Tuesday Reads: Living In A Failed State
Posted: April 21, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: coronavirus, Covid-19, Donald Trump, experts on the year ahead, Trump's war against the states, U.S. as failed state 20 Comments
Good Morning
More than 40,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, but the so-called “president” is doing nothing to stop the carnage. He refuses to help states with desperately need medical equipment and tests to identify carriers. He has made it abundantly clear that we are on our own. Money and supplies are being doled out selectively–red states get the most and blue states the least. He is using FEMA and the FBI to try to stop shipments of equipment to hospitals in blue states. It actually looks like Trump is hoping those of us who did not and won’t vote for him just get sick and die.
The U.S. is no longer the country I grew up in. We are looking more like post-Soviet Russia. George Packer describes the situation we find ourselves in: We Are Living in a Failed State. The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.
The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.
Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.
Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms. Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020 has stunned itself with a collapse that’s larger and deeper than one miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch’s contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?
Head on over to The Atlantic to read the rest.
What’s next for this country? Can we survive the ravages of this pandemic? Over the weekend, The New York Times published an important piece by Donald G. McNeil Jr.: The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead.
In truth, it is not clear to anyone where this crisis is leading us. More than 20 experts in public health, medicine, epidemiology and history shared their thoughts on the future during in-depth interviews. When can we emerge from our homes? How long, realistically, before we have a treatment or vaccine? How will we keep the virus at bay?
Some felt that American ingenuity, once fully engaged, might well produce advances to ease the burdens. The path forward depends on factors that are certainly difficult but doable, they said: a carefully staggered approach to reopening, widespread testing and surveillance, a treatment that works, adequate resources for health care providers — and eventually an effective vaccine.
Still, it was impossible to avoid gloomy forecasts for the next year. The scenario that Mr. Trump has been unrolling at his daily press briefings — that the lockdowns will end soon, that a protective pill is almost at hand, that football stadiums and restaurants will soon be full — is a fantasy, most experts said.
“We face a doleful future,” said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, a former president of the National Academy of Medicine.
He and others foresaw an unhappy population trapped indoors for months, with the most vulnerable possibly quarantined for far longer. They worried that a vaccine would initially elude scientists, that weary citizens would abandon restrictions despite the risks, that the virus would be with us from now on.
“My optimistic side says the virus will ease off in the summer and a vaccine will arrive like the cavalry,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University medical school. “But I’m learning to guard against my essentially optimistic nature.”
Most experts believed that once the crisis was over, the nation and its economy would revive quickly. But there would be no escaping a period of intense pain.
Exactly how the pandemic will end depends in part on medical advances still to come. It will also depend on how individual Americans behave in the interim. If we scrupulously protect ourselves and our loved ones, more of us will live. If we underestimate the virus, it will find us.
Read more about what the experts had to say at the NYT link.
Jonathan Chait on Trump’s abandonment of the states: Trump Wants to Starve the States Into Opening Before It’s Safe.
President Trump’s current pandemic strategy — emphasize current; like the cliché about the weather, if you don’t like it, wait a few hours — is a baffling knot of contradictions. He is hurling all responsibility to state governments, leaving it to them to devise effective tests and to decide when to relax social distancing.
At the same time, he is starving them of the resources to handle the job. And even as Trump hides behind a policy of deference to governors, he is goading right-wing protesters to force their hand. Trump is “saying things that seem contradictory,” as the New York Times puts it, “like pledging to work with governors and then urging people to ‘liberate’ their states, and leaving it to his audiences to hear what they want to hear in his words.”
Yet there does appear to be a strategy here. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon that Trump has “asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others.” Trump’s seemingly paradoxical stance is an attempt to hoard credit and shirk risk, straddling the demands of his business allies with the pleas of his public-health advisers. On the surface, he is deferring responsibility and blame to the governors. Just below the surface, he is coercing them to resume economic activity as fast as possible, regardless of what public-health officials say.
Trump’s plan to coerce the states into reopening has at least three discernible elements. The first is, or was, the formation of a task force to reopen the country. The purpose of the council was to give Trump cover. The council would prod governors to reopen businesses, and because it would be seen as coming from the business community, Trump himself would not bear the blame for future outbreaks that might result. As the Washington Post reported last week, “Trump’s advisers are trying to shield the president from political accountability should his move to reopen the economy prove premature and result in lost lives, and so they are trying to mobilize business executives, economists and other prominent figures to buy into the eventual White House plan, so that if it does not work, the blame can be shared broadly, according to two former administration officials familiar with the efforts.” (In part because its purpose was so naked, the task force seems to have collapsed.)
The second element is the mobilization of protests. The appearance of flag-waving and sometimes gun-toting demonstrators in a handful of state capitols this weekend seems to have come as a shock to the news media, but Trump’s allies signaled this was coming. Last Monday, Stephen Moore, a right-wing pseudo-economist and close Trump ally who has spent weeks pushing back on public-health guidelines, was quoted in the press saying, “In the next two weeks, you’ll see protests in the streets of conservatives; you’ll see a big pushback against the lockdown in some states.”
Click the link to read the rest at New York Magazine.
At The Washington Post, Paul Waldman on Trump’s “war against the states”:
President Trump and congressional Republicans are going to war with the states.
It’s bizarre, it’s self-defeating, it will do enormous harm to Americans in every corner of the country, and it can be fully explained only by understanding the president’s pettiest and most narcissistic motives. In other words, it’s the kind of thing we’ve come to expect in the Trump era.
Last week, the $349 billion allotted for small businesses in the CARES Act rescue package ran out, with only a portion of the American businesses that have suffered in this pandemic-driven recession getting the help they need. While everyone seemed ready to provide more money, we found ourselves in a familiar situation, with Democrats saying we need to be swift and aggressive in saving Americans suffering from this economic catastrophe, and Republicans saying that we shouldn’t spend too much or help too many people.
