The only Republican ideology is nihilism

The idiocy of one puppet attacking another is too absurd to bother commenting on itself.

But the nuclear war against efforts to overcome COVID and finally bring our society back to something approaching normal is a perfect illustration of the destructiveness of the Trumpism. They were lying when they said #AllLivesMatter.

 

It is a further illustration is that their only concern is to sabotage these efforts to undermine the recovery and harm Democrats chances of retaining Congress in 2022. Their governors are working quite effectively to this end.

To put their own jobs ahead of the greater good is not entirely new in politics. But to do so on a literally life or death matter that is harming their own base far more than the opposition's shows that their approach is not only vile and inhumane but stupid and self-defeating.

It's no surprise that the three or four vaguely reasonable Republican governors out there want nothing to do with the national death cult (who, of course, wants to cancel them for the disobedience).

The former Republican Party's only ideology is nihilism. They have literally nothing offer except rage. They can't even bring themselves to denounce violence or threats of violence. Even as their own supporters die in the meantime.

The fetishization of globalization and its consequences

I heard a show on the radio yesterday talking about the anxiety young people are facing. It discussed the disconnect in this regard between young people and older folks, because the former have a better grasp of the precarity of our national and global situations. And they are going to live longer with its consequences.

The speaker cited the toilet paper panic of last year and postulated about what might happen if the next panic is directed not a hygienic product but food.

The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the increasing effects of the climate crisis, is showing the importance of growing and making more things locally and the risks of not doing so.

There's long been a fantasy that specialization combined with a robust global supply chain would solve all the world's problems. This fantasy is dependent on a global harmony that is very atypical from a historical perspective.

To be clear, this is not an anti-globalization post. Globalization is essential to many of the positive aspects of how we live today. Fewer barriers to trade are generally - not always, anti-competitive practices undermine its benefits - better than more.

But there has to be a better balance between the local and the macro, to hedge against risks in both.

Being entirely dependent on the rest of the world is a major risk when that connection is severed, such as during a global pandemic. We've seen the effects of this already.

Only 12% of world's computer chips are manufactured in the US, compared to 37% three decades ago. And that's caused major production problems for US-based auto and electronics companies.

Canada, which has no domestic COVID-vaccine manufacturers, has fully innoculated only 19% of its citizens, compared to 45% in the US.

Even in my local area of upstate New York, many tourist-based businesses have been dependent on summer workers from Eastern Europe, already a risk in a country often run by an immigrant-bashing party. Their absence during the border closure is causing major staffing issues.

Being overly dependent on a global supply chain has led to an astonishing lack of resilience in many sectors of the economy.

One thing individuals can do is to buy as much of their food from local sources as possible. This will help ensure those local producers remain an option when a panic-induced shortage or further global supply chain disruption hits the food sector.

Stop living in fear!

I hear a lot of people saying that if you take reasonable, minimal precautions during a global pandemic which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, you are living in fear. 

So don't live in fear. 

Drive without a seat belt. 

Ride without a helmet.

Disable the brakes in your car/bike/motorcycle.

Jump off a cliff.

Science says these are bad ideas but can you really trust science? It's just controlled by Big Seat Belt (the richest lobby in DC). I mean isn't gravity just a "theory"?

 Don't live in fear by letting the tyrannical laws of physics suppress your freedom.

Why Germany succeeded where the US failed

The German soccer leagues are the first in the world to re-open, albeit without fans. I was listening to an interview with a German soccer announcer. He said that part of what helped is that Germany "got lucky." 

He explained that they watched on TV what was happening in Italy and were quick to take action to mitigate the spread of the virus. 

Rather than choosing a national leader who rejects science and surrounds himself with the same, they chose as their national leader a trained scientist. Even in a decentralized federal republic, this was critical in setting the tone.

Little about this is "lucky."

It is the result of conscious choices made by Germans and their leaders to act decisively and proactively to prevent a crisis from becoming much worse. They saw what happening elsewhere and didn't sit on their hands and/or scream MSM sheeple Nazi Hitler hoax plandemic. They took action.

Over the decades, they've also consciously chose to develop a decent social safety net to reduce inequality and to establish a rational health care system designed to serve citizens.

