How Many Americans Will Needlessly Die Of COVID Because Of Trump's Incompetence And Sociopathic Nature?

Bret Stephens has a long career as a conservative opinion writer, formerly at the Wall Street Journal and Jerusalem Post (as editor-in-chief) and currently at the NY Times. He's also a crackpot Zionist, a racist, a neo-con, a Climate Change denier, a Pulitzer winner and a prominent #NeverTrump Republicano. In yesterday's column, Donald Trump Is Our National Catastrophe, Stephens wrote about a class he taught about heart of political persuasion, using as examples of practitioners Abraham Lincoln, Pericles, Martin Luther King, George Orwell, Václav Havel, Winston Churchill and Señor Trumpanzee-- or at least the Twitter account of Señor T's. "We are, he wrote, "in the midst of an unprecedented national catastrophe. The catastrophe is not the pandemic, or an economic depression, or killer cops, or looted cities, or racial inequities. These are all too precedented. What’s unprecedented is that never before have we been led by a man who so completely inverts the spirit of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. With malice toward all; with charity for none: eight words that encapsulate everything this president is, does and stands for... [G]reat political writing aims to elevate. What, by contrast, does one learn by studying Trump’s utterances?"

The purpose of Trump’s presidency is to debase, first by debasing the currency of speech. It’s why he refuses to hire reasonably competent speechwriters to craft reasonably competent speeches. It’s why his communication team has been filled by people like Dan Scavino and Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Sanders.

And it’s why Twitter is his preferred medium of communication. It is speech designed for provocations and put-downs; for making supporters feel smug; for making opponents seethe; for reducing national discourse to the level of grunts and counter-grunts.

That’s a level that suits Trump because it’s the level at which he excels. Anyone who studies Trump’s tweets carefully must come away impressed by the way he has mastered the demagogic arts. He doesn’t lead his base, as most politicians do. He personifies it. He speaks to his followers as if he were them. He cultivates their resentments, demonizes their opponents, validates their hatreds. He glorifies himself so they may bask in the reflection.

Whatever this has achieved for him, or them, it’s a calamity for us. At a moment when disease has left more than 100,000 American families bereft, we have a president incapable of expressing the nation’s heartbreak. At a moment of the most bitter racial grief since the 1960s, we have a president who has bankrupted the moral capital of the office he holds.

...Trump is responsible for the nation’s wounds. It’s that he is the reason some of those wounds have festered and why none of them can heal, at least for as long as he remains in office. Until we have a president who can say, as Lincoln did in his first inaugural, “We are not enemies, but friends”-- and be believed in the bargain-- our national agony will only grow worse.

And it isn't just Trump's words that are making literally everything worse. His dysfunctional, chaotic and incompetent, venal regime is a colossal failure. The nightmarish coronavirus pandemic is global and wasn't started by Trump. The fact that it is far worse in the U.S. than anywhere else on earth is the fault of Trump, his regime and his Republican Party lickspittles.

I Can't Breathe by Nancy Ohanian

This afternoon we crossed the two million confirmed cases mark in our country. It didn't have to be this way. Even as new case rates start to slow down in states that were hit hard early on-- New York, Washington, New Jersey, Michigan, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, other states-- particularly states with governors who emulate Trump, like Greg Abbott (Texas), Ron DeSantis (Florida), Brian Kemp (Georgia), Henry McMaster (South Carolina), Kim Reynolds (Iowa), Doug Ducey (Arizona), Pete Ricketts (Nebraska), Chris Sununu (New Hampshire), Mike Parson (Missouri)-- are watching their own cases numbers accelerate dangerously. States that we're part of the early first wave but where bad policy decisions are fueling severe outbreaks see rapidly growing cases per million today:

• Nebraska- 8,082 cases per million
• Iowa- 6,867
• South Dakota- 6,147
• Virginia- 5,938
• Mississippi- 5,803
• Colorado- 4,862
• Georgia- 4,888
• New Mexico- 4,264
• Alabama- 4,181
• Tennessee- 3,863
• New Hampshire- 3,691
• North Dakota- 3,754
• Utah- 3,764
• Arizona- 3,694
• California- 3,331
• Nevada- 3,133
• Arkansas- 3,123
• Florida- 2,977
• South Carolina- 2,775
• Texas- 2,613
• Missouri- 2,455

