Who's At Fault, Who's To Blame, What To Do

Josh Marshall is running a series of emails from California readers who are angry at various people and entities for the spike in cases in California and the renewed shutdown of various areas of the economy.  He began with "ME" who makes the usual case against selfish dickheads in the GOP who have turned this into another partisan football. Reader SK puts more onus on America's cultural hubris. I'm not sure that they are really too far apart. 

Two groups of people are flounting good public health measures: the Deranged and the Deluded. 

The Deranged are the Fox News/OANN consuming conspiracists that equate wearing a mask in Costco with Stalinism. These are Cult 45 members who are insisting that Covid is "just the flu" and therefore liberals are trying to destroy Trump's presidency by manufacturing a crisis where none exists. 

The Deluded are those who simply think "It won't happen to me, and if it does, it won't be that bad." Of course, the odds are that it WON'T be that bad. It seems clear that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic. But that one-in-five ratio is worse than playing Russian Roulette.

I've seen increasing social media pushback against opening schools in the fall. The basic argument is that "Teachers should not be putting their lives at risk to cover up Trump's failures to contain the pandemic."  OK, in an ideal world that's true, and I certainly would not be thinking about opening schools in the South right now. I feel pretty good about our plan, but I know it comes with some risks. I also am desperate to avoid prolonged online teaching, both for myself and my sons. 

I worry that just as the Right took masking as a political football, the Center-Left will turn returning to school as a political football. There are profoundly important reasons to get students back into school that simply do not apply to re-opening bars, restaurants and movie theaters. I don't want the people who are legitimately angry about the clusterfuck that has been the Trump maladministration's response to Covid-19 to somehow turn this decisions into an absolutest position. We need to open schools, but we need a plan. My guess is that states that have done better so far will do better with planning school reopenings. 

However, I do still worry about the Deluded, when it comes to schools. And by the Deluded, I mean the students. We know that teenagers have an over-inflated sense of their immortality. We know that they will not be diligent with their masking. We know that classrooms could become super-spreader events, even with good (but not perfect) masking.

I saw a post by an epidemiologist that outlined the three variables in a pandemic: Prevalence, Infectivity and Contact Rate. 

Working backwards, Contact Rate must be addressed by rigorous testing and the quick removal of those who are positive and the isolation of those they came into contact with until they can be tested. I just don't know how much we - as a school - will be able to test people. We need to limit the number of contact points between those who are infected and everyone else. Tricky, but not impossible.

Infectivity can be greatly reduced by masking, washing hands and social distancing. We are looking at reducing class sizes, which is great, but it looks like we will be inside. (I was hoping we might set up tents in some areas.) How well will students comply with reducing infectivity by following these procedures.  That's the wild card. Masks aren't perfect, but if we can get near-universal masking, we should be able to reduce infectivity enough for contact tracing to reduce Contact Rate.

Finally, our hope is that through testing and sanitary practices, we can reduce the prevalence of the virus. If the virus is simply not present, then we are safe. Most of the places where our students come from (in the Northeast) are doing a good job with this. We often talk about the "Taft Bubble," but hopefully we can create that in a positive way to create a pool of students, teachers and staff in which the virus is simply absent.  

The lack of a national policy is a disaster. The lack of universal masking is a tragedy.  If we masked everywhere in public for the next 2-3 months, I bet we could get the virus under control. (We are too big a country to eradicate it like New Zealand.) I think on a small scale states, cities and even my school can achieve this, but how will we contend with the Deranged and the Deluded?

Failing The Ayatollah Test

Even Khamenei gets it.

The Global Intersection Of Race And Class

In this interesting piece on the descendents of Confederates who fled to Brazil, there is a passage worth highlighting:

The Confederate flag? Everywhere. On flagpoles and knickknacks. Emblazoned on the dance floor. Clutched by men clad in Confederate battle gray. Decorating the grounds of the cemetery that holds the remains of veterans of the rebel army — the immigrants known here as the confederados.

