Where’s the outrage?

outrage is lacking

As of right now — 2:38 pm on May 26, 2020, about 99,162 Americans have been killed by Covid-19. This should make people outraged but it isn’t. That is nearly 100,000 people killed in approximately three months. For perspective, that is more than 33 9/11s or 25,000 Benghazi attacks. President Donald Trumps’ inability to face reality or care about anyone has meant tens of thousands of people died who didn’t have to. Think that is hyperbole? Columbia University looked into this and found that 36,000 people would still be alive if we stated social distancing a mere seven days earlier. Yet, the response has been muted. I live in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic and a state Trump no longer cares for. Wherever I look, I see how damaging this pandemic has been.

If you were angry about Benghazi, why are you complacent now?

Between September 11 and 12, 2012, militants in Libya attacked two American compounds and killed four U.S. officials and contractors. At first the attacks were blamed on a protest but then that was changed to premeditated attacks by a militant group in the country. For people on the right, “Benghazi” turned into a dog whistle for people who hate Hillary Clinton. It remains such today. T-shirts, bumper sticker, and more were made with the claim, “Hillary lied, people died.”

A flurry of investigations followed. None unearthed any evidence of wrongdoing. The Republican-led Congress put together six investigations. They went so far as to convene the United States House Select Committee on Benghazi, which was chaired by then-Congressman Trey Goudy (R-SC) and would go on to clear the,-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After two years of investigating these events, he told FOX News that nothing could have saved these four people. When asked if the U.S. military could have been deployed to arrive in time to make a difference, he said, “Whether or not they could have gotten there in time, I don’t think there is any issue with respect to that — they couldn’t.”

Where are the “Trump lied, people died” signs?

Since it struck China in December 2019, President Trump has made a number of misleading statements (aka lies in any other reality). CBS News has a great timeline of what Trump has made up, when he lied, and what the actual situation was. Their list goes through April but the lies have continued through today.

To recap, Trump denied the virus was a problem or threat to the country for months. When it was too real to deny, he switched to “I always said this was a pandemic.” When people started looking into how his administration responded to the crisis, he switched to talking up the job he has done and fell back on his normal pattern of blaming and bashing everyone who disagrees with him or anyone he thinks is vulnerable. I can’t think of anyone who thinks Columbia University is not a venerable institution but after they reported on Trump’s ineptitude, he called them “discredited.” (Don’t take my word, you can Google this and find it yourself.)

Despite all of this, there are no calls for hearings or investigations. The Republican Party is so fully up Trump’s ass, they no longer can see the harm this dangerous man is doing to the nation.

This revolution will be televised and Tweeted.

Maybe the most disheartening part of the Trump response has been the way he, his party and his news network (FOX News if you have not been paying attention) have turned this into the ultimate culture war. When Trump was busy denying the impending crisis, so were the anchors on his favorite network. More than one survey came out showing that people who relied on FOX News were less concerned (if they cared at all) about Covid-19 than people who relied on other sources for their news. The NY Times wrote this about the pro-Trump media response. In it, they note:

Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing commentators turned a pandemic into a battle of us vs. them — the kind of battle President Trump has waged for much of his life.

The NY Times

I have talked to people at FOX News who dispute the reports about its viewers by saying no one outside of the network have access to data about them. That may be true but anecdotal evidence I have collected supports the general thesis that people who support Trump and pay attention to right-wing “news” are less likely to care as much about the pandemic.

More than just convince FOX News viewers and their ilk not to worry, the Trump message to get back to work and not wear a mask has also found support in the anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theory communities around the country. And the worst part? Conspiracy theorists are winning the communications game. New polling suggests that 40 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats think Bill Gates is going to use any vaccine against Covid-19 to implant microchips into people to track their movements. (Side note: those smartphones we all love already do that. Where’s the outrage about that?) Groups that support opening the nation back up talk about “government oppression” (wearing masks violates some right they think they have) and an “upcoming rebellion.” Again, this is anecdotal but people I know say a revolution is going to start if states do not open up and stop asking people to wear masks.