Friday, Guardian writer Michael Safi looked into what the contours of Wave II are likely to look like-- warning ominously that "the pandemic’s future will be decided by human action and several unanswered questions about the nature of the virus." Some countries see their curves flatten significantly-- Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, South Korea, Holland, Iceland, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, Austria, Denmark, Czechia, Australia, Finland, Cuba, New Zealand, Hong Kong-- while others, notably the U.S., India, the UK, Russia, Peru, Mexico, the Gulf states, Pakistan, south Africa and Egypt, are still going in the wrong direction. "The future shape of the pandemic," Safi wrote, will be decided both by human action, in the form of social distancing, testing and other traditional methods of disease control, but also several unanswered questions about the nature of the virus itself. Experts say there are several possibilities."

One is that the virus breaks out and is suppressed in peaks and troughs, until enough of the population is vaccinated or potentially develops immunity.

Antibody tests in most places indicate that quarantine measures were very effective in slowing down the virus. Fewer than 10% of populations in France, Spain and Sweden have developed the antibodies that would be evidence of having caught the virus and, in theory, becoming immune, for at least a short time.

But that also means the vast majority of populations remain susceptible.

If societies reopen before the virus is sufficiently eradicated, it may be that this first wave does not completely go away, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University.

“In the US, we are lifting lockdowns when there are still increasing numbers of cases in a bunch of states … We may just have peaks and valleys of transmission occurring over and over again as people’s behaviour changes,” she says.

The scale of these peaks could be reduced by making changes such as wearing masks, using public transport in a staggered way and avoiding overcrowded social events-- which are increasingly being blamed for being “super-spreaders” of the first wave of the coronavirus.

If outbreaks grow too large, some governments might choose to reimplement quarantines. “If we’re reopening and we start to see case numbers growing rapidly in a few weeks, we may see rolling lockdowns or shutdowns to try to control the virus in those areas,” Rasmussen says.

...Social distancing and robust testing-- or a lack of it-- will be critical in deciding the future of the pandemic. But its shape will also be influenced by factors outside our control.

The first is whether we can become immune to the virus, and if so, how long that protection endures for.

Sometimes immunity can last for decades. During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, public health authorities were initially confused as to why many older people seemed to be immune. Later, they discovered the virus was structurally similar to one that circulated during the 1918 pandemic. The immune systems of many older people had dealt with a similar virus 92 years ago.

Resistance to some earlier discovered coronaviruses has been thought to fade within a year. If immunity to Sars-CoV-2 is not permanent, a report from Harvard epidemiologists says it is likely to enter into regular circulation, coming in annual or biennial waves or sporadic outbursts.

The frequency of significant outbreaks may also be influenced by the weather. Most influenzas spread more easily in the winter because the virus is thought to prefer dry air over humidity, and because people in cold environments spend more time indoors and close to each other.

Existing coronaviruses also follow seasonal patterns. If this coronavirus behaves in the same way-- and there is not yet strong evidence that it does-- we could see regular wintertime surges of Covid-19.

But with so many people still apparently not immune to the virus, that summer relief may not arrive this year, says James Hay, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health.

“The factor that most contributes towards transmission is how many people are still susceptible,” he says. “And with so many still susceptible, that’s going to swamp out any climate effect.”

Significant mutations in the virus might also lead to a wave of new infections down the track. So far, scientists say that isn’t a huge concern.

“Even though there are different genomes out there that have changes compared to each other … there’s no evidence any of those changes are in spots that are critical for the immune system to recognise,” Rasmussen says.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t see a significant mutation later. “We’ve only known about this for six months, so it’s possible different strains could emerge in the future, because it does have a higher mutation rate,” she says. “But right now there’s no evidence that that’s happening.”

