So Far, Trump-Stoked Chaos And Anomie Are Not Helping Him With Voters

Rev. John Pavlovitz was frustrated when he woke up yesterday-- very frustrated. He wrote that he felt "done being represented by a needy, belligerent, barely literate mobster, done with unrepentant racists and anti-science religious zealots, done with confederate flags and Fox News and MAGA cultism, done with a grotesque Frankenstein Christianity wildly stumbling around without Jesus’ tender heart, done living in a nation, nearly half of which wants it to be more white, less diverse, and less kind." On second thought, he noted that dwelling on that frustration isn't what he needed to do as much as the fact that America is "he place we’re going to shout down the bigots, the place we’re going to outnumber the close-minded, the place we’re going to demand equity, the place we’re going to tear down the flags and the statues and mindsets that perpetuate white supremacy, the place we’re going to expand so that every hungry, exhausted, hurting soul finds rest, and the place we’re going to lock arms and dig in our heels and push back the terrified bullies trying to drag us backward."

Pavlovitz concluded that "The racists are growing desperate. I think their violence is going to get worse. I think they feel the head winds of History blowing fiercely against them and they are going to make one more frantic, brutal, ugly assault on diversity and decency-- and we’ll have to be here to be the line that will not be moved." He's ready "to be here to be the line that will not be moved... We have to make a stand."

Trump made a deranged and extremely worrisome appearance on Fox News with one of his worst media enablers, Laura Ingraham. You should watch this and see if you can count the lies (hint-- more than one every 20 seconds). Try to remember that almost a third of Americans-- many of them armed to the teeth-- believe whatever this sociopath says:





That was Monday. On Tuesday, on his way to stir up trouble in Kenosha, he was still carrying on about how "an entire plane" was "filled with looters, the anarchists, rioters, people looking for trouble. When reporters, trying not to laugh in his orange face, asked him to speak to a witness who TRump claimed was made to feel "uncomfortable" on the plane filled with looters and rioters and thugs, he told the reporters he will try to put them in touch with the person. "Maybe," he said, "they will speak to you, maybe they won’t."

Has Trump lost his mind-- or is he just gaslighting and feeding his low-IQ base the red meat they thrive on? Even Ingraham noted that some of this crazy off-the-top-of-his-head nonsense she was getting out of him was conspiracy theory stuff.

NBC News reporter Ben Collins explained where Trump got it. He wrote that the conspiracy theory that Señor Trumpanzee was pushing Monday about the plane almost completely loaded with thugs in "dark uniforms, black uniforms" ready to disrupt the Republican National Convention "was almost identical to a rumor that went viral on Facebook three months ago... There is no evidence of any such flight. When Ingraham asked for more information about the flight, the president said, 'I'll tell you sometime.' He then alleged the people had been headed to Washington to disrupt the RNC. Before mentioning the uniformed men who allegedly boarded the plane, Trump claimed that there are 'people that are in the dark shadows' and 'people that you haven’t heard of' controlling Democratic nominee Joe Biden." He also claimed "they control the streets" and are being paid by rich people and corporations.

Ingraham pressed the president for more details and said it sounded like he was alleging a conspiracy.

“They’re people that are on the streets. They’re people that are controlling the streets,” Trump said.

The claim about the flight matches a viral Facebook post from June 1 that falsely claimed, “At least a dozen males got off the plane in Boise from Seattle, dressed head to toe in black.” The post, by an Emmett, Idaho, man, warned residents to “Be ready for attacks downtown and residential areas,” and claimed one passenger had “a tattoo that said Antifa America on his arm.”

That post was shared over 3,000 times on Facebook, and other pages from Idaho quickly added their own spin to it, like the Idaho branch of the far-right militia group 3 Percenters.

One post claimed that “Antifa has sent a plane load of their people” and that the Payette County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it. Within days, that version of the rumor picked up enough steam in Idaho Facebook groups that the Payette County Sheriff’s Office had to release a statement insisting that the viral rumor was “false information.”

Rumors of marauding bands of Antifa supporters have plagued local Facebook groups, chain emails and forwarded text messages since mid-May. One of the most viral rumors on an Antifa invasion into the suburbs was taken down after Twitter said it was created by a troll account with ties to white nationalists.

Some armed Americans took to town squares in several towns to fight off fictitious busloads of Antifa in June, spurred by false rumors on Facebook pages. Seven days after the original Idaho rumor went viral on Facebook, armed men stood guard over protests in Missoula, Montana, worried about the planeloads of Antifa supporters.

In his Washington Post column about Trump's flawed election strategy August 20th, David Byler pointed out that not only is "Trump's suburban pitch... off-key in an election dominated by the coronavirus," but that "Playing the race card is more likely to backfire now than in any time in a generation. In 2019, the libertarian Cato Institute found that 52% of Americans who live in the suburbs favor 'building more houses, condos and apartments' in their community while 46% oppose the idea. According to YouGov, 50% of suburbanites think Biden would be better at handling race relations than Trump, and only 28% prefer Trump to Biden... These communities are no longer all-White bastions where fathers work and mothers stay home with the children. These neighborhoods are racially diverse: According to a 2018 study, only 68% of suburbanites were White, 14% were Hispanic and 11% were Black. And no matter where they live, Pew Research Center found that the share of mothers who stay home with children declined from 49% in 1967 to 27% in 2016. The audience Trump believes he’s targeting-- White stay-at-home suburban moms-- may be smaller than he thinks.

Trump's bullshit about "saving Kenosha" is not being bought by voters, who are finally recognizing how Trump lies and manipulates to push his personal agenda. Even with support for Black Lives Matter sliding in Wisconsin, voters are still backing Biden, not Trump.