When negotiations began, Republicans wanted to add about $250 billion to the small business fund — and do nothing else. Now it appears that Democrats have pressured them into accepting a package that sends $370 billion to small businesses, gives $75 billion to hospitals, and spends $25 billion to beef up coronavirus testing.
What isn’t included in the package, however, is the desperately needed aid to states and cities Democrats sought. Republicans absolutely refused to even consider it.
Why? The need is urgent. State and local budgets are suddenly facing all kinds of new costs related to the pandemic, while at the same time tax revenues have fallen off a cliff. If they don’t get help, they’ll have to start laying people off and slashing state services, which will only make the recession deeper and longer. By some estimates, states and cities will need $500 billion in federal aid to make up the shortfall.
Read more at the WaPo.
So far Trump’s strategy isn’t convincing most Americans. The Washington Post: Most rate Trump’s coronavirus response negatively and expect crowds will be unsafe until summer, Post-U. Md. poll finds.
Most Americans expect no immediate easing of the health risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic, despite calls by President Trump and others to begin reopening the economy quickly. A majority say it could be June or later before it will be safe for larger gatherings to take place again, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
Most Americans — 54 percent — give the president negative marks for his handling of the outbreak in this country and offer mixed reviews for the federal government as a whole. By contrast, 72 percent of Americans give positive ratings to the governors of their states for the way they have dealt with the crisis, with workers also rating their employers positively.
Partisan allegiances shape perceptions of when it will be safe to have gatherings of 10 or more people and of the president’s performance during the pandemic. But governors win praise across the political spectrum for their leadership, which has sometimes put them sharply at odds with Trump and his administration.
Personal health concerns are widespread, with 57 percent saying they are “very” or “somewhat” worried about becoming infected and seriously ill from the coronavirus, including at least 40 percent of people in every major demographic and political group. For those most concerned, the fear was enough to override partisanship when it comes to the safety of public gatherings, particularly for Republicans.
Today we face another day in the time of coronavirus. There will be more reports of deaths and infections, more horror stories, and more lies and propaganda from the Trump gang, and another insane briefing airing of grievances by Trump. We have to steel ourselves to protect ourselves from the virus and save our sanity in these crazy times.
Have courage Sky Dancers! What’s on your mind today?
Lazy Caturday Reads: A Little Good News And More Bad News
Posted: April 18, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump, Trump cult 20 Comments
Okazaki Cat Demon, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1850
Good Morning!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the Trump death cult. In the past couple of days we’ve been seeing ominous signs that Trump and his zombie followers are going to make the coronavirus epidemic in the U.S. even worse than it already is by fomenting unrest over restrictions governors and mayors have imposed in order to slow the spread of infections. But before I get to that, I want to highlight something positive that is happening here in Massachusetts.
The New York Times: An Army of Tracers Takes Shape in Massachusetts.
Alexandra Cross, a newly minted state public health worker, dialed a stranger’s telephone number on Monday, her heart racing.
It was Ms. Cross’s first day as part of Massachusetts’s fleet of contact tracers, responsible for tracking down people who have been exposed to the coronavirus, as soon as possible, and warning them. On her screen was the name of a woman from Lowell.
“One person who has recently been diagnosed has been in contact with you,” the script told her to say. “Do you have a few minutes to discuss what that exposure might mean for you?” Forty-five minutes later, Ms. Cross hung up the phone. They had giggled and commiserated. Her file was crammed with information.
She was taking her first steps up a Mount Everest of cases.
Dancing Cats by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Massachusetts is the first state to invest in an ambitious contact-tracing program, budgeting $44 million to hire 1,000 people like Ms. Cross. The program represents a bet on the part of Gov. Charlie Baker that the state will be able to identify pockets of infection as they emerge, and prevent infected people from spreading the virus further.
This could help Massachusetts in the coming weeks and months, as it seeks to relax strict social-distancing measures and reopen its economy.
Contact tracing has helped Asian countries like South Korea and Singapore contain the spread of the virus, but their systems rely on digital surveillance, using patients’ digital footprints to alert potential contacts, an intrusion that many Americans would not accept.
Massachusetts is building its response around an old-school, labor-intensive method: people. Lots of them.
Read the rest at the NYT.
So that’s the good news. The bad news is that Trump himself is egging on public protests by his craziest supporters that could lead to more infections and quite possibly violence.
Axios: Trump accelerates the unrest.
What he’s saying: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN! … LIBERATE MINNESOTA! … LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
Why it matters: Governors have in place strong public health restrictions and are likely to want to continue to hold the line for some time to come. This was a position Trump publicly supported as recently as Thursday.
- Michigan in particular has a bad coronavirus outbreak, with a lockdown from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that’s among the most severe nationwide.
Japanese Cat by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The ingredients for mayhem, via Axios’ Jonathan Swan:
- Deepening economic desperation: 22 million have filed for jobless benefits, with a second wave of layoffs already underway. More help appears to be coming for small businesses, but Congress is still haggling.
- Conservative TV and talk radio influencers encouraging protests: “People instinctively know now that however bad this is, it isn’t as bad as they all told us,” Rush Limbaugh told listeners on Thursday.
- Early signs of big conservative donor money getting behind the protests: In Michigan, one protest was planned by the political adviser to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, WashPost reports.
- Police departments are stressed: Hundreds of police officers have been quarantined for coronavirus exposure, with some dying. Multiple departments nationwide have reported issues getting PPE.
Between the lines: As we reported in yesterday’s PM, public support is strongly on the side of social distancing.
- 66% of Americans are concerned state governments will lift restrictions too quickly.
- 73% say the worst is yet to come from the outbreak.
The bottom line: It surely can’t be helping individuals and businesses to have the yo-yo effect created by federal and state officials openly arguing about timelines that involve life and death.
NBC News: In Trump’s ‘LIBERATE’ tweets, extremists see a call to arms.
When President Donald Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” on Friday morning, some of his most fervent supporters in far-right communities — including those who have agitated for violent insurrection — heard a call to arms.
