the dominant white caste. The revolt failed failed to show the proper deference to the top of the hierarchy even as its less economically secure elements fear they may somehow slip out from under their caste halo of white privilege. GOP slogans capture those sentiments in translation, “they’re coming to your suburb”, “cities [Black people] are Democratic ruled centers of anarchy”, “public housing and Corey Booker are coming to your neighborhood”. Trump ripped the laquer off Nixon-Reagan based GOP dog-whistles to return to the rhetoric of Dixie.
The call from the president of the United States to openly defy public health measures to combat the spread of coronavirus and the enthusiastic response from his rally goers embodies the hallmark of a true cult. When Trump called his flock to huddle in mass rallies without masks, he was asking them to risk their lives in his name, not unlike Jihadist suicide bombers serving Allah. And cult members are happy to sacrifice themselves for the leader. Jesus sacrificed himself for mankind; Trump asked his slice of mankind to sacrifice themselves for him.
When Trump called his flock to huddle in mass rallies without masks, he was asking them to risk their lives in his name, not unlike Jihadist suicide bombers serving Allah.
One is tempted to suspect the RealityTVPresident set the scenario up that way, but alas, he has demonstrated his ineptness stumbling through a career pockmarked with multiple failures, reimagined through an adroit propaganda machine aimed at a gullible audience. But he did structure the circumstances of the COVID19 response to let himself shift the blame for the consequences to governors who could also serve as targets of his Twitter wrath. He has to throw chum into the waters to keep the cult churning. Insulated from the world outside Trump/FoxNews by a small group of mollycoddling advisors, Trump had no real sense of how dire the pandemic would become, but he intuited a way to enhance his image through the size of his crowds while simultaneously degrading political enemies and cult members alike, as their form of penance.
There are some who suspect that letting the COVID19 run amok has implications for the labor market over the long term, a prospect that today’s robber barons see as advantageous. The pandemic deaths and long term injuries of hundreds of thousands of workers combined with the exit of particularly female workers from the workforce for associated reasons and a complete shutdown of immigration are all factors that will reshape unemployment statistics. As further automation, globalization and the development of new businesses and services as older spheres disappear erode employment opportunities, the unemployment rate will appear within a reasonable range camouflaged by the number of people fenced off from labor market. The apparent normalcy of labor dynamics is useful politically to dampen dissatisfaction with the ever increasing disparities in wealth distribution, consistently redirecting blame on individuals rather than the business decisions that fuel economic changes. The threat of plant closures and layoffs due to automation can dampen pressure to increase wages particularly with the near absence of unions outside the public sector.
While GOP politicians appear to be enslaved by the Trumpology cult, they have been laying the seeds for that cult since before Ronald Reagan who took it to a new level. The Koch brothers and their clique of robber barons financed and implemented their plan to shift the themes of small government and deregulation from the extremist periphery of the Republican Party to its central platform. Yet, Reagan and the two Bushes vastly expanded the federal government under the guise of domestic security and national defense, ala the War on Crime, the War on Drugs and finally the War on Terrorism. Each new war extended the government into personal privacy, adding new waves of surveillance, first in Black and brown communities then finally to NSA intrusions into the whole population. The growth of the federal bureaucracy was accompanied by further concentrations of power in the chief executive, with the legislative branch voluntarily surrendering its role as a check on the president.
That Congressional surrender culminated in the absurdity of the Trump Impeachment Trial where Republican Senators literally became KGB propagandists, with fake facts straight from a Russian script. In what many “true” Republicans consider a betrayal of conservative principles, Russian propaganda is a necessary tool to retain their grip on power, so instrumental to the continued deconstruction of federal centers. But the federal government is only the tip of the iceberg.
The state governorships and legislatures were the first building blocks to create dominance in Congress. The GOP currently holds 26 governorships and controls both chambers of 32 state legislatures. Their victories have been built through voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering of voting districts that have built ballot proof districts that allow representatives to ignore their constituents. They have essentially picked their voters rather than voters picking their representatives. Consistently across those states, a minority of Republican votes creates a majority of legislative seats. In these platforms, 2020 census, state reapportionment and the redrawing of district maps will allow the party to correct for the slippage that allowed the Biden-Harris ticket to claw its way into the White House. But just as Barack Obama was a momentary diversion from the GOP path to single party rule of the country, Republican grasp on the reins of power has placed them in control of their own destiny. Democrats seem completely blinded to the realities of the current game of power politics and unable to hammer out a hard nosed defense. They are too busy squabbling among themselves.
It should now be clear that the Republican Party is the party of dictatorship. Their goal is one party rule in service to their own interests without the consent of the governed. That is the very definition of dictatorship and it’s about time the majority of the country recognizes that. In their denial of the validity of the Democractic Party’s legitimate attempts to share in governance, Republicans disavow the opposition party’s right to exist and the right of voters to select its candidates. They haven’t been playing nice and they won’t be. They have given themselves permission to lie, cheat, steal and murder in the name of their own greater good. The only high road to fight dictatorship is the one that gets down in the trenches.