Yesterday, Chuck Todd's team at NBC News speculated that playing the race card "is-- at best-- break-even for Trump. And at worst, it’s another liability for him. According to our August NBC News/WSJ poll (conducted before the violence in Kenosha), Trump held a 4-point advantage over Biden when it comes to which candidate better handles crime, with 43 percent picking Trump and 39 percent Biden. But on uniting the country, Biden’s edge over Trump was 23 points, 49 percent to 26 percent. And on race relations, Biden’s lead over Trump is 24 points, 53 percent to 29 percent. So despite the conventional wisdom, it’s not clear at all this issue is a winner for Trump.

The new poll from Morning Consult that was released yesterday-- so post-conventions-- shows Biden ahead 51 to 43% nationally. 55% of voters view Trump negatively while just 46% view Biden negatively. But it's the swing states where the campaigns are in full gear that are most interesting. According to this set of polling, Trump is losing every swing state but Ohio and Texas. But what about that normal convention bounce? Well, there was some. Biden increased his support after the 2 conventions in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin-- stayed the same in North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota and Colorado-- and lost one point each in Pennsylvania and Florida, each of which he is still leading in. Trump, on the other hand, had a bounce down in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, stayed the same in Wisconsin and Colorado, and increased his positions slightly in Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Minnesota-- in each of which he's still losing-- and in Ohio and Texas.

Enforcement And Anomie-- Trump vs Law And Order

"I’m strongly in favor of mandating things. If you do that, I think it’ll be a giant step towards interfering with the spread in the community."
- Dr. Anthony Fauci

How far can society go from protecting itself from existentially dangers posed by idiots within-- and when I say "idiots" I mean this described by Umair Haque in his interpretation of the etymology of the word from the ancient Greek meaning. To the Greeks an idiot was a contemptible, anti-social person, only interested in private gain, with no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. Like the anti-maskers, who are putting the rest of us in grave mortal risk by refusing to cover their noses and mouths.

Still, I don't believe law enforcement agents should be allowed to go up to someone not wearing a mask and shoot him in the head without a trial. Early in the pandemic I was on line outside a grocery store in Los Angeles. Everyone was masked and socially distanced. A little guy making a lot of noise and without a mask pushed himself up against a big guy on the line. A few words were exchanged and the big guy decked him. I don't condone violence but I admit I felt some satisfaction to see the noisy little maskless fellow dragging himself across the parking lot.

But should it be up to customers and shop owners to enforce government mandates? In mid-May Neil MacFarquhar brought it up in a New York Times column, Who’s Enforcing Mask Rules? Often Retail Workers, and They’re Getting Hurt. Trumpists everywhere, including in California, where you don't see many of them, say they are standing up for their rights by not wearing masks. I've been complaining for months that Gavin Newsom's mandates don't come with endorsement, so do not protect us and are bullshit mandates. MacFarquhar wrote that "many retail workers have reluctantly turned into de facto enforcers of public health guidelines, confronting customers who refuse to wear masks or to maintain a wide distance from others. The risk of a violent reaction now hangs over jobs already fraught with health perils. A Target employee in Van Nuys, Calif., ended up with a broken left arm after helping to remove two customers who refused to wear masks... In San Antonio, a man who was told he could not board a public bus without a mask shot a passenger, the police said."

Hardball by Nancy Ohanian

Masks, he wrote "turned into a flash point in the country’s culture wars, with some defending their right to not wear one. The Trumpists whine about their individual rights-- the idiot argument, over which they get all indignant and even revolutionary over.

Public health experts said this argument was misguided.

“I never had a right to do something that could injure the health of my neighbors,” said Wendy E. Parmet, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University.

Mask opponents generally overlook the fact that such regulations are meant to protect other people, not the person wearing the mask, she added.

Americans are navigating a patchwork of conflicting national and local guidance on masks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, initially downplayed the efficacy of masks but now recommends them.

And they have become a ready symbol for those dubious about giving government officials wide powers for an extended period.

Retailers find the confrontations over masks a minefield.

“It is a very hot button issue,” said Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokeswoman for Trader Joe’s. The company declined to allow Jesse, the employee involved in the confrontation, to be interviewed.

“We do not want to put our crew members in the position to have to enforce something like that,” she said, noting that customers “overwhelmingly” wear masks.

In all its 505 stores, Trader Joe’s has put up signs recommending that customers wear masks, not least to protect its employees, Ms. Friend-Daniel said.

Refusing is not grounds alone for being ejected from a store, she said, even where wearing masks in public is the law, but creating a disturbance that bothers other customers is.

Target, in places where masks are the law, has stationed security employees outside its stores to remind customers to wear them, said Jake Anderson, a spokesman.

Stores are not the only businesses involved. Uber announced that starting Monday, drivers and riders must wear masks, and those who refuse can be kicked off the platform.

Smaller retailers feel especially vulnerable to balancing the need for safety and the need to revive their bottom line.

...In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made masks mandatory in late April and allowed stores to bar customers who refused. But she did not criminalize such refusals, so police have only intervened when confrontations turned violent.

In Illinois, Rob Karr, the president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, compiled a list of episodes that took place in the first 48 hours after masks became mandatory on May 1.

One customer threatened to get a gun from his car to shoot the worker insisting that he wear a mask. Several employees were hit, while others were verbally abused. Sometimes customers fought each other. The list has only grown longer.

Some police departments refused to respond when stores asked for help, Mr. Karr said, while various retailers were fined $750 for not enforcing the ban.

In Warwick, R.I., a police union initially announced on its Facebook page that it would not enforce Gov. Gina Raimondo’s mandatory mask order, calling it “overreaching” and bound to destroy the bridge of trust built with the community. The police chief then issued a statement saying the department would act.

Lawrence O. Gostin, the Georgetown University professor who wrote the draft public health law adopted by many states, suggested that in the absence of national guidelines, retailers should develop one policy for all their stores and stick with it, whether it has the backing of state law or not-- that way the rules would be clear for all customers.