The results of serious leadership: they had one of the lowest per capita death rates in the western world. And now the country is slowly re-opening.  

Even Republican governors are targeted by Trump

It's bad enough the Trump regime has been failing miserably to help governors desperately trying to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. 

As many governors have rightly pointed out, given the knowledge of how the pandemic was spreading in Asia and Europe, FEMA should've prepared a national stockpile before the outbreak started him rather than having states bid on the open market against each other and FEMA and other countries.

 But even when responsible governors do manage to obtain supplies that the federal government should be doing, there's the fear that the Trump regime will steal them. 

The Republican governor of Massachusetts complained that the feds seized a plane load of masks that his state had bought and paid for. No word on if the Trump regime reimbursed the taxpayers of the Bay State they swindled. 

The Republican governor of Maryland has ordered the National Guard and state police to protect his state's supply of COVID19 tests. His assertion of states rights in the face of an intentionally sabotaged federal government will no doubt enrage the PO(TU)S.

Trivializing COVID19

I see a lot of people relentlessly trying to trivialize the danger of COVID-19. They're clearly doing so for ideological reasons, which is fine, except that they spout pseudo-scientific b.s. to obscure their ideological reasons.
 

What's noteworthy is that you don't really hear doctors and nurses in hospitals or nursing home staff trivializing the virus.

What you do hear is medical professionals and care staff talking about how bad it is in the hospitals and nursing homes, not only in metro NYC but also here in upstate. They use words like overwhelming, exhausting and unprecedented, even those who've worked during previous pandemics. They're not saying "it's just like regular flu season." They're saying it's worse than during AIDS. 

Maybe this is a terribly mainstream belief, MSM sheeple that I must be. But the people who are on the front lines of this and have actual scientific training from real schools might, just might, actually know what the fuck they're talking about better than someone whose "expertise" changes (impeachment last month, epidemiology this month, chem trails next month) based on whatever is trending on Youtube at the moment. Or maybe not. Maybe those LPNs risking their lives for $16/hr are just part of the Grand Conspiracy too.

Historically, Americans have always lurched through extremes where we go back and forth between fetishizing science uncritically to rejecting it entirely. We're obviously in the latter period right now. Take a swig of Clorox if you disagree.

When I lived in West Africa, a Guinean friend of mine who was a chemistry teacher told me something I never forgot: "Science without conscience will be the ruin of Mankind." This is not about rejecting science. It means assessing it with a critical eye based on the intersection of ethics and actual scientific principles. But we Americans never seem to be mature enough as a people to master this nuance.

Why I wear a mask

I've seen several local businesses posting something like "No mask, no entry, no exceptions." And it always provokes howls of outrage from cable "news" addicts denouncing the business owners and those who follow their rules as submissive slaves and sheeple. 

They're a private business. They can make you wear a mask any time they want, pandemic or not, governor's orders or not. You step on their property, respect their rules. Get over it or leave.

 Listen, wear a mask in public. Don't wear a mask and deal with the consequences. That's your choice.

I choose to wear one. Not so much because I'm that worried about catching it, even though I'm in a higher risk category. I do so out of respect for my neighbors.

Out of respect for the underpaid cashiers and stock clerks who deal with hundreds or thousands of people coming in, some of whom are no doubt sick and many of whom do not respect social distancing. I'm sure most of workers have their stress heightened just a little bit every time they see a customer without a mask. This is not the job they signed up for.

Out of respect. for senior citizen shoppers who no doubt share that fear.

Out of respect for the doctors and nurses and other medical personnel who having working straight out with no break for a month. Out of respect for their family members that they barely see anymore.

Out of respect for everyone who wants this pandemic to subside sooner, rather than later.

If you think your governor is Hitler for issuing restrictions and that he's trampling on your God-given right to get a haircut that our Founding Fathers fought for, fine. That's your right.

If you think the business owners doing this are idiots because they don't realize this is all a hoax like you learned from Fox News or YouTube Medical School, that's your right.

If orotesting that makes you feel like Rosa Parks, congratulations. That's your right.

Go ahead, break your arm patting yourself on the back. The first responders will treat your broken arm anyway. But bear in mind, they will be wearing masks too.

But don't crap on people who think they're part of society and choose to respect their fellow community members. That's our right.