August 28, 2020
Dear Interested Readers,
From Here to the Election, Expect the Unusual and Bizarre
It has been a violent and disturbing week as we have witnessed yet more dramatic displays of the effect of our continuing abuse of the environment and our national problems with violence associated with racial tensions and disturbing police actions. In the midst of the concerns about the fires in California and Colorado (my son and his family live in the redwoods above Santa Cruz and have been evacuated since there are fires at the edge of their town), Hurricane Laura in Louisiana, the demonstrations and deaths in Kenosha, Wisconsin, we hardly noticed that we are approaching six million COVID-19 infections and passed 180,000 deaths on our way to more than 200,000 deaths by election day. Simultaneously, some of us, either out of curiosity or some exaggerated sense of responsibility, have endured one of the most disgusting political exercises in memory as the Republicans and the president repeatedly denied responsibility for anything, tried turning their failures into great victories, misrepresented or lied about Joe Biden and other Democrats, and abused the White House and norms of behavior while more than a thousand party loyals gathered cheek to jowl, mostly without masks, in the equivalent of a middle finger gesture to our collective effort to control the spread of the virus.
It has been a very difficult week across this great country. One wonders what to expect over the next two months running up to and an election where there are real concerns about barriers to voting and the intrusion of foreign influence. To top it all off the president has suggested that he is not sure if he will accept the election results. Realistically, the results may remain in doubt for weeks after election day.
In a non traditional and “norm” busting, if not illegal, setting with dozens of American flags flanked by two huge Trump Pence banners, and The White House as a beautiful backdrop, last night after an evening full of lies and misrepresentations, the president’s daughter, Ivanka, who is a presidential advisor ,and was perhaps was violating the Hatch Act, spewed more lavish praise drawn from yet more lies or distorted facts in her introduction of her father. Following Ivanka’s norm busting precedent, the president and first lady dramatically descended the stairs from the balcony of the White House that overlooks the South Lawn, as his maskless sycophants spewed the aerosolized secretions of their potentially virus containing airways into the evening with their cheers. It was a scene that exceeded my most lavish nightmares of the past three and a half years.
Our Constitution speaks to the centrality of the electorate and our leader’s responsibility to the people. This scene was the reverse, and more consistent with the pomp of a dictatorship than a representative Democracy. The spirit of the whole mess probably caused every previous president, with perhaps the exception of Nixon, to wince in disbelief had they been able to see the spectacle.
If you missed it, you can see the whole disgusting evening on YouTube. Fast forward past Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell, and other enablers until you get to the over the top speech of Ivanka where at 2:01:30 you can see the spectacularly gaudy entrance, and get a feel for how dramatic an abuse of power the evening was. What follows is even more remarkable. The president topped all of his enablers in praise of himself and in the lies and misinformation he presented about his opponent. What else would you expect from a man who has a need to frequently remind us that he passed a screening test for dementia.
I owe you a confession. I was so bored that I fell asleep in my chair somewhere near the beginning of his speech, and did not wake up until the evening news was fading into the Stephen Colbert show about 12:20. My wife did not have the heart to wake me, but thanks to YouTube, I have now seen it all. If you’re interested you can click here to read the transcript. It follows some comments by Glenn Thrush of the New York Times which are worth your time to read. Below is “the meat” of Thrush’s introduction.
It was an in-between effort — neither as vivid and shocking as his “American Carnage” inaugural address, nor as fun and freelancing as one of his beloved rallies, which the pandemic has prevented him from hosting.
The address was suitably scathing (“Joe Biden is not the savior of America’s soul — he is the destroyer of America’s jobs, and if given the chance, he will be the destroyer of American greatness”), characteristically filled with falsehoods, slowed by digressions (there was an odd paean to Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill) and marred by amateurish glitches that could have been zapped with a quick Wikipedia search.
No, James Madison did not sign the Declaration of Independence.
But, in the main the staid surroundings influenced the prose. The speech was conventional, at times even inducing yawns (visible because few on the South Lawn wore masks). And he avoided directly addressing the most explosive issue of the convention, the shootings and protests in Kenosha, Wis., although he name-checked the city in a list of places overrun by street violence.