Cats Practicing Their Music, Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The tweet was one of three sent from the president’s account, along with “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
Trump’s tweets came after small protests by Trump supporters broke out in a handful of states, many of which were fueled by anti-vaccination and anti-government groups. Anti-government sentiment has percolated among far-right extremists in recent weeks over the stay-at-home orders governors have issued to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Trump’s tweets, however, pushed many online extremist communities to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict, an event they’ve termed “the boogaloo,” for which many far-right activists have been gearing up and advocating since last year.
There were sharp increases on Twitter in terms associated with conspiracies such as QAnon and the “boogaloo” term immediately following the president’s tweets, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit group of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.
Posts about the “boogaloo” on Twitter skyrocketed in the hours after the president’s tweets, with more than 1,000 tweets featuring the term, some of which received hundreds of retweets.
“We the people should open up America with civil disobedience and lots of BOOGALOO. Who’s with me?” one QAnon conspiracy theorist on Twitter with over 50,000 followers asked.
“Boogaloo” is a term used by extremists to refer to armed insurrection, a shortened version of “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo,” which was coined on the extremist message board 4chan.
Falling Cat, Utakawa Kuniyoshi
Washington Governor Jay Inslee released a statement in response to Trump’s twitter taunts.
“The president’s statements this morning encourage illegal and dangerous acts. He is putting millions of people in danger of contracting COVID-19. His unhinged rantings and calls for people to “liberate” states could also lead to violence. We’ve seen it before.
“The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies even while his own administration says the virus is real and is deadly, and that we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted.
“Just yesterday, the president stood alongside White House officials and public health experts and said science would guide his plan for easing restrictions. The White House released a sensible plan laying out many of the guidelines that I agree are essential to follow, as we work to resume economic activity. Trump slowly read his script and said the plan was based on ‘hard, verifiable data’ and was done ‘in consultation with scientists, experts and medical professionals across government.’
“Less than 24 hours later, the president is off the rails. He’s not quoting scientists and doctors but spewing dangerous, anti-democratic rhetoric.
“We appreciate our continued communication with the vice president, Dr. Birx, Admiral Polowczyk, Admiral Giroir and others in the federal government, but their work is undermined by the president’s irresponsible statements.
“I hope someday we can look at today’s meltdown as something to be pitied, rather than condemned. But we don’t have that luxury today. There is too much at stake.
Three cats at an indoor party by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
“The president’s call to action today threatens to undermine his own goal of recovery by further delaying the ability of states to amend current interventions in a safe, evidence-based way. His words are likely to cause COVID-19 infections to spike in places where social distancing is working — and if infections are increasing in those places, that will further postpone the 14 days of decline that his own guidance says is necessary before modifying any interventions.
“I hope political leaders of all sorts will speak out firmly against the president’s calls for rebellion. Americans need to work together to protect each other. It’s the only way to slow the spread of this deadly virus and get us on the road to recovery.”
But some Republicans are singing a different tune. The Washington Post: GOP’s growing ‘open it up’ caucus urges fewer virus restrictions amid warnings from fellow Republicans.
A growing number of Republican lawmakers across the country are pushing for a more rapid reboot of the American economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that the risk of spreading more sickness — and even death — is outweighed by the broader economic damage that widespread stay-at-home orders have wrought.
They are taking cues from and breathing energy into a grass-roots conservative movement of resistance against government-ordered quarantine measures — one that President Trump appeared to back in several tweets Friday — but are facing defiance within their own party from Republican congressional leaders, governors and fellow lawmakers who warn that a rash reopening could reinvigorate the virus’s spread.
The emerging “open it up” caucus has spoken out on key conservative media platforms, including some of Trump’s favorite programs. In a prime-time Fox News Channel appearance Wednesday, for instance, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) said that balancing the health of Americans with a functioning economy amid the pandemic was “like choosing between cancer and a heart attack.”
Read more at the WaPo.
By Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Politico: Trump allies press administration to unleash lawsuits against lockdowns.
As President Donald Trump uses the bully pulpit to press state and local governments to ease their virus-related lockdowns, conservative activists and religious leaders are urging his administration to go further by unleashing a wave of lawsuits arguing that the measures are intruding on Americans’ legally protected rights to worship, protest and buy guns.
In a letter sent to Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday, the Conservative Action Project, a group of conservative leaders including Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots, called governors and local leaders “petty, would-be dictators” who had committed “rampant abuses of constitutional rights and civil liberties” as part of their response to the coronavirus.
Among the examples they include are “arresting pro-life counselors for peacefully standing outside an abortion clinic while maintaining social distance,” “arresting a man for surfing,” ticketing people attending drive-in church services, and “prohibitions on citizens’ rights to purchase firearms.”
The letter comes as Trump put pressure on Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia to ease up on social distancing measures a day after the White House released federal guidelines to reopen the economy. Protests, many led by Trump supporters, have cropped up across the country demanding state leaders reel in restrictions designed to stop the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, Trump’s so-called “plan” to reopen the economy is complete bullshit. The Guardian: Operation reopen America: are we about to witness a second historic failure of leadership from Trump?
Unveiling new guidelines for the loosening of the lockdown, [Trump] committed his administration to a “science-based reopening”. “We are starting our life again, we are starting rejuvenation of our economy again, in a safe and structured and very responsible fashion.”
Woman with a cat, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Beyond the cloistered confines of the White House an alternative interpretation of events was gathering force. On a day in which the US suffered its highest death toll from Covid-19, with a total of more than 680,000 confirmed cases and 34,000 deaths, public health experts were scrutinising the president’s new guidelines and coming to rather different conclusions.
“This isn’t a plan, it’s barely a powerpoint,” spluttered Ron Klain on Twitter. Klain, the US government’s Ebola tsar during the last health crisis to test the White House, in 2014, said the proposals contained “no provision to ramp up testing, no standard on levels of disease before opening, no protections for workers or customers”.
