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With Donald Trump’s Tulsa campaign rally right around the corner, MAGAmmunity is on the way. Even though Tulsa’s top health official warned that the Trump rally could become a “superspreader” event, MAGA rallies are in the works for Oklahoma and elsewhere.
Amid calls to “defund the police,” Donald Trump and most on the right have come out decidedly against transferring funds from law enforcement to social programs. They’re apparently fine with defunding everything else, though.
And here I thought we wouldn’t have troops on the street until closer to the election. The George Floyd protests have laid bare the underlying horriffic racism that has marred the United States throughout our history. Of course, Donald Trump is definitely not the guy we want in office to help heal our country’s racial wounds.
As we pass the horrible milestone of 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States, the Trump administration is handling the COVID-19 pandemic in the same way the Trump Organization has handled the real estate business — with bluster, overconfidence and fudged numbers. If they talked themselves into some favorable real estate deals, surely they can talk themselves out of a global health and economic crisis, right?
Call me pandemic worry wart, but I don’t have a good feeling about this reopening. The fast pace that social distancing restrictions are being lifted across the country is driven much more by politics than by public health. Of course we all want to fire up the ol’ economy and do whatever we want with whoever we want wherever we want — but that level of “freedom” may be in direct conflict with, you know, staying alive.
The biggest cheerleaders for “reopening” the United States (aka, lifting social distancing measures) are President Trump and Fox News. Keep in mind that Trump’s top doc, Dr. Anthony Fauci, thinks going too fast will have dire consequences. Never mind though, full speed ahead to a booming economy, say Trump and Fox News.
As states and counties across the United States begin to relax social distancing measures and “reopen” the economy, just remember— it’s the economists and politicians driving those decisions, not infectious disease doctors. The curve is definitely not yet flat.
President Trump just can’t help himself. If a thought enters his head, it must be the most tremendous and correct thought imaginable and he must immediately share it with the world. No need for research or relying on experts, watching Fox News is enough.
It’s one thing when right-wingers march around state capitols to rally for gun rights, it’s another when they march around (with their guns, of course) to rally for states to be “liberated” from the tyranny of public health measures. Just by being there together, defying the recommendations of infectious disease scientists and the mandates of governors, they are endangering us all.
Statues are being defaced and toppled across the country as the ripple effects from the police shooting of George Floyd continue. I’m all for getting rid of racist monuments to the Confederacy and removing the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park. But even though it might feel immediately satisfying, let’s not do it as part of protest actions.