Some experts also suggested it was overkill to involve police in the general enforcement of public health measures.

The issue should be treated like wearing seatbelts or not smoking in public, which eventually became habits, Ms. Parmet suggested, but such consensus must develop much more quickly given the danger from Covid-19.

Monday morning one of the kings of idiots, Rush Limbaugh was quoting fake statistics on death rates and ripping the media for failing to talk about the "survivability rate" of coronavirus, arguing it was time to allow the "young and the healthy" to "live their lives and spread herd immunity. You need to not go along with this idea of shutting down the entire economy again, shutting down entire states," Limbaugh said. "What they’re not telling you is the death rate is falling. But you don’t know that, because they’re simply reporting this massive increase in cases and you’re supposed to assume every case equals a death... They’re not reporting the survivability rate. The answer, here: Don’t mandate closures. Don’t mandate social distancing. Don’t even mandate mask-wearing. Encourage people who are old or who have a compromised immune system to stay quarantined. Stay hidden away. Do not go out. But let the young and the healthy go out and live their lives … and spread herd immunity, because that’s ultimately-- until we get therapeutics or vaccine, that’s going to be the answer to this." He's distorting the facts and lying and should be deprived of his broadcast license for endangering the public health.

On Monday, reports of new cases from the states showed Texas taking the one-day lead from Florida-- 9,054 new cases, bringing the state total to 210,006 (7,243 cases per Texan-- worse than any country in Europe. Sweden is closest with 7,234, practicing an unspoken herd-immunity agenda like the one suggested by Limbaugh.) Because of the "Limbaugh option," a growing number of hospitals in Texas, Arizona, South Carolina and Florida are at, near and beyond capacity.

Officials in Texas also reported hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed. Hospitalizations statewide surged past 8,000 for the first time over the weekend, a more than fourfold increase in the past month. Houston officials said intensive care units there have exceeded capacity.

Along the border with Mexico, two severely ill patients were flown hundreds of miles north to Dallas and San Antonio because hospitals in the Rio Grande Valley were full.

In Arizona, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 topped 3,200, a new high, and hospitals statewide were at 89% capacity. Confirmed cases surpassed 100,000, and more than half of those infected, or over 62,000, are under 44 years old, state health officials said.

As cases surge across the state, Katie Cameron said it appears some of her neighbors in Phoenix are in denial. The mother of two said she’s seen people tearing down caution tape meant to keep them off playground equipment in parks, large groups gathering to socialize and-- most concerning-- very few masks.

“I feel like people don’t care or don’t think its real,” Cameron said. “It’s kind of like ‘out of sight, out of mind’ or they are just lying to themselves because they don’t want to believe it.”

Health officials in South Carolina reported over 1,500 new cases Monday. If the numbers keep rising at their current rates, hospitals will probably have to adopt an emergency plan to add 3,000 more beds in places such as hotels and gyms, authorities said.

...[T]hree of the top U.S. medical organizations issued an open letter urging Americans to wear masks, social distance and wash hands often to help stop “the worst public health crisis in generations.”

The American Medical Association, American Nurses Association and American Hospital Association issued the plea in the absence of a mask-wearing order from Washington and said steps taken early on that helped slow the spread of COVID-19 “were too quickly abandoned.”

The White House again rejected calls for a nationwide order to wear face coverings, with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows saying on Fox News that it is a matter for governors and mayors to decide.

Late Monday night, the Washington Post noted that a growing number of Texas sheriffs are refusing to enforce Gov. Greg Abbott's mask mandate. Anomie and the social breakdown that accompanies it are becoming a real threat across the country-- almost as if it was planned this way.

Sheriffs in at least eight Texas counties-- Denton, Nacogdoches, Smith, Upshur, Kerr, Gillespie, Panola and Montgomery-- are refusing to fine or cite people who defy Gov. Greg Abbott’s order requiring masks in public.

Abbott, a Republican who had previously blocked cities and towns from enacting their own mask ordinances, reversed his stance last week and made masks mandatory statewide as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations exploded in Texas. The order allows authorities to fine repeat offenders up to $250 but states that violators cannot be detained or jailed.

That limitation has frustrated sheriffs in Montgomery, Kerr, Gillespie and Upshur counties, who say they’re unable to stop anyone who isn’t wearing a mask, since that could be construed as detaining them. The Gillespie County Sheriff’s Office has additionally claimed that “the wearing of objects near the face and neck provide an offender possible tools to impose harm to an officer.”

In other parts of the state, including East Texas’s Panola and Nacogdoches counties, local sheriffs have said that they lack the resources to enforce the order or keep track of repeat violators. Smith County, located east of Dallas, says it will “encourage voluntary compliance.”

Denton County, located north of Dallas and Fort Worth, is by far the most-populous county where the rule isn’t being enforced. Sheriff Tracy Murphree has expressed concerns about the prohibition on detaining people and told a local newspaper that he predicts Texans “will rebel and purposefully try to go into establishments without masks,” predicting that it would invite “chaos and protest.”

If you click on the image,  you'll be able to read it

Kansas Anymore?

You know what would be amazing? That Trump winds up being so toxic that he even manages to lose the Kansas Senate seat for the Republicans! I know, I know... it's impossible. Actually it is-- literally-- impossible since even if the Schumer candidate, Barbara Bollier, wins, it's still a Republican in the seat. (A few months ago, she switched parties, although certainly not her ideology, but... good enough for Schumer.) Pat Roberts is retiring and the seat is open and-- that aside-- Kansas has elected Democrats in the past-- although only one after senators started being elected by popular vote rather than by state legislatures. That one time Kansas elected a Democratic freshman was in 1930 when George McGill won after Charles Curtis resigned to become Herbert Hoover's vice president.