On 28 March the Guardian exposed the missing six weeks lost as a result of Trump’s dithering and downplaying of the crisis when the virus first struck. Jeremy Konyndyk, another central figure in the US battle against Ebola, told the Guardian that the Trump administration’s initial response was “one of the greatest failures of basic governance and leadership in modern times”.
Now that the US is contemplating a shift into the second phase of the crisis – tentative reopening of the economy – scientists and public health officials are agreed that three pillars need to be put into place to manage the transition safely. They are: mass testing to identify those who are infected, contact tracing to isolate other people who may have caught Covid-19 from them, and personal protective equipment (PPE) to shield frontline healthcare workers from any flare-up.
A chorus of expert voices has also begun to be heard warning that those three essential pillars remain in critically short supply throughout the US. Less than a month after the Guardian’s exploration of the missing six weeks, the chilling recognition is dawning that the country is heading for a second massive failure of governance under Trump, this time on an even bigger scale.
Unless testing capability is dramatically ramped up and a giant army of health workers assembled to trace the contacts of those infected – right now – the consequences could be devastating.
We are in big trouble. That last thing we need is another tea party-style uprising in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. Somehow, some way, Trump has to go.
What stories are you following today?
Thursday Reads: Sleep and Dreams In the Time of Coronavirus
Posted: April 16, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: coronavirus, Covid-19, dreams, nightmares, sleep disturbances 22 Comments
The Nightmare, painted in December 2016, depicts what artist Mark Bryan imagined the Trump presidency would be like.
Good Afternoon!!
It seems that the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders have caused lots of people to have bizarre dreams and nightmares. I spent this morning reading numerous articles about this phenomenon. Here’s a sampling:
The Washington Post: ‘Edith Piaf sneezed on my cheesecake’ and other coronavirus dreams.
“I dreamed that we couldn’t record [my podcast],” says Alex Scheer, an Ohio music student and the co-host of “College Sports Connection.” “Because covid-19 spread over the airwaves, and if we recorded, we would be risking each other’s lives.”
“I dreamed that I planned a duck boat tour for a conference,” says Christi Showman Farrar, a Massachusetts librarian. “And we were going to meet at the Prudential Center, which is a shopping mall, but we got there and it was eerily quiet and I couldn’t figure out why. And then I realized there were a few people around, but they were all dressed like Santa or elves, and all the stores had been covered in wrapping paper like they were holiday gifts.”
The NIghtmare, by John Henry Fuseli
Did the wrapping paper signify that the concept of public shopping now seems like an underappreciated treat? Did the elves signify that things won’t be back to normal until Christmas? Does anything in a covid-19 dream signify anything more than the pitiful bleating of our collective subconscious, creating a different ludicrous reality than the ludicrous reality we’re already inhabiting?
“Okay, so I’m not typically a vivid dreamer,” says Hillary Haldane, a professor in Connecticut. Nevertheless, a few nights ago, she found herself face to face with the French singer Edith Piaf.
Except it wasn’t the “real” Edith Piaf, exactly — more like the stylized painting-version of Piaf, from the cover of an album Haldane has been playing for living-room dance parties during the quarantine. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Dream Piaf produced an entire cheesecake. Then she sneezed on it. Then she handed it to Haldane.
“Obviously, what made it so vivid was the fear of sneezing and coughing,” Haldane says. “Plus, all of this anxiety around food: Do we have enough of it? Is it safe to go get it? The virus was infecting the one safe activity I still have. Dance parties with my kids.”
The New York Times: Why Am I Having Weird Dreams Lately?
The question of whether “anyone else” has “been having” strange dreams (“lately”) is perennially popular online. It is a spooky yet comforting query: Has anyone else stumbled onto possible evidence that the universe possesses a finite metaphysical infrastructure occasionally detected by the subconscious?
Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński recreated his dreams in his paintings.
In recent weeks, however, the question has been posed with increasing frequency. Local news personalities in particular appear uniquely susceptible to wondering if anybody else is having strange dreams, with meteorologists and anchors in, for instance, Texas, Connecticut, North Carolina, Washington, Wisconsin, and New York, having recently posed it on their public Facebook pages. And the Google query “why am i having weird dreams lately” has quadrupled in the United States in the past week.
National media properties — anxious to provide lighthearted human interest stories to counterbalance news items like a recent announcement that the convenience store chain Wawa was sending a refrigerated truck to New Jersey to serve as a temporary morgue, yet hamstrung by the dearth of novel experiences it is possible to uncover in one’s own home — have hastened to supply the answer.
The answer is: Yes, someone else is having weird dreams lately. (Always.) But are we — humanity — dreaming with more frequency, and more vividly, right now? The answer is: Also, likely, yes — at least for many people.
Read much more about dreaming in traumatic times at the NYT link.
National Geographic: The pandemic is giving people vivid, unusual dreams. Here’s why.
Ronald Reagan pulled up to the curb in a sleek black town car, rolled down his tinted window, and beckoned for Lance Weller, author of the novel Wilderness, to join him. The long-dead president escorted Weller to a comic book shop stocked with every title Weller had ever wanted, but before he could make a purchase, Reagan swiped his wallet and skipped out the door.
Nightmare, by Sigifredo Camacho
Of course, Weller was dreaming. He is one of many people around the world—including more than 600 featured in just one study—who say they are experiencing a new phenomenon: coronavirus pandemic dreams….
With hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home during the coronavirus pandemic, some dream experts believe that withdrawal from our usual environments and daily stimuli has left dreamers with a dearth of “inspiration,” forcing our subconscious minds to draw more heavily on themes from our past. In Weller’s case, his long-time obsession with comics came together with his constant scrolling through political posts on Twitter to concoct a surreal scene that he interpreted as a commentary on the world’s economic anxieties.
