100,000 dead and...yawn.

I had this random thought. Back in 2001, there was this moment that we rallied around. On 9/11 planes were flown into the World Trade Center buildings, taking them down.

It's a (mostly) unexpected terror attack.
We show empathy for New York, and we
unite as a country.

I distinctly remember one ad campaign. "They thought they could divide us, they were wrong."

We had an enemy who we could identify (they were essentially boiled down to "Muslims who wanted to change our way of life") and it wasn't clear where, when, or if they might strike again.

But here's the thing. We allowed some of our constitutional rights to be subverted. We allowed big brother to watch us. New banking rules. New security rules. Hell we were okay with a version of a strip searches at airports.

Sure it was probably (mostly) warranted. And arguably necessary.

But on that day 6,000 people died. Not to use their memory in a bad way - this was indeed a tragedy - but put that in perspective with what's happening today.

100,000 have died because of a virus. That's nearly 20x the number that died on 9/11.

Again New York suffers the most, but in this case we hear people deriding New York. It's too..whatever and we can't be bothered to care or help them.

And instead of uniting, we're fighting with each other. There's no enemy per se. We buy toilet paper and carry guns into legislative buildings to protest....Something.

We tell people to stay at home. To wear a mask. To social distance to stop the spread. And what we hear is "No you're infringing!"

Dear leader is inept and clueless. He wants this to just be over and wish it away. He blames everyone he can think of. He starts talking up the military because that's going to protect us against a virus I assume?

And people want to just back to "life as we knew it" and I don't think we will be able to. There's another evolutionary step we'll take. More security. More screenings. More things that change "our way of life."

And I think I finally understand why this is a problem. When there's a world issue we release our military on it. We chant "USA" and "support our troops"...there's an enemy. And we have to protect our way of life. That idea of American exceptionalism or the ideal.

And in this case, our military can't be utilized. It's an unseen enemy. There is no exceptionalism in play. And what we're asking a nation to do is *actually* sacrifice for the way of life. And that MAGA ideal that the "incompetent, sociopathic, impeached president" has been touting may be lost, especially the "great."

That's simple unacceptable. We need to just go back to living the way we living and supporting our troops and deriding immigrants.

And the sacrifice becomes more about just letting the virus run through us. Better to embody (stupidly) Patrick Henry's immortal words "give me liberty or give me death" quite literally - than to find ways to fight it.

Sports in bizarro world

I woke up this morning and turned on a broadcast of the only live sports currently on: Korean baseball.

It's bizarre for so many reasons....it's sports like, and it's baseball, but it's in Korea so you can't read players names (not that you would know them anyway). There are no fans in the stands. Its quiet. Umps are wearing masks, as are any non-players. It's 6am. The announcers aren't at the game - they're in their own houses, so there are oddities in the way they interact with each other and the game itself.

How they handle it (being a country that in the whole takes the virus seriously): they check temperatures regularly, and test whenever there are symptoms reported or observed or if temperatures are high.

And yes, boog (at one point he was a marlins broadcaster) is one of the announcers, and he made a marlins joke about teams playing in front of empty stands.

Snoop Dogg listening to “Let it Go”

This makes me oddly happy. 

Wartime presidents

The term "wartime president" didn't really come up until WWII, when FDR rallied a nation, set about fighting an actual war, with an actual enemy, to produce ships, planes, equipment, and more. He acted in a way that would support the growing war effort.

So there is no clear definition for the term. However, it's been applied at times to presidents who rallied a nation to fight a common enemy. 

Each had the courage to take personal responsibility for their actions – and, equally courageous, for their inaction. The courage to admit error and learn from it.  

As I noted earlier the term was coined under FDR, and somewhat became a thing because of what Winston Churchill did in England in 1940. In short, he saw Germany as an aggressor and boosted production of aircraft, taking a risk in rallying a nation. He said of this: "To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour."

Roosevelt a short time later, likewise rallied our nation to achieve greater things. And this is how he became the war time president. He harnessed the power and prestige of the federal government to mobilize the national effort.

First he saw the threat. 

And the second thing he did was financial. He managed to get appropriations to support the effort.  

After that, he directed companies to produce ships, equipment, aircraft, and equipment.

And he did this *before* Germany invaded France, because he saw the threat mounting and acted decisively to counter it.  

FDR was well aware of the risks. And he proceeded in spite of them. He didn't shrink, rather he got bolder. There were many who preferred that America ignore foreign conflicts. Amusingly one was called "the America First Committee" which sounds like something trump might have made a slogan. 

Roosevelt said of them:  "Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead—danger against which we must prepare. But we well know that we cannot escape danger, or the fear of it, by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads."

And I should note that the other president who you could say presided over a war in that sense was Lincoln.

It might very well be the most apt parallel to today. The nation was divided over something that seems almost silly. And as it happened, the Union sustained a long string of battlefield defeats in the first years of the Civil War. But Lincoln did not blame these losses on the generals, the Union governors or anyone else. Instead he made the hard and unpopular decision to pursue the war – fully expecting that it would cost him his reelection. 

Because it was in the best interests of ultimately uniting a nation. 

So trump thinks this will help him with re-election, even though he has done exactly the opposite of what FDR or Lincoln did. 

Trump punted on responsibility for preparation and said early on that "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China" and later doubled down saying "It's going to disappear. One day—it's like a miracle—it will disappear."