For these people, who think the government is always up to no good (yet many support Trump, head of the government, go figure), vaccines are inherently shady and bad for you, and that Bill Gates works for Satan (I KNEW CLIPPY WAS EVIL), any efforts to slow the spread or flatten the curve of the pandemic really want to control the American people. Note: Many of these Trump supporters and rebels also do not see any racism in U.S. police departments (again, go figure). They feel all of the outrage but not at Trump. It’s the corrupt/evil/larger-than-life system!

But where’s the anger about the death toll?

Way back in 1996, Bob Dole (presidential candidate and U.S. Senator from Kansas) had a meltdown of sorts. At a rally in Texas, he listed off all of the problems he attributed to Bill Clinton’s unscrupulous behavior and questionable moral character (his opinion, not mine) and asked, “Where is the outrage?” I pose that same question today.

People I know and respect who were outraged about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya say their anger is not at the number of people who died but the coverup that followed. To that argument, I call bullshit. The GOP has become of the party of gaslighting. In claiming to look into a coverup for political purposes, they launched investigation after investigation to hurt Hillary Clinton. Gowdy called his hearings “a failure” but Kevin McCarthy admitted they hurt Hillary and that was the reason they were hell-bent on investigating. He told FOX News:

“Everybody though Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

FOX News

PS, Congress spent more money investigating Benghazi than they did looking into 9/11. Apparently, national security only matters when you can prove nefariousness on the part of Democrats.

Trump is incompetent and needs to go.

No one can say for sure if the nation should open up. Will more people get and die from Covid-19? Will there be a second wave in the fall? Other waves after? Will the outrage come then? (The 1918 flu had between four and five waves, the second was worse than the first.) One thing we do know is Donald Trump’s incompetence killed Americans. If 100,000 people dead in under three months is not enough to convince you he needs to go, what will?

PS. People have asked me “were you worried about pandemics before this?” Yes, yes I was. In fact I wrote this in 2013. And, while at least three people died in February from the coronavirus, people didn’t really start dying until March so that is why I say it is nearly 100,000 over three months and not four is because that is more accurate.

Make. It. Stop.

I generally like the idea of having a spirited conversation with someone who disagrees with me. I don’t believe either side has a monopoly on being right or wrong. First of all, I think life is boring when we only talk to people who agree with us, we never learn anything. Second of all, if we cannot defend our position to someone with the opposite view, how can we really know how good of a position it is? And lastly, we need to talk to each other if we are going to work together.

The problem today is that we all come to conversations with our own ideas about what the “truth” is. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “You have a right to your own opinion but not your own facts.” Well, today, you are entitled to both.

Here are some of the “facts” people have told me this year:

  • Huma Abedin is in the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Angela Merkel endorsed Hillary Clinton.
  • Saudi Arabia funded 20% of Hillary’s campaign.
  • Hillary leaked Chris Stevens’ schedule and that’s what led to his death.
  • There is proof that the DNC has committed election fraud.
  • The Clinton’s skilled Anontin Scalia
  • President Obama is buying up all the emergency supplies and having FEMA move them to secret places so he could halt the election and stay in the White House.
  • China hacks us. Russia hacks us. We hack them.
  • Millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary.
  • And we’ve all heard of the Pizza Gate

Of course, I asked where they got these “facts.” They sent me a sundry of random blogs, websites and message boards. I tried to counter them with facts I had. None of it mattered. They asked where I got my facts and when I told them, they said, “If you are going to listen to the MSM…” At the end of the day, they told me that they thought their sources were right and mine were wrong. The argument that “they have their news and I have mine” creates a false equivalency. While, in a way, it is true, it isn’t really.

Here are the places I get my news: MSNBC, CNN, FOX News, Politico, the Washington Post, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, the Daily Beast, NPR, BBC and others. If I read something that sounds “out there” I check more news sites. I don’t “blindly follow” anything or anyone.