At least five research teams at institutions across multiple countries are collecting examples such as Weller’s, and one of their findings so far is that pandemic dreams are being colored by stress, isolation, and changes in sleep patterns—a swirl of negative emotions that set them apart from typical dreaming.
“We normally use REM sleep and dreams to handle intense emotions, particularly negative emotions,” says Patrick McNamara, an associate professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine who is an expert in dreams. “Obviously, this pandemic is producing a lot of stress and anxiety.”
Read about some of these studies at the link.
Seasons with strange dreams, Marnie Pitts
A few more to explore:
The Guardian: Is coronavirus stress to blame for the rise in bizarre ‘lockdown dreams’?
The Los Angeles Times: You’re not imagining it: We’re all having intense coronavirus dreams.
CNN: The meaning behind your strange coronavirus dreams.
Time: The Science Behind Your Weird Coronavirus Dreams (And Nightmares).
There’s even a website that is collecting coronavirus dreams: IDreamofCovid.com
I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t been remembering dreams lately. Since the lockdown started I haven’t slept much at all. I’ve been getting about four hours sleep a night and then waking up around 3-4 AM. I know it’s because of my anxiety about what’s happening. Then lately I started feeling tired and sleepy much of the time. I actually dozed off while writing this post! It turns out I’m not alone.
The Cut: Is My Fatigue Due to Stress or the Coronavirus?
For everyone else who is tired all the time now, and worried about what that means, I got in touch with Andrew Varga, a neuroscientist and physician at the Mount Sinai Integrative Sleep Center, and Curtis Reisinger, clinical psychologist and corporate director at Northwell Health, to learn more.
If I’m tired all the time, does that mean I could have coronavirus?
As is the case with chest tightness, or a cough, or any other single symptom, it’s hard for doctors to make a definitive diagnosis — especially when we still don’t have enough tests. And because fatigue can be a symptom of a number of things (many of them unrelated to your physical health), it’s not a reason to panic. “If you get more symptoms, so it’s not just the fatigue, but fatigue plus body aches plus a cough and a fever, that’s worrisome,” says Varga. “Chest tightness alone, fatigue alone — those are less concerning that you’re about to become really sick.”
Henri Rousseau (The Sleeping Gypsy), 1897
So if I’m not sick, why am I tired every day?
Okay, yes: Many people likely have a pretty good guess as to an answer here. Many essential workers are overworked and underpaid, often with fewer resources available when they do feel sick. Parents are tired because they are parenting all day every day without the relief of school and/or child care. But I work from home, on my couch, and I don’t have kids, so what’s my excuse?
First, says Reisinger, it’s important to understand there are different types of fatigue. There’s physical fatigue, like you might experience after a long run or playing sports. That kind can lead to achy muscles, but it’s usually pretty good for sleep.
There’s mental fatigue, like you might get after doing your taxes or something similarly … taxing. Unless you’re an infectious-disease modeler, this probably isn’t the most likely culprit for your persistent exhaustion at the moment. “When you get mental fatigue, you may jump up in the middle of the night and think of a solution,” says Reisinger, but otherwise, your sleep stays pretty regular.
What’s most troubling, says Reisinger, is the third form of fatigue: emotional. When we’re on high emotional alert — worrying for ourselves, our families and friends, the world at large — we use up a lot of brain energy, and we tend to have a harder time recouping it. “Emotional fatigue is the one that’s going to wake you up at three in the morning or give you insomnia — either you can’t get to sleep, or you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t get back to sleep,” he says.
The Independent: Coronavirus: Why Do People Seem To Feel Groggy and Tired During Lockdown?
The way in which our lives have transformed in such a short space of time has heavily impacted our daily routines, as many individuals no longer have to wake up at a certain time in order to be punctual for school or work.
The Nightmre, by John Anster Fitzgerald
This has seemingly resulted in an increasing number of people experiencing “grogginess” amid the coronavirus pandemic….
“The medical term for grogginess is ‘sleep inertia’,” Dr Natasha Bijlani, consultant psychiatrist at Priory Hospital Roehampton, explains to The Independent.
“Grogginess refers to a phase in between sleep and wakefulness when an individual doesn’t feel fully awake. People who are affected feel drowsy, have difficulty thinking clearly and can be disorientated and clumsy for a while after waking.”
Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California and author of Why We Sleep, compares the way in which a brain wakes up to an old car engine, stating that sleep inertia occurs when “sleepiness is still hanging around in the brain”. “You can’t just switch it on and then drive very fast. It needs time to warm up,” he says.
So why is this happening to so many people now? Read all about it at The Independent.
What’s happening with you today? What stories are you following?
Tuesday Reads: Trump’s Most Insane, Out of Control Meltdown Yet
Posted: April 14, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Andrew Cuomo, Anthony Fauci, coronavirus "briefings", Covid-19, Donald Trump, insanity, John Yoo, meltdown, narcissism, propaganda, Tenth Amendment 30 Comments
Good Morning!!
Yesterday Trump had an epic meltdown at his “coronavirus briefing,” Yes, I know he has meltdowns all the time, but this was the worst one yet. It included screaming, yelling, attacks on the press, a North Korea style propaganda video, and claims of dictatorial power. There was almost no mention of a federal response to the pandemic.
He began the performance by bringing Dr. Anthony Fauci to the podium to explain why what he said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday wasn’t a criticism of Trump. USA Today: Anthony Fauci says he used a ‘poor choice of words’ in discussing Trump administration’s coronavirus response.
Anthony Fauci, the health care policy expert under fire from allies of President Donald Trump, said Monday he used a “poor choice of words” when he suggested lives could have been saved had the Trump administration put in place coronavirus restrictions earlier in the year.
“Hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty,” Fauci said during a unique statement delivered amid reports that Trump was thinking of firing him.
In an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci was asked if lives could have been saved had social distancing been imposed during the third week of February instead of mid-March. Fauci said, “It’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.”