In a country that has long been more preoccupied with class divisions than racism, the Confederate symbols, stripped of their American context, never registered much notice. But now, as the racial reckoning in the United States following the killing of George Floyd inspires a similar reexamination of values in Brazil, that has begun to change.

Let's leave aside the entire WTF story of a bunch of people celebrating the Confederacy in Brazil and look at the bolded part. Brazil - like the US - is a multiracial society with a legacy of slavery. Slavery ended quite late (1888) but without a civil war. The legacy of slavery in Brazil is not something I'm frankly familiar with and don't want to speak of something I don't understand, but I would be very, very surprised if there was not a high correlation between race and class in Brazil.

Nevertheless, there is a strong tendency in other parts of the world to look past race and see only class. There was this kerfuffle with Trevor Noah and the French government over whether the World Cup winning soccer team was "French" or "Franco-African."  While France and other countries have a long history of dealing with class issues, they really don't want to have conversations about race.  Meanwhile, the US doesn't like to talk about class, but we have been talking about race off and on since the 1830s, and certainly since the 1950s. 

During the primary season, the Sandernistas were so focused on class that they insisted on negating the experience of race. This - in part - explains why Biden crushed it among Black voters.  Sanders - but more so his white supporters - didn't want to talk about race unless it was really about class. This fits broadly into the global Socialist focus on class, with its roots in Marxist academic and political theory.  

Europe was so overwhelmingly white for so long, that European society was never riven along racial lines (except within the broader context of their empires, but that's a different story). The only slightly different ethnic groups present in substantial numbers - the Jews and the Roma - were routinely persecuted. Europe wasn't free from bigotry, it was simply free of large numbers of racial minorities.  As Arab and North African refugees begin to migrate into Europe, Europeans are coming face to face with neo-Nazi and other forms of race-based white nationalist politics, just as America has for centuries.

As we examine race in America, though, it is important to note that intersection between race and class. Racial subjugation of black and brown Americans has been economic as well as social. The legacy of lost and stolen wealth creates a wealth gap between white and black Americans that is real and persistent.

As America looks at ways to repair (or perhaps better stated as 'truly create') our sense of national unity, we need to understand that race intersects profoundly with class.  As the rest of the world becomes more diverse, they will have to contend with issues of race through more than the lens of simple class politics.

Worst President Ever

Max Boot does a good job laying out why Trump is the worst president ever, by cataloguing his misdeeds...since April.  If you just took the maladministration and corruption from 2020, he would likely rank as the very worst president ever.  But let's look at the competition.

The only president whose personal corruption comes close to Trump's is Nixon. His personal involvement in the Watergate crimes (and quite a few others, including prolonging the Vietnam war by scuttling 1968 peace talks).  Nixon's primary crimes were about power not personal wealth.  Trump's pardon of Roger Stone, interference in the Michael Flynn prosecution and firing of Inspector Generals qualifies as a Nixonian level of corruption.  We can, of course, throw in his impeachment for the Ukraine affair.  So, in 2020 alone, he's worse than Nixon.

The only presidents less competent at the basic task of doing his job are Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Those two non-entities were elected president because they were "doughfaces," Northern Democrats who were OK with slavery and its expansion. As the nation began to burn with the fires that led to the Civil War, they mostly made things worse or simply proved unequal to the job -wedded to an extreme states rights ideology. However, my belief is that there was little Buchanan could do by the time he was president. Seward was right, it was an irrepressible conflict.  Trump, however, has overseen the return of an extreme states rights...well, it's not an ideology so much as a default. The federal government has simply stopped governing in the face of a pandemic that has killed at least 137,000 Americans and will likely blow past 200,000 before August gets here.

Even Herbert Hoover made some small efforts to arrest the Great Depression.  They were meager and unequal to the task, but he at least tried to move outside his comfort zone with things like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the beginning of some aid to states. Trump's entire plan for the economy is to "re-open" and kill more Americans...which will cause the economy to shudder back to a halt.