But a newly released poll of registered voters in Kansas by Civiqs, shows the Kansas Senate contest all tied up-- quasi-Democrat Barbara Bollier beating neo-fascist Kris Kobach 42-41%, losing to establishment Republican Roger Marshall 41-42% and beating establishment Republican Bob Hamilton 41-40%. The same poll, but of Republicans only, indicates that Bollier will probably get her wish to take on Kobach:

• Kobach- 35%
• Marshall- 26%
• Hamilton- 15%

In 1960 Kansas voted for Nixon over JFK, 561,474 (60.5%) to 363,213 (39.1%). In 1968, Kansas would have given Nixon an even bigger percentage but George Wallace was running so it was Nixon 54.8% to Humphrey 34.7% and Wallace 10.2%. Four years later, you can probably imagine the Kansas landslide to reelect Nixon, right? 67.7% to 29,5% for George McGovern. "Trump," wrote David Frum yesterday, "is no Richard Nixon." That's true, even Kansans know the difference. They only gave Trump 56.2% against Hillary. But's that's not exactly what Frum had mind. "As riots and looting have disordered cities across the United States, many have speculated," he wrote, "that the troubles could help reelect President Donald Trump. The speculation is based on analogy. American cities were swept by riots in the mid-1960s, and then, in 1968, Richard Nixon campaigned on a pledge of “law and order” and won the presidency. As it was then, so it will be now-- or so the punditry goes. The riots of 2020 may or may not help Donald Trump. The analogy to 1968, however, misunderstands both the politics of that traumatic year, and the success of Richard Nixon. One thing to remember about the presidential election of 1968 is that it was a three-way race. Nixon ran not only against the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, a liberal stalwart with a long civil-rights record, but also against the outright segregationist George Wallace, governor of Alabama. Wallace would ultimately collect 8.6 percent of the popular vote and win five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Facing those two rivals allowed Nixon to run as the candidate of the middle way, committed both to civil rights and to public order." But, yeah, Wallace did better in Kansas... of course.

Today, we know the Nixon of the secret tapes: crude, amoral, often bigoted. The public Nixon of 1968, however, behaved with the dignity and decorum Americans then expected in a president. Trump in 2020 occupies the place not of Nixon, but of Daley and George Wallace: Trump is the force of disorder that is frightening American voters into seeking a healing candidate-- not the candidate of healing who can restore a fair and just public order.





The irony, of course, is that at the same time that Trump tweets bloodthirsty threats, he has turned off the White House lights and cowered in the bunker below. He joins noisy bluster to visible weakness-- exactly the opposite of the Nixon formula in 1968. Trump will not repeat Nixon’s success in 1968, because he does not understand that success. Nixon joined his vow of order to a promise of peace at home and abroad. Trump offers only conflict, and he offers no way out of conflict, because-- unlike Nixon in 1968-- Trump is himself the cause of so much conflict.”

If Trump seeks historical parallels for his reelection campaign, here’s one that is much more apt. There was a campaign in which the party of the president presided over a deadly pandemic at the same time as a savage depression and a nationwide spasm of bloody urban racial violence. The year was 1920. The party in power through these troubles went on to suffer the worst defeat in U.S. presidential history, a loss by a margin of 26 points in the popular vote. The triumphant challenger, Warren Harding, was not some charismatic superhero of a candidate. He didn’t need to be. In 2020 as in 1920, the party of the president is running on the slogan Let us fix the mess we made. It didn’t work then. It’s unlikely to work now.

The L.A. Times published an editorial at 3AM yesterday about Trump poring oil on the flames. He's overtly calling himself "your president of law and order" and threatening to send the military into American cities. The Times labeled that another demonstration "that he has little understanding of why Americans have taken to the streets [and] reinforced the impression that he sees the current crisis as an opportunity for him to score political points in an election year with a new iteration of his 2016 claim that 'I alone can fix it.'... A different president would have been able to credibly lament that lawlessness, and call for measures to deal with it, with no one suspecting ulterior motives. Trump has forfeited any such benefit of the doubt. In his remarks on Monday, as in previous comments, he expressed sympathy for George Floyd, whose death led to a murder charge against the former Minneapolis police officer shown kneeling on Floyd’s neck in a video that went viral. But Trump consistently has failed to recognize that Floyd’s death was the latest example of a pattern of police violence against African American men that in turn is a manifestation of entrenched and pervasive racism."

ANOMIE, Part II-- The Masked Men Are The Good Guys... And The Unmasked Are The Enemies Of Society

Face To Face by Nancy Ohanian

Please think of this post as a continuation the 5AM piece on anomie. I had a few questions about what anomie is. And after I realized that not everyone was a sociology major-- I was-- I grabbed the Wikipedia description: "the condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals". Anomie may evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community (both economic and primary socialization). In a person this can progress into a dysfunction in ability to integrate within normative situations of their social world - e.g., an unruly personal scenario that results in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of values... commonly understood to mean normlessness... [arising] more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations."

This relates to the COVID Civil War raging in America now between those who claim social distancing rules infringes on their liberty and freedom and those who claim that without the social cohesion required to encourage everyone to adopt those rules, the entire society is at risk from the pandemic. Tuesday, the L.A. Times published a report by Brady McCollough about the fight over masks. First a tiny bit of background: societies that were quick to adopt masks have largely contained the outbreak. Societies that scoffed at it, are suffering from big outbreaks now. Let me give you a couple of examples. Czechia, South Korea, Argentina, Taiwan and Japan were quick to adopt universal mask wearing. Their caseloads are low:

• Taiwan- 18 cases per million people
• Argentina- 111 cases per million people
• Japan- 121 cases per million people
• South Korea- 211 cases per million people
• Czechia- 738 cases per million people

On the other hand, the U.S., Britain, France, Sweden and Belgium have been grudging and slow to adopt mask wearing. The caseloads are horrific:

• Belgium- 4,382 per million
• U.S.- 3,746 per million
• U.K.- 2,872 per million
• France- 2,613 per million
• Sweden- 2,368 per million

Closer to home, let's look at California. 6 Bay area counties got together and ignored Governor Gavin Newsom's timid and inadequate response. The 6 counties shut down despite Newsom's unwillingness to do so statewide. Los Angeles County has, roughly, 10 million people and 27,815 cases. The six Bay Area counties have a combined population of about half that but just 8,319 cases, a rate of half the infections Los Angeles County has.

