I went for a walk–a real one, not a virtual one–with my friend Andrew, the two of us maintaining healthy social distancing and wearing our masks. Though I’ve gone on long drives, waltzes into the cemetery, and made runs to a grocery store packed with people, this marks the first time in over two months […]
Tag: Trump
Quarantine, Day 68
My sister this afternoon told me that her husband had been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, and we agreed that she should cancel her plans to spend time today with our parents. Despite a significantly lower number of cases than where I live in Northern New Jersey, rural America–particularly the places […]
Trump Appears to be Flirting with Genocide
What seemed at first to have been a feckless and ignorant response to the spread of COVID-19 is starting to look more malicious over time. You can only bungle something for so long before the repeated missteps reach a point where they have to be more than just missteps. There is reporting out this morning […]
Five Reasons Americans Prefer a COVID-19 Death
I don’t understand why anyone is surprised that Americans are incapable of following “stay at home” orders. This is the country of “Honey Boo Boo,” anti-vaxxers, Joe Exotic, and Neo-Nazis holding public office. We aren’t exactly the cream of the crop, as countries go, even though we think we are. Here in New Jersey, while […]
The Final Hours of America, or How Trump is turning the U.S. into a Banana Republic
A few weeks ago, I laid out a detailed picture of the failures of Trump not only in his fecklessness to do what needs to be done to save human lives during a pandemic, but also detailing how those failures display gross, criminal negligence on the part of Trump and his Republican party. Just to […]
Quarantine, Day 50
The longer this pandemic flows on, the more it seems the days grow somehow quieter, eerily quiet in fact. The bar beneath us hasn’t made a peep in well over a month. There are fewer cars on the street below, fewer voices on the corner with no one waiting for the bus. I know it’s […]
The Republican Promise of a Negligent Homicide against America
America believes, perhaps because of our history, that freedom is our most cherished quality. Maybe because of violent beginnings, our independence has long been interpreted to mean “freedom from tyranny,” as opposed to “freedom from want.” That is, when we obsess over the need to be free, we assume ourselves victims of some fast-approaching enemy […]
Quarantine, Day 27
My N-99 masks came–two of them with filters on the mask. They are black and make me look like Bane from the Batman series. To be honest, I’d feel guilty for having ordered them, knowing in hindsight they could’ve gone to someone in a hospital, except I ordered them back in February, before anyone was […]
The Lie of the ‘Great American Resurrection’
Last week when Trump said he wanted the country “open by Easter,” a Fox News anchor referred to it as the “great American resurrection.” The reference to the Easter tradition, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, is an obvious attempt to signal to Trump’s evangelical base that this president really is a person of faith, a […]
Quarantine, Day 18
I heard someone today reference the Church as one of the reasons the Black Death was able to kill off somewhere between 40% to 80% of Europe during the 14th century. When I started digging more into that claim, I had some trouble verifying it. The claim hinged on the belief that people packed themselves […]
