Day 142 Nat'l Emergency: Trump's Dilemmas

What if you hosted a party to celebrate the creation of a COVID-19 vaccine but nobody came?

Having invested so much time disparaging the reality of the pandemic, only to invest billions of taxpayer dollars to develop a vaccine at “warp speed,” Donald Trump will have to confront dilemmas mostly of his own making should a potential cure be discovered.

Having cultivated an image as a disruptor while encouraging similar behavior, including disbelief in government programs and pronouncements, among the legion of his followers, will Trump be able to turn those mavericks into compliant communal-minded sheep? 

What if a coronavirus vaccine is developed but not enough people take the shot to make it effective as a pandemic deterrent?

What if Trump’s past deprecation of science and medical expertise, including support for the anti-vax movement, leaves him with no moral persuasive powers to convince enough people to take the inoculation?

What if he were told by advisors he needed to publicly take the shot to rally the country behind the vaccine. Would Trump roll up his shirtsleeve and do it? Could he trick the public by getting a dummy shot, or would he fear a leak would expose his deception?

Would he have his wife and children and their families publicly inoculated? What about the White House staff and cabinet secretaries? Would he order them to take the shot?

A president is charged with safeguarding the nuclear bomb codes that could destroy the world. As this viral moment in time unfurled a president also had the power to help save the world from a virus that knows no boundaries to its ravaging impact. 

How sad that Trump has squandered opportunities to stem the transmission of the disease. How sad that Trump has championed false remedies. How sad that Trump has set the example that wearing a face mask is not necessary and definitely not mandatory. How sad that Trump has sown doubt about the medical and scientific communities’ integrity. How sad that in almost every public appearance Trump has dispensed lies, fabrications and misinformation. 

How sad that the death toll from the coronavirus in the United States exceeds 152,000 from more than 4.46 million confirmed cases. How sad that those numbers will continue to climb because of Trump’s ineptitude. 

Day 132 of Nat'l Emergency: Lawn Sign for Justice, Petty President, Will Trump Take a Shot

We have proudly joined the woke lawn sign brigade. Designed by Gilda, our sign displays an illustration of eight children of various ethnicities next to a Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “Injustice Anywhere Is a threat to Justice Everywhere.”

Presidential adviser and not-too-secret white supremacist Stephen Miller notwithstanding, Jews have been at the forefront of civil rights activism. We believe in the legitimacy behind the Black Lives Matter movement but have been repulsed by the open antisemitism and anti-Israel stances of some of its leaders and followers, made all the more reprehensible by the organization’s failure to call out repression and discrimination common in Arab Moslem lands. 

Our sign already has won approval from neighbors. We’re at the end of a cul de sac so the sign will get limited exposure. But it’s the sentiment that counts, not the number of eyeballs that see it.

Petty President: The pettiness, the mean-spiritness of Donald Trump continues to know no bounds as it continues to amaze. His latest denigration of the office of the president involves the removal of the official portraits of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from a public viewing area and their placement in a non public room of the White House.

He couldn’t remove Barack Obama’s portrait because it has not been officially unveiled in deference to the longstanding animosity Trump has toward his immediate predecessor.

One has to wonder how Trump will be treated by his successor, an especially trenchant thought if it is Joe Biden in 2021 or a different Democrat in 2025. Will he be invited to ceremonial functions? Will he be shunned by the members of the exclusive Past Presidents club? 

Will foreign governments welcome him, not that he was an avid jet-setter before his election? As he was not overly complimentary to most foreign leaders while in office, his options for frequent flyer points are limited. Okay, he could visit Turkey, Russia, Brazil. And Israel. Perhaps his good buddy Kim Jong-un will invite him to a deeper visit inside North Korea. Or Xi Jinping might want to show him China’s biological warfare labs that Trump is always talking about.  

Will He Take the Shot? Should an anti COVID-19 vaccine be introduced while he is still in office, will Trump display presidential leadership by publicly taking the shot, or will he punk out and reinforce the cautionary call of the anti-vax brigade that rejects all types of inoculations? Perhaps he will claim an exemption to the injection because of a flareup of his bone spurs.

The current fight over wearing a mask to contain the pandemic’s spread will be child’s play compared to the opposition anti-vaxers will wage, especially if anyone administered the vaccine becomes infected (https://nyti.ms/2OAxMM1). 