Joe Biden, steeped in the tradition of bipartisanship and buoyed by a belief in personal relationships with colleagues who have been transformed from their former selves by addiction to power, will be blindsided by this autocratic GOP brick wall. He’s too old to radically shift his worldview, particularly when he believes his mandate is to bring the country together. While he reminisces about old friendships, the Trumpophants outside Washington and McConnell’s gang within will clobber him, not simply by obstruction but their ability to resist any popular pressure from liberal forces to respond. At this very moment, the cult media machine is pumping the helium into their bubble of resistance, increasing the possibility of violence as early as the Biden-Harris inauguration. How does one negotiate with a group who dissemble, refuse to bargain in good faith and almost never keep their word?
Cultists remain outside the tug of reality. The primary recruiting tools for Trumpology, the right wing media bubble including Trump/FoxNews, newer networks like OAN and Sinclair, Rush Limbaugh, and new underground social media outlets are all alive and well. Profits compel them to stay on the Trump train, even as there appears to be some momentary reshuffling by some in their commentary on the clownlike behavior of their leader. The cult will remain strong as the MAWA campaign for 2024 hits the road, perhaps even during the Biden-Harris inauguration to divert press attention from what must be a drastically scaled down event in the face of the pandemic. An alternative inauguration for the “true second term president” [in truth fairly deposed autocrat], anyone? An elected president mirrored by an uncrowned Napoleon in exile; a country divided in a non-territorial civil war. Trump/FoxNews will be there to cover the secession.
Strong evidence of the power of the cult is the continuing grift that the ex-president is running on his followers through appeals for donations for legal funds to continue the false narrative of a Biden election theft. No less a scam than Trump University or Trump Vitamins, the campaign is sending out millions of emails, aimed at their lists of contacts, primarily small time donors as well as small businessmen looking to score something from their association. The Trump girls, exemplified by Diamond and Silk, so emotive at his rallies are opening their wallets, particularly through automatic recurring donations. The small print in the appeal informs the donor that 70% of the donation goes to a Trump Leadership PAC that he can use at his discretion, totalling so far $170 million. IRS debt, $421 million in personal debt, legal defense against any or all of the upcoming legal actions from the NY Attorney General or the 5th District Attorney or Manhattan District Attorney over tax fraud and campaign violations could be covered by the haul, but it can’t cover it all. Alternatively, he can use it to maintain his lifestyle. The Art of the Deal author will keep it rolling as long as it works. Trumpology cultists are happy to sacrifice much like the faithful tithe to their respective churches. It’s not a sacrifice; it’s a duty. I can imagine an Alex Jones formatted network in his future where The Donald hawks some kind of Coronavirus prevention or treatment in between conspiracy rants.
Moscow Mitch is not a cultist; he’s a cynical pragmatist who sees Trump as a useful tool to maintain his position of power. While many GOP politicians elected through the Trump train have been initiated into the cult, many seasoned politicians like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are nonbelievers, passengers hanging on to get to White House station but ready to change seats as needed. Republican enablers have made an irrevocable Faustian bargain with the devil and can’t get off the train. Do some of them believe in the tenants of conservative Republicanism; maybe. It is afterall a philosophy that elevates individual success and denigrates failure without understanding the many societal factors that create individual success and undergird personal failure. It is a view of rugged individualism that substitutes a treasure trove of American myths for the actual course of events. Myth based philosophy can never be anything but false.
Not all of the 74 million voters for Trump are Trumpophants. Some were not seduced by a Democratic message that failed to connect how Biden-Harris would concretely help their lives, not even as far as pandemic relief. Certainly the pandemic hampered the campaign’s ability to communicate broadly and door to door on the ground. But their messaging was flawed as well.
Others, like the media darling Dade County Venezuelans and Colombians who have been wooed by Republicans for 4 years without an adequate on the ground Democratic counterargument that Medicare for all or a public option is not socialism. Certainly a well drawn comparison between the stormtrooper-like police response to peaceful social justice demonstrators and the state violence in their native countries would have been an effective counter to the drivel about anarchist rioters. They know that the violence in their country came from the state or the state’s corrupt collaboration with drug cartels. Random small disorganized groups armed with clubs, not bullets were not the problem. Still, because many were middle class when they emigrated and are ensconced in communities separated from dark skinned residents for whom they have little empathy, they were suckers for “they’re coming to your community”.
The fact that Democrats, too fixated on the apocalyptic end to democracy, failed to connect the pandemic to the troubles in people’s everyday lives can be seen in their poor showing down ballot. The question remains if the “anybody but Trump” voters actually believe that the Republican legislators who enabled the emergence of El Trumpe were reacting from personal distaste for the man but affirming economic growth as they perceive it as their primary concern. No doubt, they felt the tug of anxiety about the slippage of white privilege, although perhaps unconsciously. Are their better angels peeping out of their armpits?