Fauci said, “What goes into those kinds of decisions is – is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”
Trump, who on Sunday re-tweeted a supporters’ statement that Fauci should be fired, called the epidemic expert to the podium early in the briefing, an unusual move.
A reporter asked Fauci if he had been forced to make the statement, and he claimed it was “voluntary.” Raise your had if you believe him. It looks like Fauci has become just another Trump sycophant. We. are. so. fucked.
Ashley Parker at The Washington Post: The Me President: Trump uses pandemic briefing to focus on himself.
“Everything we did was right,” Trump said, during a sometimes hostile 2½ -hour news conference in which he offered a live version of an enemies list, brooking no criticism and repeatedly snapping at reporters who dared to challenge his version of events.
Trump has always had a me-me-me ethos, an uncanny ability to insert himself into the center of just about any situation. But Monday’s coronavirus briefing offered a particularly stark portrait of a president seeming unable to grasp the magnitude of the crisis — and saying little to address the suffering across the country he was elected to lead.
At one point — after praising himself for implementing travel restrictions on China at the end of January and griping about being “brutalized” by the press — Trump paused to boast with a half-smirk, “But I guess I’m doing okay because, to the best of my knowledge, I’m the president of the United States, despite the things that are said.”
Read the rest at the WaPo.
Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted that he and he alone–not governors of states–has the authority to “reopen” their economies.
Then during the briefing, Trump claimed that he and he alone has the power to open businesses, etc. in individual states. He has no understanding of the Constitution, much less the Tenth Amendment, which reserves police powers for the states.
Rick Wilson at The Daily Beast: Trump the Narcissistic Authoritarian Statist Declares He Has ‘Total’ Authority.
If you watched President Donald Trump’s daily press briefing Monday, you know that even by his abysmal standards this was the loudest siren yet, a warning that the man occupying the Oval Office is more suited to a very long, involuntary stay in an inpatient mental-health facility than the presidency of the United States.
It wasn’t presidential leadership. It wasn’t executive power made manifest. It wasn’t a grown-ass adult facing a serious crisis. It was an angry, needy man not looking outward to the needs of a nation in crisis but inward, and downward.
Anyone—and I mean anyone—who tells you Monday’s presser was anything other than a complete meltdown shitshow on the top of the dumpster fire at the peak of Burning-Tire Mountain is a liar.
It was a manic, gibbering, squint-eyed ragefest by America’s Worst President, a petty display by a failed man who long ago passed the limits of his competence and knowledge. It left little to cling to for even his most fervent lackeys but the grunting media animus that replaced conservatism as the motivating force of the Republican Party.
There was no there there when it came to facing the most consequential national crisis in generations. Even the parts about actions by the government were just mummery to frame his desperate desire for more stroking of his delicate feels. Everything is incidental to his delicate feelings and ego. Everything—and, more importantly, everyone else—is incidental.
Trump just gave the nation a performance that was so manic, so furious, and so utterly unhinged that anyone watching it walked away thinking the 25th Amendment has been too long unexercised and the proof is behind the podium every damn day.
Even John Yoo, the torture advocate says Trump can’t force states to “reopen.”
Our elected leaders confront the difficult decision on when to start lifting the lockdowns, even at the risk of a faster spread of COVID-19. Presiding Trump claims that he has the right to determine when businesses open their doors, employees return to work, and consumers shop again. “For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government,” he tweeted earlier today. “Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect . . . It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons.”
But the federal government does not have that power. The Constitution’s grant of limited, enumerated powers to the national government does not include the right to regulate either public health or all business in the land. Congress enjoys the authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.” This gives Washington, D.C. an important, yet supporting, role in confronting the pandemic. It can bar those who might be infected from entering the United States or traveling across interstate borders, reduce air and road traffic, and even isolate whole states.
But our federal system reserves the leading role over public health to state governors. States possess the “police power” to regulate virtually all activity within their borders. As the Supreme Court has recognized, safeguarding public health and safety presents the most compelling use of state power. Only the states can impose quarantines, close institutions and businesses, and limit intra-state travel. Democratic governors Gavin Newsom in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York, and J.B. Pritzker Illinois imposed their states’ lockdowns, and only they will decide when the draconian policies will end.
Read more at The National Review.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Tuesday that President Donald Trump should not try to reopen the state against his wishes, saying it would create “a constitutional crisis like you haven’t seen in decades” and could result in a dramatic increase in coronavirus cases.
“The only ways this situation gets worse is if the president creates a constitutional crisis,” Cuomo said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“If he says to me, ‘I declare it open,’ and that is a public health risk or it’s reckless with the welfare of the people of my state, I will oppose it,” he said. “And then we will have a constitutional crisis like you haven’t seen in decades, where states tell the federal government, ‘We’re not going to follow your order.’ It would be terrible for this country. It would be terrible for this president.”
This morning Trump responded with another insane tweet.
Finally, there was the insane campaign ad that Trump forced the press and his science advisers to watch during the “briefing.”
The Daily Beast: Trump Uses Coronavirus Briefing to Play Batshit Campaign Ad Attacking Press.
President Donald Trump took over Monday’s White House task force briefing to lash out at critics and the press with a bizarre video that amounted to a campaign ad, before later declaring his authority is “total” if governors disagree with him during the coronavirus pandemic.
Monday’s unprecedented press briefing began to go off the rails with the video, but before the end, the president was falsely trumpeting definitive authority during the health-care crisis that has already led to the deaths of more than 23,000 Americans.
The briefing almost immediately devolved into the president airing widespread grievances against his critics, from his likely 2020 general election opponent Joe Biden to governors and reporters who have dared to call his virus response into question over the last few weeks as American life has ground to a halt during the pandemic.
In a mash up of clips and audio that amounted to a campaign ad, Trump lashed out at critics and returned to his favorite pastime of going after reporters. The video began with a white screen saying “the media minimized the risk from the start.” At one point, it showed news clips of different governors giving kind remarks about the president’s response to the pandemic.