Back to McCollough's report in the L.A. Times. He wrote that "As more states reopen their economies, officials say fighting the coronavirus outbreak means wearing a face covering. But some are balking at restrictions." Although the city of Los Angeles (population is not 10 million but just 4 million), got a slow start, Mayor Garcetti ordered masks in all indoor establishments long before Newsom did it statewide. It has helped.

In the bustling college town of Stillwater, Oklahoma, residents are allowed to visit restaurants and retailers-- freedoms that most of the country does not currently enjoy in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet when the city issued an emergency proclamation Friday that required citizens to wear face coverings, store employees were “threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse,” according to a statement released by the city. In response, Stillwater quickly amended its wording to only “encourage” use of masks.

“This has occurred in three short hours and in the face of clear medical evidence that face coverings help contain the spread of COVID-19,” Stillwater City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. “Many of those with objections cite the mistaken belief the requirement is unconstitutional, and under their theory, one cannot be forced to wear a mask. No law or court supports this view.”

About a dozen states have reopened more of their economies since Friday’s calendar turned to May, with several, including Florida, loosening more restrictions Monday. No matter where a state falls on the reopening spectrum, though, all Americans who choose to go outside are being met with a choice that isn’t going away anytime soon: to cover up or not?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says "everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public" to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. The federal agency notes that masks are to protect others and that they are not a substitute for social distancing.

In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine backtracked last week on an order to require masks be worn in stores as too many Ohioans found it “offensive.”

“It became clear to me that was just a bridge too far. People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do,” DeWine said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.





On Monday, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, as part of a tour acknowledging the reopening of most of the state, visited a thrift store in Joplin that is operated by the Disabled American Veterans. The veteran workers wore masks, but Parson did not.

"I chose not to," Parson said, when asked at his news briefing why he did not cover his face.

"I think it's up to the individuals. I don't think that's government's role to mandate who wears a mask and who don't. I go back to what I've said all along: It's your personal responsibility."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis allowed the reopening of most restaurants, retailers, museums and libraries at 25% capacity Monday. DeSantis-- who controversially referred to his state, with its large population of older residents, as "God's waiting room" last week-- is recommending that employees and customers wear masks, but he is not requiring it.

DeSantis' phased opening plan kept populous South Florida counties Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach closed for most business.

Miami reopened parks to the public last week, but only with the mandatory use of masks. By the end of the weekend, park rangers had handed out more than 7,000 warnings to people not wearing face covers, most of them in the popular South Pointe Park, police said. On Monday, the city closed up the park at the end of South Beach yet again.

New Jersey opened its parks Saturday, and although Gov. Phil Murphy was pleased overall with the social distancing compliance shown by the population, he shared one major complaint Monday.

“Not enough masks,” he said. Eighty percent to 90% "of the folks we're not wearing masks."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a mandatory mask order April 15 and said Monday that he believes local governments should have the right to enforce it.

“Because you could literally kill someone,” Cuomo said. “How cruel and irresponsible would that be? … It's not that big of a deal. You don’t wear a mask to protect yourself. You wear a mask to protect me. And I wear a mask to protect you.

“No one said wear a mask all the time. If you go for a walk in the woods, you don’t have to wear a mask. You can have the mask down when walking in the woods, but if you see someone coming the other way, you put the mask on. It’s the least we can do.”

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 68,600 on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than a third of American losses from the disease were in the state of New York, which has become the epicenter of the pandemic, with more than 24,900 deaths as of Monday afternoon. The global death total has surpassed 250,000. [The U.S. death toll surpassed 73,000 as I sat down to write this post with large case spikes in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Iowa, Utah, Mississippi, Colorado, Nebraska and both Dakotas, all states with limited compliance with social distancing rules.]

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio began his Monday morning news briefing by talking about how nice the weather had been in the city over the weekend-- and how that could lead to a false sense of normality. New York City on Monday reported 13,536 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 and 5,373 deaths in which the cause was listed as the disease but the victim was not tested.

De Blasio said he did not have a problem with citizens returning to outside spaces and enjoying the weather as long as they wore a mask and kept social distancing requirements. He announced Monday that the city would be distributing 5 million three-ply nonmedical masks and 2.5 million cloth face coverings for free in the coming weeks.

“Wherever you turn, you’re going to be offered a face covering,” De Blasio said.

De Blasio and New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea were peppered with questions stemming from a video of an officer pointing a Taser at bystanders in lower Manhattan during an arrest of people accused of not social distancing properly. The video shows the officer punching and slapping a man as he brings him to the ground.

“This one incident is troubling, but there’s been tens of thousands of interactions between police officer and civilians that went very well,” De Blasio said. The officer has been placed on modified duty and the incident is being investigated, De Blasio said Sunday.

On Monday he said more face covers could help prevent future violent scenarios from playing out with enforcement, but in this case, the plainclothes officer was also not wearing a mask.

In Oklahoma, Stillwater City Manager McNickle said in a statement that one of the incidents involving the mask requirement included a threat with a firearm.

In Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has ordered that masks be worn through May, state police investigators are looking into reports that a Flint dollar store security guard was fatally shot Friday after an argument with a customer who had refused to wear a mask in the store, according to the Detroit News.