Do the Georgia votes for Biden represent better angels when David Perdue got 10,000 more votes than Jon Ossoff, his Democratic challenger? Personal disgust for Agent Orange and perhaps commitment to the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ agenda, a big issue in the state, or evangelical revolt against pandemic regulations that banned church gatherings or pre-pandemic economic benefits, although the state agricultural sector has been suffering, are all possibilities. Perdue is a true Trump aper, a wealthy businessman who has likely been involved in insider stock trading around early pandemic briefings (and perhaps others not yet discovered). In recent reporting in the NY Times, Perdue made 2596 trades in one term, sometimes 20 a day. His transactions are about the same as the next 5 most active traders combined. He seems to regularly traffic in stocks in companies which his Senate committees oversee although he dumped all individual stocks in April after questions about his activity in the early days of the pandemic led to an investigation. He is probably not a Trumpology Cult member, just a shrewd propaganda strategist riding the wave. Yet, he can’t diverge from the script because, devoid of principles, he has no political future without it. Sadly, without integrity and empathy, he’s a flattened toothpaste tube devoid of better angel potential.
Even the Georgia election official who gave an emotional speech shaming Republican elected officials for inciting violence against poll workers is entangled in an illogical partisan web. In a PBS News interview, he lapsed into a narrative about his loyalty to the Republican party and that he would vote for the two Senatorial candidates among the most boisterous in the fake fraud movement. Why would he want to be represented by someone so unscrupulous, I ask. Because if he doesn’t, paraphrasing him, the Democrats will take over the legislative and executive branches and life as we know it will cease to exist. Boom! There you have it. Why wouldn’t politicians continue to engage in despicable acts if it doesn’t cost them votes? Does the election official not see that his plea will consequently fall on deaf ears. He has just admitted that he will support any kind of shady behavior as long as it doesn’t result in a sheriff stationed outside his door. Who is he kidding? Does he not cringe at the prospect of participating in that? Doesn’t he understand that he’ll have another vote in 2 and 4 and 6 years to remove the Democrats, just as for umpteen years I am still waiting to rid the state of Republican rule. That’s our system. And because he’s a cis white male, the world will not come to an end in the meantime (although it will continue to collapse if political leaders continue to ignore climate change. But that’s not the world the Georgian was thinking of).
Barack Obama still clings to the audacity of hope, although bruised by his own battles with the consolidating party of dictatorship in waiting for its own fuhrer. Still, he acknowledges the danger of the rightwing media silo that comfortably encloses and expands the Trumpology Cult, but a solution still eludes him. You can sense throughout his A Promise Land narrative that he looks for the best in every person he meets and is often a little incredulous when they prove to act on their villainous impulses. His assessment of Vladimir Putin is incisive, not a better angel in sight. But he understands his duty as president is to work with Russia when he can convince Medvedev that a particular action has shared benefit for both countries. Obama kinda has to believe in better angels. He is the living breathing example that the son of an African and white American can achieve anything in the United States, including being elected President. Unfortunately, that may have been the period before this one and the near future may be a descent into something else. Jon Meacham has said in The Soul of America, “Our [America’s] fate is contingent upon which element–that of hope or that of fear–emerges triumphant.” As fear abounds around us, we appear to be in for a bumpy ride.
If Obama’s election establishes that there are better angels, the next step is to determine how often Americans have acted on them. As a student of American history, the answer is seldom, but it isn’t never. The civil rights acts of the 1960s and Supreme Court decisions that supported them exemplify some of those moments, until they didn’t. The decades long fierce and ongoing resistance to integration and equal minority rights, I guess, is the expression of the worser devils who ultimately won out by the time of Ronald Reagan’s War on Crime, a euphemism for an assault on urban ghettos that transplanted Jim Crow to large and medium sized cities. In concert, when Supreme Court decisions walked back the gains that allowed for the growth of a minority middle class by introducing the doctrine of colorblindness into US law, the justices publicly acknowledged dominant caste privilege as the law of the land. I hear the thunder of haloes crashing to the ground.
The idea of better angels is no answer to the question why should the people in the lowest caste have to wait for the rise and fall of angels. Why should we not have what the dominant caste has? The answer is the caste system itself. Somebody’s got to be on the bottom and the people with the guns decided that would be us. We were chosen for capture and importation because our skin color made us easily identifiable and therefore more easily controlled. That legacy holds today as white people consistently call 911 when they find a brown body in a place that the caller believes they don’t belong. The quality of our lives matters not at all.
People can be deprogrammed from cults. Sometimes the person sees the hypocrisy itself, rejects the scam and decides to leave. Others like former Jihadists, white nationalists and scientologists require intensive interactions over an extended period, painfully dismantling the mental architecture that repeatedly confirmed absurd assertions that defied logic. The powerful human longing to belong to a group, generally severed abruptly by the cult itself, must be carefully realigned with a larger group identity, ideally American, rather than white. The Qanon people are in way too deep to be easily rescued.
Who then is going to take on this deprogramming? Without it, we will be in the continuing battle to retain our imperfect democracy for the foreseeable future while climate change, social justice, wealth inequality and anti-racism will be shoved into the back seat. By the time the better angels surface, we may all be underwater.
On December 1, 1893, Lucius Holt was lynched in Pike County Georgia.
oleblacklady 