Paul McCartney and Wings – Live and Let Die
Rant
It’s not often (at least, I don’t think it’s often) that I just go off on a rant. But this is the day, and this essay might be categorized in the “rant” column. Take it for what it is, but it’s happening.
Yesterday, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, toured a factory in Arizona that makes facemasks. In the COVID-19 world, they are doing important work: facemasks help protect people from giving the virus to others, and from getting the virus themselves. The music playing in the background: Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney and Wings. But in what was undoubtedly an intentional act, the President chose not to wear a mask. And the others around him didn’t either.
It wasn’t that the President was against all protective devices. He wore the protective eyewear needed in the factory environment. No, he was simply making a false point about the virus. He was saying, “It’s over, and facemasks are really not needed”. The theme song was the heavy-handed way of underlining the point: some will live, some will die, but the country is going to open up, regardless of what Dr. Fauci or the rest of the medical community says. We don’t even need a Corona-Virus taskforce anymore.
Money
This isn’t about those “workers” who need to get back to their jobs. There are other ways they could be cared for: countries all over the world are literally paying folks to stay home to stop the spread of COVID-19. And it certainly isn’t about “the poor” at all: the President knows that the death rate among the poor is greater than any other group, and particularly among minorities. But they are also the most “essential workers” out in the community. They are already working, and getting sick, and dying at a greater proportion than everyone else.
No, those “poor workers” need to GET BACK TO WORK. Our meat packing plants have turned into hotbeds of COVID? Too bad, we are ordering them reopened, ordering those workers back into a viral soup. If they don’t, then Trump’s voters won’t get their boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 80-20 hamburgers because they won’t be in the stores – and the nation won’t stand for that!
Clock’s Ticking
In what seems like another lifetime, Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia criticized the Democrats of the House for impeaching the President on “…a clock and a calendar,” accusing them of hurrying ahead of the facts. Well, here’s the real “clock and calendar;” it’s the clock of the crashing economy, and the calendar of the 2020 Presidential election.
President Trump knows that his only chance of re-election, if there’s any remaining chance at all, is based on the James Carville phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid”. If Trump can’t show the ‘V’ velocity of economic growth by Labor Day, then he knows the family “party” is over in the White House. The VIP’s on Jared’s list will lose their “free lunch”. So people need to get their meat, and workers need to get to work, even if it’s at the risk of their lives.
This doesn’t impact the “white collar” workers, safely working from the couch at home. And this doesn’t affect the old retired folks, many Trumpers, hiding away in their retirement homes. The government will find a way to “fudge” the statistics on deaths in nursing homes, so that we don’t really see the contagion burning through our elderly. Oh, they died of pneumonia, or heart failure, or old age. COVID-19, well we didn’t test for that, so we will never know.
Excuses
In fact, while we’re fudging numbers, let’s make sure that no one trusts the facts. Social media is absolutely stuffed with fake doctors saying fake things about COVID, and Trump sycophants re-tweeting all of that nonsense over and over again. What’s the old advertising adage, if you hear something five times it’s true? Trump’s social media strategy will make sure we all hear the lies fifty times. It doesn’t make it valid, but it does make it even more difficult for the real truth to be heard.
Guess what: China hid the fact they had a virus. They didn’t tell the rest of the world that COVID-19 was burning through their population. They hoarded protective gear, and ventilators, and all the other stuff they needed, and didn’t tell anyone. And they certainly have lied about the number of fatalities; it’s hard to imagine that China had fewer deaths than New Jersey.
That doesn’t let Trump off the hook. US Intelligence warned ISRAEL (the nation) about COVID-19 in November 2019 (I25). You think they didn’t tell their own President? But it didn’t fit in with the Trump program, he was cutting a “great deal” with China at the time. Instead of preparing, developing tests, tracking the virus, and keeping it out of the United States, Trump ignored the problem. Sure he was being impeached. I guess that the Democrat’s fault, we knew he couldn’t chew gum and walk, that we elected a President with a ten second attention span. He let COVID in, and we’re suffering for it.
Strategy
So the Trump campaign strategy for 2020 is no longer about Biden and the Ukraine. It’s not even about Make America Great Again. It’s all summed up by Paul McCartney’s song: let the corona-virus spread, as long as the Dow Jones goes back up again. The brokers will be fine – the “essential workers” and the elderly, well: Live and Let Die.