An agitated and indignant president pointed at the seated press corps, telling them that while he’d answer some questions after airing his montage of coronavirus praise that maybe “I’ll ask you some questions because you’re so guilty.”
Both CNN and MSNBC, which have wavered between airing the increasingly antagonistic briefings, both cut away during the multi-minute campaign ad. The networks, however, came back to broadcast the performance after a short break.
The highlight of the show was questioning from CBS correspondent Paul Reid. BBC News:
CBS White House correspondent Paula Reid was met with a fiery response when she challenged President Trump during a coronavirus briefing.
Mr Trump touted his ban on travel from China at the end of January as an example of his administration taking decisive action. However, he did not declare a national emergency until 13 March – and public health experts have criticised the response to the outbreak, including early testing failures and a shortage of protective equipment.
The reporter asked Mr Trump what his administration had done in February, “with the time you bought with your travel ban”.
So . . . another crazy day has dawned in America. Will we survive? What stories are you following?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Can We Ever Go Back To “Normal?”
Posted: April 11, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 34 Comments
John William Godward, The Favorite
Good Morning!!
Over the past week, Trump’s daily “coronavirus briefings” have grown more and more disorganized, nonsensical, and infuriating. It has become very clear that he has deliberately decided to abdicate any efforts to stem the tide of infections, leaving the battle against the virus to state and local governments. He has no plan, no strategy, except to make every effort to force Americans to go back to work even if that means millions of us get infected and hundreds of thousands die.
The Washington Post reports that states, health experts, think tanks, and non-profits are trying to come up with plans, but there’s no sign that Trump would let the federal government follow their recommendations. The plans involve ramping up testing and organizing contact-tracing efforts.
…a collection of governors, former government officials, disease specialists and nonprofits are pursuing a strategy that relies on the three pillars of disease control: Ramp up testing to identify people who are infected. Find everyone they interact with by deploying contact tracing on a scale America has never attempted before. And focus restrictions more narrowly on the infected and their contacts so the rest of society doesn’t have to stay in permanent lockdown.
But there is no evidence yet the White House will pursue such a strategy.
Instead, the president and his top advisers have fixated almost exclusively on plans to reopen the U.S. economy by the end of the month, though they haven’t detailed how they will do so without triggering another outbreak. President Trump has been especially focused on creating a second coronavirus task force aimed at combating the economic ramifications of the virus.
On the Catwalk Dream, Tolle Pettery
Administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, say the White House has made a deliberate political calculation that it will better serve Trump’s interest to put the onus on governors — rather than the federal government — to figure out how to move ahead. [emphasis added]
“It’s mind-boggling, actually, the degree of disorganization,” said Tom Frieden, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director. The federal government has already squandered February and March, he noted, committing “epic failures” on testing kits, ventilator supply, protective equipment for health workers and contradictory public health communication. The next failure is already on its way, Frieden said, because “we’re not doing the things we need to be doing in April.”
At a White House briefing Friday, Trump said he will announce next week the members of his second coronavirus task force, charged with determining when and how to reopen the country. He stressed his desire to get the economy running again as soon as possible but wouldn’t commit to specifics, saying, “The facts are going to determine what I do. But we do want to get the country open. So important.”
It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain what will happen if Trump convinces some states to do what he wants. But The New York Times gained access to a government report that includes projections from DHS and HHS.
The new federal projections, obtained by The New York Times, come from the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, and outline three possible situations. The first imagines policymakers doing nothing to mitigate the spread of the virus. The second, labeled “steady state,” assumes schools remain closed until summer, 25 percent of Americans telework from home, and some social distancing continues. The third scenario includes a 30-day shelter in place, on top of those “steady state” restrictions.
The government’s conclusions are sobering. Without any mitigation, the death toll from the virus could have reached 300,000. And if the administration lifts the 30-day stay-at-home orders, the death total is estimated to reach 200,000.
By Utagawa Kenoshi
The projections foresee a bump in the demand for ventilators 30 days after stay-at-home orders are issued, a major spike in infections about 100 days after, and peaking 150 days after the initial order. (Those timelines assume further shelter-in-place policies are not put in place to reduce future peaks.)
These numbers fueling the projections may already be out of date. Forecasts accepted by the White House that once estimated at least 100,000 deaths in the United States have now been revised to about 60,000, thanks to aggressive social distancing.
Read the full report here: Data and Analytics
The Daily Mail provides a summary of some of the projections with charts here: New federal projections show huge spike in coronavirus infections in the summer if current lockdown and social distancing measures are lifted after planned 30 days.
At Vox, Ezra Klein summarizes the various plans for reopening the economy and makes it clear that we are not going to return to the old “normal” anytime soon–probably never.
Even Trump’s evangelical CDC director says we shouldn’t open up the economy without contact tracing. NPR: CDC Director: ‘Very Aggressive’ Contact Tracing Needed For U.S. To Return To Normal.
CDC Director Robert Redfield spoke with NPR on Thursday, saying that the plan relies on not only ramped-up testing but “very aggressive” contact tracing of those who do test positive for the coronavirus, and a major scale-up of personnel to do the necessary work.
Contact tracing is the process of finding and reaching out to the contacts of someone who tests positive for an infectious pathogen. Those contacts are then quarantined or monitored, and if any of them are also positive, the process is repeated with their contacts, and on and on, until the chain of transmission is halted. It’s a labor-intensive, time-consuming practice that for decades has been a fundamental public health tool for containing infectious diseases….
Redfield said his agency is ramping up America’s capacity to do more contact tracing. “We are going to need a substantial expansion of public health fieldworkers,” he said. This, along with ample testing, is what will be needed “to make sure that when we open up, we open up for good.”