Some journalists, like Chuck Todd, have called this era we are in “the post truth era.” How can we work together if we have different realities?

When it comes to the recent hacking stuff, I care because I don’t think we should let Russia get away with playing with our election. It would bother just as much if he had done this to the other side. I don’t want Russia hacking us in any way.

Donald Trump supporters don’t care. They say, “It wouldn’t have changed anything so, no harm, no foul. Let’s move on. Trump’s election was legitimate.” Move along, nothing to see here.

I honestly don’t know where we can go from here if we are going have our own facts but I do know this is a sad state of affairs. Welcome to the end of truth era.

My Current Problem with Bernie Sanders

bernie sanders catFor most of the time I have known about Bernie Sanders, I liked him. Last year I wrote this about him. Now i just find him annoying. Never mind that he practically wrote and starred in a political ad for Donald Trump when he called Hillary Clinton “unqualified to be president.” Never mind that he just seems like an old guy yelling at kids to get off their lawn. Never mind a lot of things. I am mad about his hypocrisy. He claims to be purer than the driven snow but I am not so sure.

For most of his campaign, the narrative he has pushed has been that Hillary was winning only because of the shady super delegates. Democratic party insiders who are accountable to no one and have it in against Bernie. This is where we have problem number one. I am not sure how I feel about  the super delegate system but given Bernie’s top strategist’s role in creating the Democratic super delegate system, watching them rail against it seems disingenuinous at best and hypocritical at worst. You can read about top Bernie strategist Tad Devine’s role in creating the system here.

But wait, there’s more. For months this was the narrative, that Bernie was winning the popular vote and losing the super delegate count. Except that is not true. Hillary is far ahead in the pledged delegate count and the popular vote.

Including caucus results, Clinton leads Sanders by almost 2.4 million raw votes, 9.4 million to just more than 7 million, according to The Green Papers.

You can read the full piece, “Bernie Sanders Is Even Less Competitive Than He Appears.” So, now that the fallacy that Bernie has the “will of the people” his campaign is changing gears. Now that they see their only path to the nomination as wooing the super delegates that have committed to Hillary, they are going to spend the summer doing that. Personally, after hearing them whine about the system their people designed for months only turn to it when it serves them could be the worst kind of bullshit I have ever heard.

PS. I still think it sucks that Bernie doesn’t care about helping down ballot Democrats. That’s just douchie.

Why I Support Hillary Clinton

I am a Democrat, a liberal one at that. I am also a political and news junkie. While many people have fallen in love with Bernie Sanders this year, I was admiring him from when he was in the House. People will say socialism can never work here because of this reason or that. I don’t know enough about economics to know but people in Netherlands where they have one of the happiest populations on earth seem ok with it. Continue reading

After spending most of my day with my head up my butt…

Well, not really but I was accused of that this morning after I posted a column I wrote about Hillary Clinton for Firebrand Left. My general thesis is that if you like Hillary Clinton, you don’t care what the transcripts of her speeches say and if you do not like her, nothing in those speeches will change your mind. I stand by this. But it led some people on Facebook to get really pissy.

If you would like to see the exchange, please check it out here. You can read my original column about the transcripts here. I wrote a follow up piece about how Hillary and Bernie supporters need to treat each other better here.

Now, you may know that Susan Sarandon endorsed Bernie Sanders. While I think that’s great for him, I have to take issue to part of her endorsement speech. She claimed that one reason she is supporting him because she doesn’t “vote with (her) vagina.” Well, that’s good for her, I guess.

Now, I cannot get that out of my head. For instance, I wanted to watch the Superbowl but my pushy vagina wanted to watch some feminist clap trap on PBS so that’s what I watched. I had to miss the puppy, baby, monkey commercial. Dang, my vagina is so annoying sometimes.

Anyway, please check out my links and let me know what you think.