So how are you celebrating?
President Trump told us that deaths would be held to 60,000 but that proved a bit too aspirational, and based on modeling created within the White House, the new death toll would be 95,000. The President pitched his new modeling to some friendly governors, and some took the bait including the Governor of Georgia Brian Kemp. He and others crafted their re-opening strategies based on the new model supplied, not by the CDC, but by the White House. He drank the Kool-Aid a bit too fast but he had the idea.Today we surpassed 95,000 deaths confirmed.
The crisis is over.
The CDC revised their estimate to 143,000 deaths by August, but the White House never endorsed these numbers. They ignored them. They had let their last statement stand.
Somewhere in Trumpland someone is celebrating the end of the crisis, happy we got to 95k so quick so we could get this over with. Boom! Mike drop! Trump 2020! Open back up!
That no longer reads as obvious satire, does it?
There will be no changing the true heart of his support. It will die with them and they will never let it go, but it may be that their numbers are shrinking.
Fox News released a poll showing Biden up by 8 points. Fox.
Fake news. OAN is starting to poll. Just wait. Coming very soon. Very soon. We are way ahead. You’ll see!
The President did take the podium yesterday, though. He had a very important announcement to make that couldn’t wait. All houses of worship must be allowed to open. Right Now! They must be allowed to welcome worshipers this weekend. It was unclear why this issue had reached an emergency status, but apparently it had. God was at the end of His patience, apparently, and he had communicated that to his earthly emissary.
The most interesting part of the announcement was that if the governors of the states did not obey this Presidential Edict, the President would override their decision and open the places of worship on his own. No one knows how that will happen. The President of the United States has no such power to influence the decisions of the duly elected governors of the various states. There are separations of powers between the branches of the Federal government and from the Federal and State governments. Each has a job to do that has unique parameters within which to work. Some of those parameters are gray and require parsing from the courts, but this isn’t one of those.
This is largely irrelevant, of course, because to the few who are still giving credence to the President’s pronouncements, what he said is true, by definition. It is true because he said it. All else is false, fake, a made-up personal attack. Reporting on case counts or death tolls accurately is considered an attack on the POTUS. Facts are, and have always been to this Administration, the enemy. They have been the President’s enemy for his entire lifetime.
This announcement yesterday is an extension of the pronouncement from several weeks ago that the President’s powers are total, absolute. What is hard to wrap my head around, but I am becoming convinced of, is that he believes it. He thinks he has the scepter, the crown and the robe. He is so ignorant of our system of government that he sees no way for anyone to get in his way. In his mind, the role of state governments is to handle the day to day operations of the individual states and commonwealths, taking the burden of the banal off the federal plate, but if there is something contentious then the states must bow to the fed. They are subservient to the Federal government in all things that the President decides to make his business. In his understanding the Feds are the parents and the states are the kids that never grow up. They require constant vigilance and occasional discipline, the little darlin’s.
This will blow up in his face, of course, but it will not make the slightest difference. There will be governors that stand by their very competent advice to keep houses of worship closed in the early stages of re-opening. There are many that are not particularly inclined to be bullied by a cretin. They will do their job in the best interests of their populations in the most effective ways they see fit. A crowded room filled with people shoulder to shoulder, singing, chanting and incanting is nearly the most perfect recipe for disaster you could devise in the present situation. It’s difficult to imagine a worse one. Most likely when this happens the President will do nothing but shout invective and declare the offending governor as incompetent and a traitor and blah, blah, blah. You know the drill.
But let’s take it a step further. What if this is the line in the sand that he decides to stand on? How does it proceed?
Well, the most likely scenario I just described will happen. He will vilify the offending governor relentlessly, making it as partisan as possible, because this is all part of the campaign, not public health policy. But what if he then declares the houses of worship in that state “open”? The lucky governor will likely ignore his bogus decree and correct him, letting the clergy of all stripes know that they are not eligible to legally open their doors. Spiritually essential or not, they do not provide sustenance or medication or critical maintenance items. The President will tell them to ignore the governor because he has their back. If the state gives you a hard time, come to daddy. He’ll protect you.
When a worship leader takes the bait and opens the doors, and they will, what choice will the governor have but to crack down on the offender in order to maintain the credibility of state government? Most likely that will trigger a response from Trump’s lap dog, AG Barr, who will declare a new, previously unimagined offense in a calm and tempered tone that makes the absurdity of his disservice to his country seem reasonable and measured, rather than criminal in itself. This will go to court where the cards are becoming stacked, and the result is anything but assured. Long before the decision has come down, the astro-turfed movement of gun toting freedom fighters will reappear at the state house, but having been encouraged and now unleashed by the President, maybe they don’t stop at threats this time, at screaming unmasked within inches of law enforcement faces, no longer satisfied to merely brandish arms.
As long as the courts hold, and for the most part they have so far, with a few exceptions, then the enforcement arms of government will be empowered to enforce these decisions, and they will. Military, National Guard, police will all be activated to enforce the decisions of the court.
But let them rule the other way, take one more step to the actual coronation of a king, and you will see an entirely separate enforcement arm come out of the closet. We have seem them strut up to the gates of power before this. Will they now be locked and loaded, prepared to die for their cause? Prepared to kill for it? Will they be wrongfully empowered by the President of the United States to form a vigilante force that will take matters into their own hands?
Hyperbole? I hardly think so. During the 2016 campaign the Candidate could not abide hecklers at his rallies, getting them removed and encouraging the oustings to be as violent as possible, assuring the crowds that they had nothing to fear from beating on the offenders. He would pay their legal bills. Many of these people being removed were, in fact, attacked on several occasions, documented on video,
suffering blows to the head from spectators while being restrained in cuffs by law enforcement.
When speaking to law enforcement officers in a speech on Long Island in 2017, he told them they didn’t need to be so nice to people in custody, such as protecting their heads when putting them in a car. The unconvicted felons-to-be did not deserve care or respect. In February of this year the Washington Post published an article documenting a new phenomenon in schools across the country, from Utah to Tennessee to Ohio. School children were using the President’s words and speeches to bully their classmates, aping both the words and the cruelty with which he uses them. Kids as young as 6 were documented to have quoted the President verbatim, and the altercations would often become violent of course, because the President had never discouraged it. He is frequently heard to gush over “tough guys”, whether he was talking about ICE officers or Hell’s Angels. The President loves tough guys. That’s why he doesn’t wear a mask. “It makes me look weak.”
If he goes head to head with governors trying to usurp their rightful authority and they stand firm, this goes to another level.
I have never wanted to be wrong so much in my life.