By Zviad Gogolauri
The first step will be to expand testing, especially testing that provides rapid results, so people can get diagnosed quickly. Redfield’s agency has received a lot of criticism for failing to quickly deliver working tests to public health labs. (Redfield defended the CDC on this point, saying that when problems with the initial test were discovered, “we figured it out and corrected it. Somebody might say that’s botched — I don’t think that’s botched.”) Redfield said that now, testing capacity is increasing daily and that he’s encouraged to see that point-of-care tests that give results within minutes are starting to enter the market.
Next, Redfield said, America will need to scale up capacity for tracing the contacts of those who test positive. “It is going to be critical,” he said. “We can’t afford to have multiple community outbreaks that can spiral up into sustained community transmission — so it is going to be very aggressive, what I call ‘block and tackle,’ ‘block and tackle.'”
Given how laborious contact tracing is, that means bringing on a lot more people to do that work. Since state and local public health departments aren’t likely to have the staff to do this, Redfield suggested, the federal government will need to help. “We have over 600 people in the field right now from CDC in all the states trying to help with this response, but we are going to have to substantially amplify that,” he said.
One more from The Nation by Yale epidemiology expert Gregg Gonsolves: The Science Is Clear on How to Beat This Pandemic. But first Trump, Kushner, and the GOP have to stop playing politics with people’s lives.
There is a quiet bipartisan consensus sweeping Washington, DC. Over the past 10 days, the center-right American Enterprise Institute and the center-left Center for American Progress have each come out with reports detailing the steps we need to take to get on the path to recovery from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The road maps are more alike than different, both focused on scaling up coronavirus testing, contact tracing, and isolation of infected individuals in the context of a sustained reduction in cases after a prolonged period of social distancing. While some can quibble with the details, the main architecture of an evidence-based, comprehensive response to Covid-19 has now been put together by Republicans and Democrats in exile in the think tanks of our nation’s capital.
Both plans are based on traditional public health principles. Social distancing has a long history in the mitigation of infectious disease outbreaks reaching back into antiquity. In the modern era, during the influenza pandemic of 1918, cities that implemented such measures had half the number of deaths compared to cities that did not. Current strategies centered around testing, contact tracing, and isolation also have a long history, much of it a variation on what was known as the Leicester method for containing smallpox in the late 19th century. If we could now act utilizing these classic methods, we might see the beginning of the end of this pandemic in our country.
The Sisters, by Fernando Botero
Yet the official US response, led, on alternating days, by Jared Kushner’s team of disruptors or Vice President Mike Pence’s task force, hasn’t coalesced around this vision. In fact, the White House remains in chaos, with no hint of preparing to put such plans in place, which would require enormous new funding to support the industrial production and logistical capacity necessary to get it all online. Meanwhile, like a snake oil salesman touting some magical elixir, President Trump hawks chloroquine, while his would-be boy genius son-in-law claims the Strategic National Stockpile is not for use by the states—although that is, in fact, is exactly what it is for. Instead of trying to head off this lunacy, the White House doubles down, with trade adviser Peter Navarro scolding task force member and infectious disease physician Anthony Fauci for refusing to get with the party line on chloroquine, while Secretary Alex Azar cravenly has the Department of Health and Human Services change the language about the stockpile on his agency’s website to reflect Kushner’s claims.
What a circus; what a show! Except none of this was ever entertaining. And now we’re heading toward disaster for millions of Americans. The failure of the initial response to the outbreak, the failure to get Covid-19 testing online or to scale up production of personal protective equipment and ventilators has been widely reported. But nothing has changed, no lessons have been learned, and no one in the president’s party has pulled the emergency brake on this train speeding 100 miles an hour toward the sharp turn ahead.
I won’t be holding my breath waiting for Trump to support federal funding for these efforts. Will Congress force his hand? What Trump will do is continue his ridiculous “briefings” as long as the cable networks are willing to televise them.
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: With Each Briefing, Trump Is Making Us Worse People. He is draining the last reserves of decency among us at a time when we need it most.
There has never been an American president as spiritually impoverished as Donald Trump. And his spiritual poverty, like an overdrawn checking account that keeps imposing new penalties on a customer already in difficult straits, is draining the last reserves of decency among us at a time when we need it most.
By Suzanne Valadon
I do not mean that Trump is the least religious among our presidents, though I have no doubt that he is; as the scholar Stephen Knott pointed out, Trump has shown “a complete lack of religious sensibility” unique among American presidents. (Just recently he wished Americans a “Happy Good Friday,” which suggests that he is unaware of the meaning of that day.) Nor do I mean that Trump is the least-moral president we’ve ever had, although again, I am certain that he is. John F. Kennedy was, in theory, a practicing Catholic, but he swam in a pool of barely concealed adultery in the White House. Richard Nixon was a Quaker, but one who attempted to subvert the Constitution. Andrew Johnson showed up pig-drunk to his inauguration. Trump’s manifest and immense moral failures—and the shameless pride he takes in them—make these men seem like amateurs by comparison.
And finally, I do not mean that Trump is the most unstable person ever to occupy the Oval Office, although he is almost certain to win that honor as well. As Peter Wehner has eloquently put it, Trump has an utterly disordered personality. Psychiatrists can’t help but diagnose Trump, even if it’s in defiance of the old Goldwater Rule against such practices. I know mental-health professionals who agree with George Conway and others that Trump is a malignant narcissist.
What I mean instead is that Trump is a spiritual black hole. He has no ability to transcend himself by so much as an emotional nanometer. Even narcissists, we are told by psychologists, have the occasional dark night of the soul. They can recognize how they are perceived by others, and they will at least pretend to seek forgiveness and show contrition as a way of gaining the affection they need. They are capable of infrequent moments of reflection, even if only to adjust strategies for survival.
Trump’s spiritual poverty is beyond all this. He represents the ultimate triumph of a materialist mindset. He has no ability to understand anything that is not an immediate tactile or visual experience, no sense of continuity with other human beings, and no imperatives more important than soothing the barrage of signals emanating from his constantly panicked and confused autonomic system.
I hope everyone is staying home and staying safe. Have a quiet, peaceful weekend.
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