For countries that are able to implement highly effective interventions such as testing and contact tracing, this first wave of coronavirus cases may be the last they experience, at least for some time.

In New Zealand, which has managed to virtually eradicate the virus and installed robust systems to monitor new outbreaks, there may be no significant new outbreaks or future waves at all, says Nick Wilson, a professor of public health at the University of Otago.

“New Zealand is about to eliminate this virus,” Wilson says. “Even if there are border control failures, I expect that the contact tracing system is now good enough to control an occasional outbreak. So this country should be able to avoid future waves until a vaccine arrives.”

Countries with small populations and isolated geography such as New Zealand and Australia may be able to pull this off. South Korea is another country whose virus detection and suppression systems may be advanced enough to smother any future outbreaks. But it will be extremely difficult for most countries, especially those with large populations and porous borders.

Biden Is Better Than Trump... But The Jury Is Still Out Whether Or Not John Tyler Will Be Judged Worse Than Trump Or Not

There's never been another president-- at least not in our lifetimes-- as antithetical to Americanism as Trump. And I've never seen as negative a reaction to him than to anyone else-- not Reagan, not Nixon... Maybe John Tyler, a vice president who became president when William Harrison died a month after being sworn in (1841). Tyler was the most racist president until Trump and one of the country's staunchest defenders of slavery. Like Trump, he was also a traitor to the country, backing secession and becoming a member of the Confederate Congress. I have no doubt history will judge Trump far worse-- even if he dies today and can't do any more harm. We should only be so lucky!

That said, Biden still sucks. I'm not telling anyone to not vote for him; do what you want. It's a damn shame there is no "Neither of the above" choice in elections. I can't image a better electoral reform. Have you noticed that the best anti-Trump ads are all coming from conservative #NeverTrump Republicans? Have you noticed that Republican elites are gleefully flocking to Biden? No? Watch these videos; there can't be more than 100 of them.

As I mentioned Thursday night, the Biden campaign is blowing smoke up progressives' asses, selling them a bill of goods that after the '70s, '80s, '90s and oughts, he's tossing his conservative record out the window and suddenly emerging as a progressive. Vote for him if you want-- or against Trump-- but Bien is no progressive and never will be. A liar? Oh, yes... that he is, probably not on a Trumpian scale, but not far behind.

After the big "I'm turning over a new leaf" rollout from his campaign, Biden himself was questioned by Wall Street whore Joe Kernen on CNBC. Kernen was concerned about Biden sliding left but Biden quickly calmed him down: ""I prepared to say that I have a record of over 40 years. And that I’m going to be Joe Biden. Look at my record. The fact is that some areas that I think, for example, I think health care is a right not a privilege. I do not support Medicare for All I will not support Medicare for all."

It's nods and winks like that that make it just so easy for top Republicans to embrace him with enthusiasm-- not holding their noses, but grinning ear to ear. "A group of former officials of the George W. Bush administration," reported Newsweek yesterday, "have come together to do what they once would have considered unthinkable-- endorsing a Democratic candidate for president-- and in a stinging rebuke to the president, are raising money for Joe Biden. The new super PAC, called 43 Alumni for Biden, submitted paperwork Monday listing Karen Kirksey, a former Treasury Department official, as treasurer. It is not yet clear whether the group has raised any funds, but its formation is the latest sign of growing trouble for Republicans and for Trump. Several members of the super PAC told Newsweek that Bush's stewardship during 9/11 illustrates his understanding that he needed to rally the country at the moment of its greatest need-- a contrast, they said, with Trump's 'law and order' approach during the current crisis."

They said they knew Bush well enough not to need him to explicitly say to them he was rejecting Trump's leadership because of the statement he made with former first lady Laura Bush about their public anguish over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and by Bush's own veiled rebuke of President Donald Trump's handling of the protests, when he said the voices of those who are hurting and grieving must be heard. "Those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America-- or how it becomes a better place," he said.

"It must be very sad for him to see what is happening right now, to see more division, more threats, more violence from the current occupant of the White House, who would use the military against our own people, said former United States Treasurer Rosario Marin. "He must witness it in horror."

