We used to think - blissfully, eh?- that it was just incompetence, laziness, and a little creeping senility overshadowing one of the lesser intellects to grab so much power. We'd just weather it through, right? Somehow?
Then it starts to build, creeping at first but unrelenting, but it's just more of the same and who's really surprised? Grandpa is doddering a little more, hee hee, watch him go. Just a joke, eh? Just be polite and don't laugh to his face.
The money starts to drain, spent by appointees in an ever-increasing variety of ways of lining their own pockets, first by hundreds of thousands, then millions, then... who's still able to count? Those full pockets deny funding to Puerto Rico after a hurricane, public schools, infrastructure projects, food for the poor, veteran's benefits including healthcare so thousands of them die or suicide while in the waiting lines. Bids? Of course there were bids. Hey, look over there! Big sighs... just same ol' same old. Even the covid relief payouts got swept up with fraud, we're finding out.
We'll still just weather it all, right? Democracy will survive, reemerge after the next election. Won't it? I mean, what could happen? Caging babies? War? Pandemic?
Journalists will do their share of trumpeting the truth, won't they? Let us know what's in the freak shows, stop claim everything's just normal but a little sillier, and actually risk the consequences of truth telling because... journalism has a long proud history. Kinda?
Evidence starts showing up of what in any other circumstance would be flat out labeled treason, but the reporting of the investigation gets buried, redacted, released with reassurances by collaborators that black is white and the investigators are the criminals. But what can ya do, huh?
We can still entertain ourselves - a hopeful last link to sanity - by trading jokes like, 'Louie Gomert, after claiming he got the coronavirus because he wore a mask, is now saying he got pregnant because dozens of people told him to go f*** himself." Unfortunately, it doesn't help the fact that now WE are the heart of the pandemic. And there's more than you know about why that is happening. Here. Now. Bits and pieces are coming clear.
Let's go back a few years. Trump dismantled everything Obama. (He's black, you know.) Trump pulled our experts from China where they were following outbreaks of things like SARS and - wait for it - coronavirus, thus stopping our flow of information and any advance information available. Stateside, Trump eviscerated first the playbook for dealing with any kind of pandemic, second the materials, equipment, supply chains needed to deal with one, and third, the CDC's reputation and funding to deal with one. Then they took away its ability to find and report the truth of its ravages.
Once it started to hit here, it was laughed off, called a hoax, described as harmless or a mild inconvenience. FOX and other, worse "information" sources, piled on. It can too easily happen when any major network is run by non-Americans with unknown agendas. Lies became truth, truth became lies, conspiracy theories ran so wild that too many couldn't be bothered to sort out what was what. Values got screwed up. Appearance, money, personal choice topped the list of the new commandments, the new bill of "rights." (I blame Reagan for this, back in his "follow your bliss" campaign where responsibility was glossed over, washed away.) People spouted getting covid was a harmless choice that should never interfere with their fun. Contagion wasn't a concept, much less a danger to others.
The stockpiles of equipment like PPEs and ventilators were hoarded, and once finally released for distribution, found to have been left stockpiled without maintenance and thus unusable. It took a few weeks for them to be repaired - after reaching the states. Equipment ordered by states was confiscated by the federal government until delivery details became highly secret information, finally allowing shipments to arrive.
We scratched our heads. This didn't make sense in any logical way, taking away what was badly needed, fumbling, floundering, whatever actions being taken being counterproductive, when nearly anybody with a lick of common sense could have done it better. People were dying, in bigger and bigger numbers. Nothing was getting done on the federal level, and governors started becoming our heroes. Well, some anyway, the ones in our "blue" states. The Democratic ones.
The Presidential Daily Clown Show sowed confusion, with reined-in experts fighting to walk the line between pacifying Mr. Ego spewing his lies and informing us of the true dangers, both from the virus and many alleged but useless and dangerous "cures". Talk too frankly, get sidelined. Kowtow, you're still on stage to show off your latest colorful scarf. Respect? Who cares?
We thought that was as bad as it was going to get, still magically thinking what we saw plainly was what there was. Then more information started to emerge. Leaks began steamrolling, gaining voices. Jarrod, long since put in charge of the coronavirus response, long believed simply incompetent and too full of his own self importance, was revealed to have developed the policy of letting the blue states die. (Of course Donald approved.) Don't try to stop the virus because it's getting the "right" people, Democrats, Jews, "the coloreds". Deliberately let it spread in the idiotic belief that it wouldn't. "Their" people would be somehow immune when it magically disappeared.
Of course it hasn't. Part of their planning missed the obvious need to inform the virus to cooperate. (Hmmm, what to bribe it with?)
Not enough, yet? Let's talk about the Phillips contract, initiated under - guess who? - Obama. It's job was to provide a plentiful supply of new ventilators, at a cost of under $10,000 each. The White House postponed that contract three times. We didn't need them, right? After the pandemic started, Phillips contacted the administration offering to provide the ventilators early this summer, but were turned down!!! Instead, Mr. Art Of The Deal renegotiated the contract. We'll get our ventilators, now at a cost of over $15,000 each, to be delivered in ... 2022.
Hold your breaths, everybody. No, really.
We're tired, angry, worn out, pissed off, discouraged, eager for distractions, fearing whatever comes next. Our hopes cling to the November 3rd election, and keeping our eyes peeled for the next wrongdoing there, trying to be prepared, believing it our last hope, still not quite ready to acknowledge it might fail.
Surely all the shoes have dropped, haven't they? Won't Barr start following the law rather than following Trump? Won't the Supreme Court fight for real, impartial justice? There can't be anything of significance coming out of the revelations coming out of the latest Epstein investigation? Trump won't send more stormtroopers into new cities? There won't be more ways enacted to suppress voting? Surely Moscow Mitch McConnell will see the writing on the wall and in a last ditch effort to retain his seat of power, enable some kind of legislation with a whisper of humanity in it? Rather, that is, than killing all the social programs which keep the bottom third of us fed and housed? There can't possibly be anything more than our imaginations have come up with that our Diabolical Tantrum Baby could come up with still, just for attention, right?
And believing in Jesus will actually protect everybody from... everything?
Oh wait, not everybody.
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