The man who died leaves behind a wife and eight kids.

"My condolences go out to the family of the security guard," Whitmer said Monday. "It is incredible that people continue to show up to work to protect everyone else. We are mindful of how important it is that people keep a level head, that we do the right things. I ask that all Michiganders keep their wits about them and take actions to protect themselves and others in this incredibly stressful time."

I want to mention a little San Francisco history before we move on. Today San Franciscans are wearing their masks and flattening the city's curve nicely. A century ago, when the second wave of the Spanish flu hit and the people in the city were ordered to wear masks, "a band of San Franciscans, led by several prominent business leaders and physicians, staged a rebellion. The Anti-Mask League held a public meeting on Jan. 25, 1919, that was attended by several thousand jeering residents demanding a permanent end to the city mask ordinance." The city health department was headed by William Hassler, who the Anti-Mask League wanted fired. "The centerpiece of Hassler’s plan," wrote Sydney Trent, "was a requirement that every resident wear a face mask, underscored by [Mayor James] Rolph, who declared, 'Whomever leaves his mask behind, dies.' The San Francisco Chronicle chimed in: 'The man who wears no mask will likely become isolated, suspected, and regarded as a slacker.'... The city was not without scofflaws, however, and soon the $5 fines mounted, and the jails grew crowded. Many who broke the new law merely couldn’t be bothered, but some were more militant. One downtown lawyer argued that the mask ordinance was 'absolutely unconstitutional,' and that police officers could be liable for enforcing it." 100 years later I have witnessed two aggressive non-mask-wearers on grocery store lines get beaten up for breaking social distancing rules.

ANOMIE-- Can Trump's Crippled America Even Survive The Pandemic?

The poem about recklessness by Kaj Munk above ran late last night. Maybe you missed it... so I decided to try again this morning... since I think it's important. The author, Kaj Munk, was a Danish pastor and playwright who was murdered in 1944 for resisting the Nazis when they were occupying his country.

I don't know anyone who's happy about the societal lockdown and the attendant social distancing rules. But if there's even the slightest chance-- and I don't really believe there is-- the the U.S. will come out of this mess without unnecessarily losing a million of our countrymen, we have to somehow foster a national attitude that puts camaraderie on a pedestal and rewards the collective good over the frontier mentality of you're-on-your own and greed is good. Greed isn't good; and it's never been stronger than with the election of Donald Trump and, in this national emergency, the social attitudes that election and the ensuing presidency have fostered are destroying whatever soul America has had. There's a COVID-Civil War going on right now ripping our society apart.





Yesterday the Washington Post published a report by Kim Bellware about enforcing the social distancing rules that could save us if so many people have-- with Trump's encouragement-- been ignoring. A strong majority of Americans support physical distancing and oppose reopening too fast. But the minority opposing it-- basically Republican ideologues and people who don't have the wits to understand what public health requires-- will kill us all.

Bellware's point is the frustration involved with enforcing these rules-- even in Manhattan. "As New York state remains the hardest-hit area of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak," she wrote, "tensions are especially high in New York City, which accounts for roughly half of the more than 321,000 confirmed cases and over 25,000 deaths statewide.

In the ninth week of the shutdown, New York City officials have repeatedly said there’s no template, let alone hard-and-fast rules, for how police should enforce social distancing orders. Reporters and police watchdogs called out what appeared to be the department’s uneven enforcement over the past weekend, during which they say officers handed out masks in parks largely packed with white residents but aggressively enforced social distancing orders in minority communities.

Officer Francisco Garcia was placed on “modified assignment,” pending an investigation into the Saturday arrest in the East Village, according to New York City police.

In the video, the officer identified as Garcia appears to be holding a stun gun as he approaches a man in a crosswalk. The officer can be seen yelling at the man-- later identified as 33-year-old Donni Wright-- before forcing him to the ground, hitting him and kneeling on his neck.

Wright was later hospitalized with severe injuries to his back, ribs and chest, his mother, Donna Wright, told the New York Daily News.

The NYC Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident involving Garcia.

Just before Wright was arrested, Garcia and other plainclothes officers stopped to investigate a corner where they saw people “walking by, milling about” and not wearing masks, Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said Monday. Garcia and several officers in the video were also not wearing masks during the arrest.

Garcia was among 1,000 officers dispatched over the warm weekend to enforce social distancing.

“Why are sunbathers who violate social distancing guidelines treated one way and young men in certain communities another,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) recently tweeted, citing a separate Saturday incident in Brooklyn where New York police are seen on video forcefully arresting three people accused of refusing to follow distancing orders.

Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) called the video of Wright’s arrest “very troubling” and “unacceptable” at a Monday news conference but insisted it is not an accurate reflection of most social distancing enforcement and praised what he said was the NYPD’s increased focus on de-escalation practices.

Shea echoed the mayor and largely defended his officers while acknowledging he was “not happy” with some of what he saw in the video of the Manhattan arrest. “I think we can be better than that,” he said.

The NYPD said police started making arrests on the corner after spotting a bag of marijuana and said Garcia felt threatened because Wright “took a fighting stance against the officer” when ordered to disperse. The department said officers recovered a Taser, $3,000 in cash and the bag of marijuana at the scene.

Wright’s mother said her son approached the scene because he saw police arresting a family friend, with his lawyer calling the violent arrest “unprovoked.” Charges against Wright included assault on a police officer and resisting arrest; they were later deferred by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office pending further investigation.

Some civil rights groups say what city officials characterize as an ever-evolving policy on social distancing enforcement is simply part of a broader, preexisting pattern of unequal policing.

“This certainly isn’t the first time and this isn’t even the first time in this pandemic that we’ve seen evidence of discriminatory policing by the NYPD,” Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement. The organization noted that Garcia was the subject of at least six lawsuits that were settled for more than $182,000.