...Bush and many of the super PAC's supporters-- which include 162 members on a private Facebook page-- have not backed Trump from the start. Marin, for example, was one of the few who endorsed Clinton in 2016, but others quietly did not support Trump.

While the Trump campaign did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment, Steve Cortes, a spokesman for the America First PAC, which supports the president, said the group's support for Biden isn't surprising.

"We ran in 2016 against establishment, entrenched interests in Washington, some of whom claimed to be Republicans," he told Newsweek. "If these so-called conservatives prefer Biden now, they reveal their true colors.

One member of the group used to be a part of the RNC's Hispanic Advisory Council supporting Trump in 2016, but left before the election because he disagreed with Trump's hardline immigration messaging. Texas-based lawyer Jacob Monty-- who has donated to Republicans since 1997-- held a fundraiser for Biden in February, when the campaign's prospects were most tenuous.

"It makes perfect sense for the good of the country to support Biden but I'm still a Republican," Monty told Newsweek, before turning to what a Bush endorsement of Biden would mean. "I think it would be very powerful not only for the Latino community that he has a strong sway with, but also with the population in general."

Really? Was it "for the good of the country" that Monty contributed, in the last couple of cycles, to Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Michael McCaul, Paul Ryan and John Cornyn... as well as Biden (back in February)? Anyway, think back to the Bush Regime for a minute. It wasn't all done by Cheney. None of these people resigned, did they?

A recent poll of the audience of one of the weekly radio shows I do indicated that at least 70% of the people who listen to me are going to vote for Biden. I understand that most of them aren't actually voting for Biden, but against Trump. Maybe that's true of many of the Republicans against Trump too-- or maybe not. On fiscal matters at least, Biden is just what they want. In any case, this is exactly the time to contribute towards a progressive Congress. Whether Biden is elected president or Trump steals the election, we will certainly need more men and women like Robin Wilt, Mike Siegel, Jamaal Bowman, Kara Eastman, Keeda Haynes, Nate McMurray, J.D. Scholten, Lisa Ring... you know who I mean. Lisa just reminded me, in fact, that "The strength of Progressives is not just our focus on important issues despite all attempts to distract, it is our willingness to support one another and fight side by side for something much bigger than any one of us." Please use the 2020 Blue America congressional thermometer on the right to help any of them or all of them. And, please remember, there is no such thing as a contribution too small.

We have an extraordinary progressive candidate running in Monroe County (Rochester, NY), Robin Wilt. A few minutes ago she told me that "Regardless who is in the White House, we rely on Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, to help to implement the will of the people. In particular, the House of Representatives, also known as 'the People’s House' in our bicameral legislature, should be occupied by citizens who are willing to legislate on behalf of the people whom they represent, as opposed to corporate PACs. In order to thwart the corrupting influence of money on the policy that we implement, more than ever, we need representatives in Congress that say 'no' to corporate lobbyists and are instead beholden only to the people they represent. The more of these grassroots candidates that we can elect-- and recreate a legislative branch that is governing in the interest of the people-- the better chance we stand of correcting the rampant and unsustainable wealth disparity that prevents us from enacting equitable policies such as the Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, a Federal Housing Guarantee, humane immigration policies, and an end to the prison-detention-military industrial complex."

Trump And The Banality Of Evil

Annie Karni reported at the NY Times today that another bunch of #NeverTrump Republicans-- this one led by Bill Kristof, Sarah Longwell and former Jeb Bush top aide Tim Miller-- has started a well-funded campaign against Trump, pushing a perspective on Republicans that basically tells them to hold their noses and vote for Biden. The campaign is being run under the ad hoc Republican Voters Against Trump committee. They have dozens and dozens of videos you might enjoy watching. She wrote that they plan "to chip away at Mr. Trump’s support from white, college-educated Republican voters in the suburbs, hoping a more surgical approach will help to elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., his expected Democratic opponent. The new group is set to begin a $10 million digital and television advertising campaign that will use personal stories of conservative voters giving voice to their deep-- and sometimes brand-new-- dissatisfaction with the president."





