Happy Easter!

The stimulus package has been agreed upon and should be ratified before weeks end. Whatever relief you get was fought for, because the GOP basically left you out of the equation in their carefully crafted legislation that was rejected.

So what was won? How are you to be supported through this calamity?

$1200.

That’s it right now. What does that pay for you? A month’s rent? Maybe car costs, electricity, water and sewer for a month? Well, that should be plenty to get you to Easter.

In the second stimulus passed after Easter, funeral costs will be covered by the state. Settle down, that’s just a rumor, but isn’t it exciting! At a moment of sorrow and loss, at least you won’t have that burden.

This check will be helpful to people as a brief palliative, a deep breath at a time when getting air in the lungs is increasingly challenging. But then you have to exhale, and their will be no more air. No job, no benefits coming in, no relief.

This bill will be the first of several. Follow up bills will be necessary as Easter passes and the coronavirus rages and the only hope is to take refuge inside. These bills will pass, only because the alternative is unthinkable. They will be necessary because the United States will be the hardest hit country in the world, because we ignored it first, and then completely misunderstood after. The President gave the virus a fifty yard lead in a hundred yard dash. He maneuvered to get the power to direct industry to build the critical ventilators and masks that we are desperately behind in, tragically so, and won’t use it. He simply doesn’t understand what he’s facing, what is coming.

If he insists on the grand opening of the country take place on Easter, a symbolic day of resurrection and rebirth, he will probably wipe out a large part of his base. Progressive churches will not open. They will know better, they will protect their congregations. They will respect the facts. The Hebrews painted their doors with blood and hid inside when God’s justice was to sweep through the land. There are times when separation, isolation are called for.

But not the evangelicals. They will celebrate their new messiah. Trump’s name will be invoked from pulpits as the dear leader. Count on this. I have been on the websites, today, where people are praising Trump and his leadership, thanking God that he is in the White House, protecting us from the virus and the libfools. There are millions of these sacrificial lambs and they will pack the pews and celebrate their victory over the snowflakes.

And then they will die.

That will happen. They will die in unprecedented numbers because this one man lied to them. One man saw them as soldiers, as necessary sacrifices to the wartime goal of a functioning economy. He will knowingly put them in harms way and they will pay for their loyalty with their lives.

You would think that would be the magic light bulb, but it won’t be. The genocide will be explained as somehow being the will of God rather than the incomprehensible ineptitude of a single man. It will actually be fascinating to see the theological explanation for the culling of the evangelical herd. Why did the Lord cut down so many dependable donors? Doctors of Apologetics will be creating supremely creative missives explaining the whole thing. They won’t agree, there will be a hundred conservative Christian explanations for what will essentially be a mass suicide. But it will be fascinating.

The sad news is, this will never happen. Why sad? Because the reason it won’t happen is the crisis will be so dire nationally by that time that the opening of churches on Easter would be tantamount to murder. It won’t happen.

I am desperate to find a way to break through to his base, because he is killing them and in turn they will kill the rest of us. The greatest hazzard posed to this country in this time of international disaster is our President and his enablers. That is not over the top, and factually it simply can’t be denied. It can be ignored, however. The red states are doing just that. Phone data shows that blue states are staying home, red states are ignoring the threat. Jerry Falwell, Jr. is doing his part. He is encouraging all the students at Liberty University to come back to the dorms and hang out together there during this crisis. He will murder a percentage of them with this advice. The Lt. Governor of Texas has a more realistic suggestion, if perhaps even more twisted. He thinks older folks are perfectly willing to die if it means America’s financial system will remain unchanged. At least he is willing to admit that following the President’s suggestions could very possibly be fatal. If that trend continues, the political balance of power will be affected, and it will be the death of the GOP by a thousand cuts, all of them inflicted by the head of the party, Donald J. Trump, and those that had his back.

Our country is going to be hit harder than any other in the world. We will have more cases and more deaths than anywhere in the world. It isn’t because we don’t have the tech, or the money, or the necessary information. We have all that.

We have Trump. He is convincing millions of people around the country that this is not a big deal. I’m still seeing it, seeing the gushing love letters to a POTUS that is murdering the writers. How do you fight that? The information is out there. The data is available. The growth curves are known.

This is Global Warning redux. How much data is enough to overcome a misinformation campaign that will kill you? What will it take to save your life? Trump is the tobacco company lawyer, showing why committing suicide is good for you. They lied starting in the 40s, and we didn’t largely change behavior until the 80s. Millions died because they lied. This is no different, but no one seems to be able to break through, and you don’t have 40 years to change. It’s already too late.

It really is, you know. The explosion of the curve right now are cases that have been gestating for a week or two. We still have no federal mandate to stay home. We have different responses from different governors. Asymptomatic carriers are all around you every day you leave the house. Traveling between states is not restricted in any way, so your best efforts in your state are being undermined by having no federal guidance or absolutes. Gov. Cuomo was exactly right yesterday when he called New York the canary in the coalmine. What is happening there is coming to a town you know well. Yours.

This is a leadership failure unlike any we have ever seen. In the past, we have been so very much better than this, but we aren’t now. The best we can be perceived as is an object of pity, thrown to the wolves by an incompetent response. The worst is as an object of derision, getting just rewards for our childish choice for leadership. Either way, America will not be admired for its response. That will be impossible, because the carnage we are about to experience will be a self-inflicted wound, and it will be undeniable. The results of this will be the worst in the world. That can no longer be avoided because the damage has already been done. The barn door was left open. All we have left is treatment, not mitigation, especially if we aren’t being encouraged to at least duck and cover, being told how dire the situation actually is, and we are fucking up the treatment phase, too. We aren’t responding like we need to, like a war footing response. We aren’t using the Defense Production Act to get emergency supplies of ventilators and masks to the front lines yesterday. We aren’t declaring a federal order to shelter in place. We aren’t doing the things that have worked globally.

Those are Trump’s choices. No one else’s. Some reading this will die because of his choices. Perhaps me. I don’t even say that with a sense of self-pity, as I am just one unit. This is a threat to every single one of us.

When the smoke clears, the country will be forever changed. When we come out of hiding, we will look different. Consumer confidence will have disappeared, and rightly so. Thousands of companies will simply be gone, and the jobs they required will be gone, too. Money to start anew will be in short supply. This has the potential of a complete collapse of the U.S. economy. It would take a very great leader to bring us back from the brink of utter ruin.

We have Trump.

Happy Easter!