Because Shea has said there’s no “hard and fast rule” on how or even whether plainclothes officers should aggressively enforce social distancing, Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch in a statement called the entire situation “untenable.”

“The NYPD needs to get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether,” Lynch said.

Really? Are our cops so perverted by our system that they can't enforce society's rules without running amuck? Suppose Donni Wright was one of the camo-garbed protesters carrying assault weapons. How would Francisco Garcia or any of the 1,000 cops assigned to enforcing social distancing regulations have reacted? A few days ago, CNN reported that "Since late March, New York City has authorized NYPD officers and other authorities to hand out fines up to $500 to New Yorkers who fail to disperse from gatherings after being ordered to do so. In Florida, authorities arrested a pastor for continuing to hold large services, charging him with two second-degree misdemeanors: unlawful assembly and violation of public health emergency rules. And in Kentucky, several people have been placed under house arrest with ankle monitors after they refused to stay home despite coming in contact with coronavirus patients.

As public officials across America coalesce around the message that people need to remain at home and stop contact with anyone outside their household in hopes of curbing the spread of the virus, more communities are adopting tactics that empower local authorities to issue fines and impose other penalties on those who refuse. Forty-four states have imposed stay-at-home orders.

But while local and state officials say such measures are necessary to force people into compliance, some civil liberties advocates are concerned the enforcement efforts will go too far, running the risk of disproportionately impacting minority or poor communities and raising the threat of financial penalties at a time when many are out of work. Meanwhile, police themselves appear wary of implementing fines and arrests, given that each new encounter with the public could expose them to the virus while potentially fraying relations with communities already on edge.

"Social distancing is absolutely a critical measure, but our knee-jerk reaction to problems as a society tends to be criminalization, and it's just not the answer, especially here," said Maryanne Kaishian, a senior staff attorney at the Brooklyn Defender Services.

"Marginalized people will be the most impacted, because we know based on years of data that other low-level offenses disproportionately target black and low-income people," she said. Poorer neighborhoods tend to have a heavier police presence to begin with, she pointed out, and for lower-income and immigrant families living in multi-generational households, there may be more of an incentive to congregate outside the home.

Others worry that an escalation in enforcement could lead to even greater exposure to coronavirus for both police and the public. Encounters could bring police into contact with sick people or contaminated sites while resulting in arrests that land people in jail, where outbreaks of coronavirus have occurred around the country.

"In some ways it's ironic that an arrest could be a result [of these policies], because we're working to rapidly decrease jail populations at this time, and arresting people and incarcerating only puts them at increased risk," said Leah Pope, senior research fellow in the policing program at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization.

Criminal justice experts, however, say that the measures are both reasonable, given the circumstances, and not all that unusual. Curfews and other measures were put in place in the United States in the name of protecting the public during Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy and amid protests in Ferguson, Missouri, though nothing on this scale in a century.

"This is really, really important. This is our health and people's lives at stake, and it's not universally understood that socially distancing is a matter of life and death. So I'm not philosophically opposed to it at all," said Jeremy Travis, former president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York and a former deputy commissioner for legal matters at the NYPD.

"It's not unusual for the police or other enforcement agencies to have the power to enforce health regulations," he added, giving as an example the enforcement of kitchen standards at restaurants. During the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-- the closest comparison to the current pandemic-- police performed comparable enforcement, making today's efforts "not conceptually all that novel."

As to whether enforcement on the ground might disproportionately impact certain communities, Travis said, "That's not a reason not to do it. That's just a reason to watch the implementation really carefully."

And despite concerns about the potential for social distancing policies to run afoul of civil liberties, in practice so far police in many communities appear to have resisted issuing fines, arrests and other punishments, using them only as a last resort, even as in some cases government officials have encouraged them to be more aggressive.

"Certainly voluntary compliance is at the top of the list, because the last thing you want to do is engage in enforcement activities," said Benjamin Tucker, NYPD's first deputy commissioner said Thursday during an online panel hosted by the Council on Criminal Justice. "We have 36,000 officers plus, but we have 8.6 million people, and so there's no way you can enforce your way out of this. You've got to get voluntary compliance."

"When people ask about the enforcement aspect, I tell them that you really shouldn't get to that point," said Democratic Mayor Jane Castor of Tampa, Florida.

In San Francisco, police have issued citations to three individuals since the social distancing guidelines went into effect, but in two of those instances the health order violations came in addition to other offenses, according to officials. In one case, for example, police issued a citation to a man for trespassing as the primary offense, with a violation of the California Health and Safety Code added on top of the initial citation.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington DC-based police think tank, said he believes police are trying to avoid antagonizing people.

"Most of the police chiefs I know are doing everything they can not to piss off the community," he said. "People are stressed already. The last thing they want to do is fine people."

"This is not a police role," Wexler added. "This is a public health emergency role. This is a role to help the community. This is the time when the concepts of community policing really have to be operationalized. This is where police can play a huge role in allaying people's fears and educating people."

But some public officials have stressed they believe enforcement has been too meek. Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who had previously signaled he didn't believe police were adequately enforcing social distancing policies, said he believed the tactics should be "more aggressive," and raised the fine for violating state directives to $1,000.

"There has been a laxness in social distancing, especially during this past weekend, that is just wholly unacceptable," he said at a news conference, as pictures of sunny, crowded parks flashed across his PowerPoint presentation.

Some locations are acting more forcefully. On Monday alone, the police department's COVID-19 task force in Newark, New Jersey, issued 38 summonses for violations of the coronavirus emergency orders.

On April 5, police in Camden, New Jersey, charged a woman with fourth-degree causing or risking widespread injury, fourth-degree contempt, disorderly conduct, and failure to disperse after they broke up a large group of people gathered outside a house, but she refused to leave. "I don't have to go anywhere," she allegedly said, according to officials, and then began to cough, telling officers she had coronavirus.