(I'm leaving George W. Bush off this list as being too recent to properly evaluate. Bush shared Trump's lack of basic curiosity about the way the world actually works, but he was not a fundamentally horrible human being, just a slob who ceded his presidency to actual horrible human beings.)

Finally, there is my pick for worst pre-Trump President: Andrew Johnson. Like Johnson, Trump has ripped open racial wounds, embraced white supremacy and hampered the efforts to make America a more just nation.  Johnson was intemperate, egotistical and ill-educated like Trump, but unlike Trump, Johnson was not personally corrupt, and Johnson ultimately bowed to Congressional pressure.

As someone said, Trump is not only the worst president ever, he's the worst American ever.

As of now, the only Republican to condemn Trump's brazenly corrupt pardon of Stone is Mitt Romney.  There is only one principled Republican left in Congress.  The fish rots from the head, but it rots all the way down.

The Next Trump

Trumpism is defined by its relentless appeal to white grievance, but luckily for the country, it appears as if Trump's malignant narcissism and profound lack of intelligence has limited his appeal to about 40% or less of the voting population. I would guess his floor is around 35%, and we might see it in polling before the election.  He will then do better than that, because some reluctant or shy Trump voters will "come home" on election day.  But 40% feels right for support for the GOP and Trumpism - which have largely become identical.

Trump is a uniquely clownish oaf. However, the roadmap to victory that he created within the GOP will be there after he's gone (to prison, hopefully). The next GOP politician to use that roadmap could be subtler and more intelligent than Trump. If it's another TV blowhard like Tucker Carlson...I'm not worried.  Carlson has ample tape of him defending and expanding on Trumpism.  He's not subtle in his racism, and the fact that he's a TV personality makes it easier to tar with the Trump 2.0 brush.

Tom Cotton has the smarts and the complete lack of scruples to become the next Trump. Luckily, he has the charisma of wet socks.

To me, the most worrisome figure is Dan Crenshaw.  Crenshaw is handsome, bright and subtler than Carlson or Cotton. I don't know how much he embraces Trumpism or if he simply complicit in his silence. My worry is that he's cynical enough to grab the roadmap Trump used and not aware enough of how that roadmap becomes its own destiny. Decrying "political correctness" is an easy enough rhetorical nod.  Amping up the volume enough to reach the WWC GOP base means a constant series of escalations.

My sons play something called "the Penis Game," where you go back and forth saying the word "penis" a little bit louder than the person before you. Republican grievance politics has become the new "Penis Game" where you have to say the racism and the fascism a little louder than the person before you. I have no idea what is in Dan Crenshaw's heart. Maybe he's a closet Mitt Romney waiting for his opportunity to reject Trump and Trumpism.  He is equating Black Lives Matter with antifa activities, so I'm hardly optimistic.

There has to be a Republican who can lead the party out of its racist, authoritarian dead-end. Otherwise the party will and should die. Crenshaw just seems like he will re-package the same hateful politics with a smoother delivery.

SCOTUS Wriggles Off The Hook

The Supreme Court had the opportunity to return America to the rule of law today and they only went half way down that road. The first decision allowing the Manhattan DA to subpoena Trump's financial records is good and proper. The second decision is basically a punt of the issue back to lower courts. The seven judge majority basically agrees that Trump should not be exempt from scrutiny but then allows for a delay that will drag out past the election.

Trump's adamant refusal to disclose his financial records has been an issue since the 2016 campaign. There are three reasons why he has failed to do so.  First, and least likely, is Trump's combative nature means that he fights everything tooth and nail.  Seems sketchy.  Second, Trump is really fairly poor and doesn't want that exposed.  Third and most likely, combines the second rationale with evidence of various criminal activity including money laundering and other forms of fraud.  We know Trump's previous business endeavors and charities have been found guilty of fraud, so there is little reason to suspect that his business dealings are any different.