It is truly a sad time when the health care system once touted as the best in the world has become a shell of its former prominence. 

Feds vs. States: Where does federal vs. state responsibility begin? States’ rights vs. federal authority. 

During the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has chosen to push responsibility for containment of the virus to governors, except when he sees political gain advocating opening up the economy and schools. He is trying to strongarm states to do his bidding even as case numbers and deaths rise. But his bottom line is that states, not he, are responsible for the pain the country is experiencing.

On the other hand, having clearly lost his bid to be a successful wartime general in the battle to beat COVID-19, Trump has shifted gears to be the law and order president by sending in federal troops to Portland, OR, to arrest and control Black Lives Matter and related protesters. No state or local official asked for federal troop assistance. Indeed, they have vociferously rejected their presence.

But Trump doesn’t care because this narrative fits the image he wants to project to his base and to voters who might feel threatened by the protesters. 

Day 36 of Nat'l Emergency: What Will Be Its Legacy?

The yarhzeit memorial candles flickered throughout Wednesday night and Thursday for Gilda’s and my parents. Her father died in 1958. Her mother in 2005. My mother in 1996. My father in 1998.

Born between 1901 and 1924, their generation has been dubbed the Greatest, a designation earned mostly for their contributions during World War II. But they experienced and endured so much more in crafting a legacy for their children and grandchildren.

It is not too presumptuous to ask, what type of America will we bequeath to our offspring? Will we match up to the Greatest Generation’s legacy? Consider what transpired during their formative years through 1971, the year the first of them reached 70, the biblical assignment of what constituted a full life. 

As they entered their teenage years the world exploded into war. Even before the United States aided in ending the The Great War (World War I), the Spanish Flu ravaged America and societies around the globe. A decade later the stock market crashed, the Depression began, the Dust Bowl exhausted America’s breadbasket. Lucky ones, like my mother and father and Gilda’s father, managed to emigrate from Europe (Gilda’s mother was born in New York). 

The Greatest Generation defeated Nazi Germany, Italian fascism and imperial Japan.  

Prior to World War II the United States had tilted toward isolationism. But with victory came the assumption of several mantles—liberator and peacemaker, supporter of progressive democracy and enlightened capitalism, developer and exporter of ideas in medicine, science and technology.

Despite the Korean War, McCarthyism, the Cold War with its capacity for nuclear annihilation, political assassinations and the Viet Nam war, the Greatest Generation soldiered on through the post-war economic boom, the civil rights movement, the space program and cultural transformation perhaps best exemplified by the move to suburbia, rock and roll and the sexual revolution.

The Greatest Generation left a global legacy that included the conquering of many diseases, the genesis of the computer age, the rebuilding of war-ravaged regions, the formation of global pacts for defense, health, trade and care of refugees.

All that and more are threatened by a pandemic that descended during a time of retraction from the belief that the United States has a role, an obligation, to lead the world through partnerships, not through isolated example.

Daily we are advised our future will be different from our present, be it by social distancing measures in restaurants, theaters and sports arenas, or through greater reliance on virtual shopping and workplace employment. Almost all aspects of life will be affected.

Truly transformative changes—legacies—require bold action. Will COVID-19 prompt America to finally adopt universal health care and increase the availability of trained medical personnel in rural areas? With Internet access seen as vital for education and employment, will we finally eliminate Web connectivity deserts in our cities and rural areas? With so many unemployed and the need for infrastructure upgrading of our roads, bridges, airports, dams, harbors and tunnels, will we create a Works Progress Administration à la the Depression era New Deal program that employed millions to build up America? With the Internet forcing faster consolidation in the retail industry, will we find new uses for shuttered shopping centers including affordable housing and low risk penal institutions? With the increased realization of the importance of healthcare workers and educators, as well as public servants who provide police, fire, ambulance, correction services, transportation and waste management, will we more appropriately compensate these contributors critical to our collective existence? Will we take steps necessary to flatten the curve of disparity between the incomes of the wealthiest and the remaining 90% of society?

Will any or all of this happen? There is a streak of individualism in the country that shares the same genes with isolationism and averseness to big government. After 80 years of Social Security there remain diehards who oppose it. The pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities we all live with. We will never be able to guarantee a new virus strain will not emerge some day, somewhere. But we would be able to smooth out any impact it might have if we have in place a more equal society.