And that same day, police charged a man in Seaside Park, New Jersey, with violating the emergency orders after they found him hosting 15 to 20 people in the backyard of his house.

One man who received a summons after attending a funeral in Lakewood, New Jersey, said in a brief interview that he believed the state's Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, had overstepped his authority. "This was harassment by the governor," Alexander Ellison said. "I didn't break the law."

He added, "The law is to protect the spread, but they have to be fair. What the governor is doing is not fair."

In New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, however, police appear to have been tentative about issuing summonses, doling out the 13 they had issued as of last week mainly to people gathered in bars, with none going to anyone in a public space.

In all cases, said NYPD Chief of Patrol Fausto Pichardo, police had given an initial warning to those gathered.

"The reason why people were arrested and people were summonsed is because these are locations where we've had to come back and educate the first time and warn. And people did not heed our advice, so of course we're going to take action," he said.

"Our overarching goal is to get compliance for everyone in the city, regardless of what color they are, so that we don't have to take the enforcement action," Pichardo said. "This is not about the NYPD, this is about every single New Yorker and every single person in this country and frankly the world everyone needs to step up. Everyone needs to police themselves."

Could The Coronavirus Impact Bernie's Election?

This morning I got an urgent letter from the biggest Berniecrat in China-- an America progressive who is a longtime resident there. He was urging me to to forward it to Bernie, his wife Jane and to Faiz, his campaign manager. His concern wasn't so much about Trump using the coronavirus to call off the elections, although that is certainly a consideration. It was generally far more mundane-- and useful-- about how to deal with a pandemic that is effecting daily life in China and, by summer, could be effecting daily life here to-- and on the campaign trail. His concerns are more in line with my own than with the far calmer perspective Reese Erlich urged over the weekend.

My friend's letter was all about how Bernie should prepare with contingency planning. The first part of his letter involved what he identified as potential events meriting advance planning:

1. Collapse of voter turnout.

2. Termination of face-to-face activities including GOTV

3. Government and/or Party suspensions of scheduled votes.

4. News and social media saturation by pandemic news (crowding out political news) for days, weeks or months.

5. Sudden overcrowding of hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units.

6. Economic disruption: (a) interrupted China supply chains; (b) quarantines of Americans.

7. Surge in discrimination against Chinese (and Asian-Americans) as suspected source of contagion.

8. After pandemic peak: (a) China head-start in newly-immune population returning to work; (b) USA xenophobia exacerbated by that head-start. 


These were my friend's suggestions-- who is living in a country where everything seems to be breaking down-- for dealing with that kind of disruption here during the most important election campaign in the lifetime of anyone currently alive. His suggestions:

1. Assign 1-2 people to closely monitor Center For Disease Control and to immediately re-transmit any official recommendations, especially on minimizing physical proximity via door-knocking, crowds, etc.

2. Stock an office in each region with gear for prevention and preliminary treatment.

3. Further prioritize early voting, and publicity about Bernie-positive news (such as “highest-ever number of college students have cast early votes”).

4. Publicize the fact that high medical costs facilitate virus spread. (“I avoided check to save money and then I infected my whole family...”).

5. Publicize the likelihood that, partly because of globalization, no matter how well or badly we cope with this pandemic, a worse one will follow sooner or later.

At the end of last week, Sonali Kolhatkar, writing for Truthdig, explored how coronavirus panic is exposing the pathology of nationalism, pointing out that "for years, scientists have warned about superbugs and other infectious agents borne out of industrial agricultural practices or unleashed by climate change" and how "the fears of a new disease with no known cure that is spreading like wildfire have been the bases of plots for science fiction books and movies... Misinformation about the [coronavirus] and its impacts has been transmitted at lightning speed, fomenting fear, confusion and xenophobia. What we do know is that the virus is spreading fast. In the face of this danger, borders are being closed, flights are being canceled, travel is being banned and racism is rising... Fears of this new disease have sparked many reported incidents of racism toward Chinese people and people perceived to be Chinese. Asian and Asian American students at U.S. universities are reporting heightened tensions, judgmental looks and outright xenophobia."

[H]ere in the U.S. there are deep concerns about whether President Donald Trump’s administration is adequately prepared for a pandemic. Under Trump’s leadership, former national security adviser John Bolton dissolved the National Security Council’s global health security team. That team, according to Mother Jones, was a “group of world-class infectious disease and public health experts,” and was “working on implementing a national biodefense strategy to coordinate agencies in order to make the United States more resilient to the threat of biowarfare and epidemics.”

Trump has additionally lowered the budgeted amount for global health funding. Gostin is worried that “taking away all of this expertise and coordinating function at the White House and at the interagency level is a serious disservice to the United States because we are not prepared.” He pointed out that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also seen its funding for overseas operations severely curtailed. He lamented, “We don’t learn the lessons of history. We just lurch from complacency when there is no disease to panic when there is. That’s no way to be prepared.”

The development and spread of dangerous new diseases are all but inevitable as the past several years have demonstrated. Rather than scramble to respond to each new contagion as it occurs, [infectious disease expert Lawrence] Gostin suggests investing in “upstream solutions” rather than “downstream” ones, such as “preparedness and prevention, and robust health systems in place.” They are “cheaper and better for the public health,” he said. What he is suggesting is antithetical to the rising right-wing populism the world over that has put more faith in strong borders, nationalism and deregulation rather than in cooperation, solidarity and greater investments in safety nets.

As a global health expert, Gostin insisted the most important message he wanted to convey to those worried about the coronavirus is this: “The idea of America First, the nationalist populism, is against everything that we believe in global health.” He explained, “We believe in mutual solidarity, we believe in strong institutions like the World Health Organization and the U.N. We believe in international cooperation. All of those things have been devalued by the Trump administration.”