These decisions are broadly "good" because they end any attempt and presidential "infallibility," but they are bad, because we will not know exactly how big a crook Trump is before the election.

I Wonder

Are Tucker Carlson's attacks on Senator Duckworth because the GOP is afraid she might be the Veep pick or because they want to goad Biden into picking her for some reason? My guess is that they are afraid that Biden will pick her.  I'm ambivalent about Duckworth, mainly because I know very little about her other than her very impressive biography. Still, that biography alone might be enough.

An Important Read

The dominant police culture is broken.

Witness To Sociopathy

Mary Trump's book is going to be the latest iteration of the Trump Tell All. Ms Trump, who is a clinical psychologist and a witness to how warped the dynamics of the Trump family are, will fill in more details into a picture that we already know.  Much like John Bolton's book or any of the ones to follow, this book will simply flesh out a little bit more of the basic contours of Trump that should have been evident to any sentient observer.

Trump is not a smart or curious man who engages with ideas.

Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder and is a sociopath who cannot see value in others except as they bring value to him.

Trump is more defined by what he hates than what he loves.

This was all in the open in 2016, but it was largely banned from polite discourse. Now, we can see if we have eyes to see. Many Americans don't. All of these tell-all books will not move the needle much at all. Trump looks to be headed for getting somewhere between 35-43% of the vote and hopefully a historic defeat. No book will penetrate the protective ignorance of that 35-43% of the people.

However, this book and others like it are the first draft of the historical record.  I suppose in that sense they have some importance.

Good Summary

This summary of the politics of race by Dan Balz is fairly authoritative.

Buried towards the end is my real worry.  Young people are cynical about electoral politics.  Balz mentions the problems of young black voters who see black elected officials in their communities unable to address their concerns.

There is a natural tension between activists and politicians.  I worry that activists are unimpressed by structural constraints on politicians.  It's those constraints that have withheld Trump.  They are frustrating but necessary.

There Are (Almost) No Good Republicans

Vote this one out, Iowa.

The creation of Cult 45 means that Republicans can't break with Trump, even as he drags down their credibility with anyone who is not already in Cult 45. Because the GOP tends to defer to their party's leader, they are marching lockstep into the maw of historical (and hopefully electoral) judgment.

Here's another good example of Kool Aid drinking.

Herd Immunity

Early in the virus, a few countries like Britain and Sweden seemed to embrace the idea of establishing her immunity by protecting the vulnerable, but letting everyone else get the disease. This did not work, because people were needlessly dying.

Anyway, it sure seems like we have backed into a herd immunity strategy. Because so many people can be asymptomatic, even though the confirmed number of infected Americans is almost 3,000,000, some projections suggest we could be closer to 15,000,000 Americans who have been infected. The question is whether we have acquired enough therapeutic options to prevent deaths from reaching 500,000 by New Year's.

This Is How To Write A Headline

At Mount Rushmore, Trump Exploits Social Divisions, Warns of Left Wing "Cultural Revolution" In Dark Speech Ahead of Independence Day.

I've seen clips of the mumbled, sweaty performance of lines someone else (Stephen Miller? Tucker Carlson?) wrote for him. Trump's speech - indeed his entire campaign message - is a litany of threats, warnings and grievances. I suppose this helped him "win" in 2016, but he's the incumbent president. He spoke of "great carnage" in his inauguration speech, but it was his responsibility to fix that.  Yet, we have tape of him saying "I don't take any responsibility."

America is seething with racial injustice. He's making it worse.

America is staggering through a pandemic. He's making it worse.

America's standing in the world is collapsing. He's making it worse.

"I'm willing to kill Americans in order to get re-elected" is pretty much his campaign message.

Josh Marshall is right.  None of this had to happen.

Thanks, Republicans.

This Is Actually Helpful

What are infectious disease specialists doing with regards to personal habits?

Big In The Land Of Masked People

Feels good to not worry so much.