Tony Schwartz, wrote The Art of the Deal for Trump, the book that launched him onto a public platform. Schwartz is so sorry and has been writing about what an asshole Trump was then and still is now. Yesterday he wrote an insightful essay about why Trump does the things he does-- The Psychopath in Chief. There's a lot there; this is just a small sampling. He wrote that "Like many other Trump critics, I believed that he was driven by an insatiable narcissistic hunger to be loved, accepted, admired and praised. That remains prima facie true, but it deflects attention from what drives Trump more deeply: the need to dominate. His primary goal is to win at any cost and the end always justifies the means. Ultimately, he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks or feels. For Trump, the choice between dominating and being loved-- saving himself or saving others-- is no contest. The catalyst for my shift came after a friend sent me a long paper written by Vince Greenwood, a Washington, D.C.-based psychologist. Greenwood makes a detailed clinical case that Trump is a psychopath, a term that is now used nearly interchangeably with sociopath. Psychologists continue to debate whether it’s legitimate to diagnose anyone from a distance without the benefit of a clinical interview. In Trump’s case, his life history is so well documented that a thorough assessment does seem possible. As I once did up close, we can observe every day which psychopathic traits Trump manifests in his behavior. The highly regarded Hare Psychopathy Checklist enumerates 20 of them. By my count Trump clearly demonstrates 16 of the traits and his overall score is far higher than the average prison inmate. The trait that most distinguishes psychopaths is the utter absence of conscience-- the capacity to lie, cheat, steal, and inflict pain to achieve their ends without a scintilla of guilt or shame, as Trump so demonstrably does. What Trump’s words and behavior make clear is that he feels no more guilt about hurting others than a lion does about killing a giraffe."

So long as we seek to understand Trump’s motivations and behaviors through our own lens, we will feel forever at sea. Viewing Trump through his lens helps clarify that his behavior is completely predictable, and why it has become more extreme during each year of his presidency. “When somebody’s president,” Trump declared on April 13, “the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total. It’s total.” When it became clear to Trump that total authority also meant personal responsibility, he backed off that claim. But Trump is akin to a battering ram. He just keeps coming at you. The only limitation on his behavior is whether he believes he can get away with whatever it is he’s trying to do.

“People with a strong sense of conscience speak truth to power,” Greenwood explains. “Trump speaks power to truth.” Since his election in 2016, Trump has told more than 18,000 lies without acknowledging or apologizing for any of them. The frequency of his lies has risen from five per day in the first year of his presidency, to more than 23 a day during 2020. For Trump, lying is second nature. Facts are simply are obstacles to be batted away when they contradict his preferred fictions.

It is a fact, for example, that Trump has been a defendant in nearly 1,500 lawsuits over the past three decades-- by government agencies seeking to collect unpaid taxes on his properties, contractors trying to get paid for services rendered to him and his companies, and women charging him with sexual assault. As far back as 1973, Trump and his father Fred were sued by the U.S. government for refusing to rent to African Americans in Trump Village, a housing project built by his father Fred. The two Trumps fought the charges for two years but eventually signed a consent order that included agreeing to take a series of actions to end their discrimination.

In 2015, Trump settled two class-action lawsuits charging him with defrauding students at Trump University by paying $25 million in penalties, and agreeing to close down the business. In 2018, in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general against Trump and his three oldest children alleging “persistently illegal conduct,” the Trumps agreed to shut the phony foundation, and to allow its remaining assets to be directed to charities chosen by the court.

The second quality that sets Trump apart is his lack of empathy. In the face of a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, we expect leaders to feel our pain, and to respond with expressions of compassion and comfort. Not Trump. In 13 hours of comments he made over a recent three-week period the Washington Post reported that he spent a total of two hours attacking others, including the media, 45 minutes praising himself and his administration, and a total of just 4.5 minutes expressing rote condolences for Covid-19 victims and front line workers.