But words, in a sense, were subsidiary to the images — which is why he insisted on smashing norms by staging a political rally on the White House grounds.
Mr. Trump is as visual as he is verbal, maybe more so.
As a candidate he would often sit in the control room with the studio engineers after an appearance, and watch himself with the sound turned off to see how he looked, a trick he learned from Fox News impresario Roger Ailes.
He expected people would take issue with his words on Thursday. They always do. But he created the visual he wanted.
I found a Washington Post article by Philip Rucker, Colby Itkowitz, Felicia Sonmez and John Wagner associated with a three minute video to have the best “return on time invested” ratio of all that I have looked at this morning. I captured for you convenience the sequence of quotes they reported from the speech. Judge for yourself, and what does he mean by “profoundly” accept”
-I kept my promise.
-Recent months, our nation and the world has been hit by the once in a century pandemic that China allowed to spread around the globe. They could have stopped it, but they allowed it to come out.
-In a new term as president, we will again build the greatest economy in history, quickly returning to full employment, soaring incomes and record prosperity.
-My fellow Americans, tonight, with a heart full of gratitude and boundless optimism, I profoundly accept this nomination for president of the United States.
-Joe Biden may claim he is an ally of the light. But when it comes to his agenda, Bidden wants to keep us completely in the dark.
-For 47 years Joe Biden took the donations of blue collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses.
-Bidden is weak.
-He takes his marching orders from liberal hypocrites who drive their cities into the ground while fleeing far from the scene of the wreckage.
-The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and driven from society as we know it.The far left wants to coerce you and scare you out of saying what you know to be true.
-Americans build their future. We don’t tear down our past.
-Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism.
-If Joe Biden doesn’t have the strength to stand up to wild-eyed Marxists like Bernie Sanders and his fellow radicals, and there are many—There are many, many. We see them all the time. It’s incredible, actually. Then how is he ever going to stand up for you? He’s not. The fact is, I’m here. What’s the name of this building? (He turns around and points to the White House, amid cheers and laughter.) But, I’ll say it differently. The fact is, we’re here, and they’re not.
-And we will make America greater than ever before. I am very, very proud to be the nominee of the Republican Party. I love you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you very much.
I agree with the assessment of the Post’s writers:
In formally accepting the Republican presidential nomination from the South Lawn of the White House, Trump cast himself as an insurgent rather than the incumbent he is, railing against Biden as eminence of “the failed political class.” He blamed the former vice president and his Democratic Party for the nation’s chronic socioeconomic problems as well as for the anger and unrest coursing through the country today.
“This is the most important election in the history of our country,” Trump said. “This election will decide whether we save the American Dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”
It is easy to see that Trump’s campaign will be designed to try to displace a review of his inadequacies with fear of riots in the streets and rampant socialism if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected. The president touts all that he has done, when he has not done all that he claimed we would do, but claims he will fix what he ignores that he didn’t fix the first time around. The campaign is designed to have us ignore his role in the current conflicts over the environment, racial strife, and economic inequity, not to mention our huge losses to his poor management of the pandemic. His plan is to use fear and the possibility of socialism to his advantage. It is amazing to realize that he has a very real chance to pull it off. The 1500 people on the South Lawn last night are just the tip of the iceberg of those who for reasons that are hard to understand want more of what he has demonstrated he can deliver. He said not one word about the health of the nation. It all ended in fireworks that encircled the Washington Monument in yet another example of his in your face violation of “norms” and the law.
What lies ahead will be more lies and pomp. I shudder to think about what will happen to the health of millions of Americans if his quest for a second term is successful. What will become of our cities as racial tensions continue to rise, and what will our answer be to nature as we remain vulnerable to the “take what you can now” mentality of a man who disregards science? We can endure any hardship, but what will the realities be after four more years of his incompetence. I don’t want to risk how far we might fall.