And then when it did spread here, he had the audacity to say, "I don't take responsibility at all."

And as for the decisions Roosevelt made in gearing up production, trump didn’t and then said this  "We're a backup. We're not an ordering clerk. We're a backup." Trump essentially told states to procure materials on their own, saying the federal government is "not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we're not a shipping clerk."

If you look at what it takes to be successful, it's four things. Let’s look at those and see how trump did. (1) accountability. He gave us the middle finger. (2) financial. He never asked for funds to do anything. (3) working at defeating an enemy.  There isn't one. If you say it's the virus then what is he doing to try and defeat it? And (4) Gearing up production for a greater good. He didn't rally us to do anything. In fact if there’s an opposite, he’s doing that. 

So for comparison, let's look through history and see presidents who were in office during a war, let's see how they did in their re-election bids.

War of 1812 - James Madison. Won re-election, though the war wasn't a huge factor. 

Civil war - Lincoln, won re-election but died in office. Andrew johnson served afterward, as the war ended, and was not re-elected. . 

World war 1 - Woodrow Wilson. Won re-election as the war was ongoing. 

The depression - not so much a war but it was another big moment. Herbert Hoover was president.  Lost his bid for re-election 

WWII - FDR, won re-election several times. But he also took over and led us in rebounding from the depression; he may have been our nations greatest leader. 

Korea - Harry Truman Lost his bid for re-election 

Vietnam - this one swallowed up many presidents including Eisenhower (not re-elected), Kennedy (died in office), Johnson (He was re-elected but the kennedy assassination was a driving factor more than the war), and to a point Nixon (left office).  Ford took over and led us to the end of the war but also wasn’t re-elected 

Cold War - this was fairly complicated and spanned for many years. You could argue that that Reagan won re-election based at least in part because of his efforts in the Cold War.

Iraq - elder bush was not re-elected. 

9/11 - again not so much a war, but W won re-election 

So as you can see, the bump that trump perceives as a benefit for his re-election isn't necessarily that. When the nation is in peril, the eyes turn to the leader. If they are good at their job and lead us through it, they get to remain in office. And if not, then the person behind the deli counter is saying "next!"

Trump is pretty much failing us on all fronts and should (hopefully) be relegated to the dust bin of history. The "Ineffective and incompetent presidents" wing of the museum. 

Howard Stern hates Trump supporters and says Trump does too - New York Daily News

https://www.nydailynews.com/snyde/ny-howard-stern-trump-hates-supporters-20200512-k3z6fmgqgbbtxjsyocj46mtvse-story.html

Donald Trump Acts Like He’s a King

I got issues...

Of course the idiot in chief started with the virus being a hoax, then he started the blame game, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?

But the issue I have is with the rhetoric that is being spilled by the dotard, by the gop on the whole, and by "conservative media outlets." They still are holding steadfast that it's not a threat to the general public and life should "return to normal"... that more people die from the flu, from car crashes, or from birdwatching.

They quote the numbers correctly (somewhat surprisingly; who knew? They can do math). But what they're missing is context.

I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday, following comments about school reopening. This group took umbrage with keeping schools closed, and called anyone who believed in science, who was exercising caution, a libtard, socialist, leftist, dem something or another. They told of personal experiences, and their braveness because they're unlikely to get it (even if they are in a vulnerable age group).

Because obviously bravery and name calling will prevent this virus from spreading.

The context they are missing is how virulent this is. How it can spread quickly among people. And how it is mutating in various ways, making it harder to really understand. So yes, the odds of dying from it remain relatively low - for the time being. And yeah, the odds of getting fairly sick from it are a little higher, but still low. But the number of people who have tested positive is still low *because we've taken steps to slow the spread*. With no immunity and no vaccine, we can't just go "okay, we're good, let's just go back to large gatherings."

It's not that simple.

A quick bit of math. Let's suppose 20% of the population gets it (say 66,000,000 people). And 2% of them die. That's 1,320,000 people who might die, just because we want to return to a previous state of being.

You may say 20% seems like a lot. A recent count says that 8.3 million tests have been done in the US. There have been 1.4 million confirmed cases. That's about 17% and excludes people who didn't get tested, but died of the virus anyway. And since this is a small percentage of the population who have access to (and in some cases can afford testing), I would posit the number is actually much higher, perhaps 30% instead of 20%.

You may also say (ignorantly) that it's less than 1% of the population on the whole. Then you really don't get this. There's a secondary issue that there don't appear to be any antibodies that last, and no immunity. So you could get it more than once. And we don't know how your body will react to a second (or third, or fourth) exposure. So keeping it running through society will just keep the death toll mounting. Maybe we develop an immunity over time. Maybe there's limited effect after a first exposure. We don't know enough yet to make a determination - and that's a scary notion. So it could be a continual, repeating 1% of the population that dies off.

But in any case, the rate of acceleration would probably increase, meaning it propagates faster. And that would overwhelm healthcare in every city.

So. No. The only viable option is to stay the course, and find new ways to conduct business. Sure, we could allow for takeout, or limited number of barber seats to be used. But maybe they have different hours to accommodate more people. But movies? Sports events? Large gatherings? Those don't seem like good ideas. And face masks should be worn at all times for now - at least until we know more.

Maybe we keep looking for ways to allow for less-risky travel and vacations. Maybe we just need to be smarter about how we approach it, rather than diving in headfirst or "throwing caution to the wind."