Trump doesn’t appear to make heartfelt connections with anyone, nor to value relationships beyond the extent to which they serve his immediate self-interest. Turnover in his administration-- 85% in the first 32 months-- dwarfs that of his five most recent predecessors for their entire first terms. Trump treats even his relationships with family members as transactional. Consider the way he describes his relationship with his father, arguably the most important influence in his life. “I was never intimidated by my father, the way other people were,” he explained to me for The Art of the Deal. “I stood up to him and he respected that. We had a relationship that was almost businesslike. I sometimes wonder if we’d have gotten along so well if I hadn’t been as business oriented as I am.”

...The third trait that most characterizes Trump is his need for dominance, and the evident pleasure he takes in exercising it. “I love getting even when I get screwed by someone,” he explains in his book Think Big and Kick Ass. “Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back 15 times harder.” In the absence of a conscience to shape and limit his behavior, Trump defaults to a more primitive and predatory impulse. Life for him is a zero-sum game. He either wins or he loses, dominates or submits. This explains why Trump felt no compunction about lashing out this week at a frequent critic, Joe Scarborough, by falsely accusing him of murder, even in the absence of a shred of evidence to support his claim. Cruelty is second nature to Trump.

Perhaps nowhere is Trump’s need for dominance more evident than in his relationship with women, captured most vividly in his comments to Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood tape. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]. I just start kissing them,” he bragged. “It’s like a magnet. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.” More than 20 women have now publicly accused Trump of sexual assault.

Another tactic that Trump employs to assert his authority is declaring his unique expertise on virtually any subject. He instinctively disdains and dismisses the knowledge of experts, including scientists, and instead casts himself as the leading expert on anything and everything. Topics that Trump has claimed to “know more about than anyone” include ISIS, drones, social media, campaign finance, technology, polls, courts, lawsuits, politicians, trade, renewable energy, infrastructure, construction, environmental impact statements, nuclear weapons, banks, tax laws, income, money, and the economy. In fact, because he can never focus his attention for long, his knowledge about any subject tends to be superficial and severely limited. Trump has even felt free to contradict the health care professionals on his own team during the Covid-19 crisis, most notably in describing the potential healing power of injecting disinfectants into the body. “Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” he explained. “Maybe I have a natural ability.”

So what does all this tell us about how we can expect Trump to behave going forward? The simple answer is worse. His obsession with domination and power have prompted Trump to tell lies more promiscuously than ever since he became president, and to engage in ever more unfounded and aggressive responses aimed at anyone he perceives stands in his way.

In the end, Trump does what he does because he is who he is, immutably. The research now strongly suggests that the absence of conscience has a strong hereditary basis, even as it may also be activated by adverse childhood experiences. The genetic abnormality itself manifests in the limbic system, the set of brain structures involved in the processing of emotions. People without a conscience, it turns out, often have an undersized or under-active amygdala and less gray matter in the limbic area of the brain.

For four years, along with millions of other Trump critics, I have wrestled with the best way to respond to a president who is incapable of shame or empathy and cares only about his self-interest. There is no effective treatment for a person with these traits, and Trump wouldn’t seek one if there was, because he genuinely doesn’t believe there is anything wrong with him. The horrifying truth is that it’s precisely what he’s missing that gives him a permanent advantage over the vast majority of us who are guided by a conscience and concern for others.

Trump revels in attention, domination, and cruelty. “The sociopath wants to manipulate and control you,” explains Martha Stout, “and so you are rewarding and encouraging him each and every time you allow him to see your anger, confusion or your hurt.” Even so, in order to protect our democracy and our shared humanity, it’s critical to push back, calmly and persistently, against every single lie Trump tells, and every legal and moral boundary he violates. We must resist what Hanna Arendt has called “the banality of evil”-- the numbness and normalizing that so easily sets in when unconscionable acts become commonplace. “Under conditions of terror, most people will comply,” Arendt has written, “but some people will not.”

Understanding what we’re truly up against-- the reign of terror that Trump will almost surely wage the moment he believes he can completely prevail-- makes the upcoming presidential election a true Armageddon.

Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.