The next two months will probably contain many surprises. You should feel vulnerable because you are. You should be anxious because the outcome is uncertain. You should be active because to sit back and just wait to see what happens might lead to more of the same undermining of norms and much more. Never for a moment suspect that we have endured the worst. I am not seeking to enhance your fear, but I am adding my small voice to those who, like Barack Obama, warn us that this is a pivotal moment. Do not be complacent. There is too much to lose.
Accommodating to Change: More Than You May Want To Know About My Personal Choices
I have been laying low in the age of COVID-19. I have not had a haircut. My curls now have passed my collar on the way to my shoulders and an eventual ponytail. I did trim my beard back from Santa Claus proportions. We have not been to a restaurant except to grab take out at the curb. I go to church and to most meetings virtually. We see our friends, when we see them, either on Zoom or appropriately distanced outside.
I did get my teeth cleaned after a more than a six month hiatus from my every three month visits necessitated by gum disease that is connected to a plate I once wore so that I could leave some of my teeth in the locker room while playing football. The experience was good. The hygienist and the dentist took all precautions. Their PPE looked up to date, and their procedures were by the book. I was relieved until I was told that with the lack of care during the spring and summer my chronic problems had deteriorated despite my redoubled and obsessive compulsive efforts to follow the routines that had stabilized my gums for years. I was pretty upset when I was told that I needed to see a periodontist. My experience just underlines one of the realities of the COVID era. Management of chronic medical and dental problems has been greatly compromised as social distancing has made the management of many chronic medical problems more difficult. You can’t get dental care on Zoom. I would suspect that the lack of continuing care will “extract” a toll on many of us that we have not yet fully appreciated.
Accommodating to the “new normal” has been a challenge for most of us. I suspect that long after a vaccine is available there will still need to be accommodations that will make life much different than it was before mid March 2020. I frequently simplify things by applying the wisdom that the world usually falls into two groups around any subject. For example, being somewhat facetious, the world is made up of two groups, those who can’t be taught easily, and those who don’t need to be. When it comes to COVID-19, there are those who understand that the inconveniences of masks and social distancing do represent our best current defense, and there are those who like those in attendance at many of the televised groups meetings of the Republican faithful this week chose to forget their masks as they hugged and embraced each other in celebration of the leader. I was appalled as I watched the crowds as the president and first lady spoke at the White House and Mike Pence spoke at Fort McHenry. The Republicans were barely faking it, and they could not maintain the act until the cameras were turned off. Perhaps the whole scene was a subliminal suggestion to America that the Donald says it’s over and it’s time to forge ahead with the “V shaped” recovery.
We see the same behaviors in “real life.” They have been greatly highlighted with the attempts to reopen college campuses where there seem to be enough of those in the “I don’t care about social distancing cohort” to cause some universities like UNC to experience COVID outbreaks that have resulted in students being sent home and classes going back online. The papers are full of the concerns of teachers, and parents who all have a dilemma as they face choices with nothing to realy guide them as they balance their self interests with the health of the nation, the future of children, and perhaps the health and safety of grandparents.
I want to see my family. I have not seen my grandsons who live in the fire zone of California since last November. Our “accomodation” was to buy an RV so that we could travel and simultaneously be socially distanced. It was a great advantage for me to be able to use the pandemic to justify yo my wife something that I have always wanted to do. My wife consented to my arguments even though she had sworn that she would never do it!
This week we took a trial run in our RV to one of New Hampshire’s lovely state parks, White Lake State Park. As today’s header indicates, there are beautiful views of Mount Chocorua as you take a walk around the lake. There were no “hookups” for RVs so we had to test all of our “wilderness systems.” Who knows what will follow. I have been on a crash course of figuring out the complex workings of the RV, and we should be heading out in a couple of weeks. Expect some modifications of these notes as we venture across the country.
Be well! Have a great late summer weekend! Still stay home if you can. When you are out and about, wear your mask and practice social distancing as best you can. Don’t try to outguess the virus.Think about the America you want for yourself and others. Reject leaders who will not be accountable and who distort facts as they ignore science. Look for opportunities to be a good neighbor. Let me hear from you. I would love to know how you are experiencing these very unusual times!
Gene
