Political Irony

If you think things are bad now, remember that as Donald Trump gets more and more desperate to win the upcoming election, things will likely get more and more unpleasant.

In fact, they are already getting worse. In the first week of June already, 14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest-ever seven-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, Right now is the time those states — Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — should be instituting strict measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus. We seem to have completely forgotten how quickly the virus took off in March, so instead most of these states are opening things up even more, with Trump playing the cheerleader to eliminate crucial restrictions.

Trump is already planning on restarting his in-person rallies in the next two weeks. His campaign manager released a statement saying:

Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump. The great American comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous. You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.

Meanwhile, the massive protests over the killing of George Floyd, which have happened in all 50 states, are perfect breeding grounds for the virus. Tear gas and pepper balls that irritate the nose and lungs will add complications to those who contract the disease. These cases will start to show up in the next two weeks after their incubation period, during which time infected people will be asymptomatic and spreading the virus even further.

And economists are predicting that the economy will not bounce back immediately, even if all restrictions are removed and everyone who can will go back to work. Many businesses have simply gone bankrupt and shut down, and business investment and consumer spending will take years to ramp up.

Forbes has an article showing photos and descriptions of the protests that are happening all over the world in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Upwards of tens of thousands of people showed up for protests and marches in London, England; Paris, France; Brisbane, Australia; Rome, Italy; Berlin and Cologne, Germany; Tokyo, Japan; and the Palestinian territories. How cool is it to see Palestinian protesters holding signs saying (in English) “Black Lives Matter”.

Other highlights:

• Bristol, England, where a statue of a 17th century slave trader was toppled and thrown in the local river.
• Brussels, Belgium, where protesters climbed a statue of King Leopold II while waving the flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC was a colony under Leopold, who inflicted countless atrocities.

And of course, there were massive , but generally peaceful protests in the US. This included an estimated 100,000 to 200,0000 people at the newly named Black Lives Matter plaza in DC, which was attended by civil rights leader John Lewis (D-GA). There were so many people you could hardly see the two-block-long “Black Lives Matter” that the mayor had commissioned to be painted on the street.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) marched in protest with around 1000 evangelical leaders in DC, singing “This Little Light of Mine“. Romney also tweeted a photo of his father, George Romney, participating in a Civil Rights march in the 60s when he was governor of Michigan.

In Philadelphia the protests stretched for over a mile, and a black couple finished getting married and joined the protest, walking hand-in-hand and holding their fists in the air.

Click the link at the top of this post to see all the photos and tweets. It warmed my heart to see the world joining in solidarity with American protesters. We may come out of this mess in one piece after all, and maybe even steer US Justice onto a better path than what we have now:

As my readers know, I love a good rant. I’m particularly enamored of that rare rant that takes things to a higher level of refinement. And this one from Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist George F. Will has the added patina of being authored by a conservative who was a staunch Republican (until Donald Trump was elected). It is titled “Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.“

Yes, that’s right. Will demands that not only must Donald Trump be defeated, but also his GOP enablers:

The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.

Here are a sampling of the epithets Will uses to describe Trump:

• Crybaby-in-Chief
• this weak person’s idea of a strong person
• chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities
• low-rent Lear
• malignant buffoon
• small man who is the great exacerbator
• vulgarian
• his Niagara of lies
• unhinged

Will concludes that regarding Trump:

There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.

I couldn’t agree more. Trump and his collaborators have managed to turn the entire civilized world against America. Not just our enemies, but — much worse — our allies, who must dream of weakening of America’s reputation and dominance in order to save the world from the power hungry madmen that we now elect, who traffic in lies, hatred, and greed.

Joe Biden gives a speech that we will never hear from Donald Trump. I was pleased that Biden actually named Trump, but didn’t dwell on him excessively. The speech was about us, and about America. It gave me hope.

UPDATE: This speech is getting very positive reviews. Well, except those commentators “whose paychecks are being signed by Rupert Murdoch”.

I found this photo particularly haunting:

Protesters all over our nation are chanting “I can’t breathe” — the last words of George Floyd, who was murdered in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25.

Except that this image is not recent, it is from 2014. Kobe Bryant, along with his teammates, wore these shirts to protest the death of Eric Garner while in police custody. Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s widow, posted this photo, saying “here we are again.”

Let’s hope that we are not doomed to repeat this forever.

In this era of overwhelming polarization, remember that the vast majority of the protests have been peaceful. The violence that is getting so much media attention has been instigated not just by protestors on the left, but also by organized white supremacist groups on the right. In fact, one expert who has been analyzing evidence and video footage from Minnesota says that right-wing extremist groups are more responsible for the violence than than the Antifa activists that Donald Trump is trying to blame.

A Minneapolis City Council member notes that most of the burned out buildings are small businesses owned by minorities, while property destruction caused by the protesters is primarily against symbols of power like police cars. “When you see no protest, there’s no mob sweeping through the north side, yet you see these fires popping up the main business corridor, that’s the thing that rang odd to me. Burning down small black- and immigrant-owned businesses, that doesn’t seem in lockstep with the tone of the protests.”

But there may be a more insidious motivation for these false flag activities. By pinning the blame on the left and blacks, Donald Trump is trying to scare whites into supporting him, the same way that Nixon used the violent riots after the assassination of MLK to win the presidency. It also distracts everyone (including the media) from the truly bad job he is doing fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the loss of jobs, and the faltering economy, all of which ironically affects blacks and minorities far more than whites.

UPDATE: Trump is actively encouraging the situation to escalate. He is telling governors to aggressively target violent protestors, who he claims will only respond to a show of force. Trump advised the governors that they must seek “retribution” for violent acts in their states and told them to not act too gingerly, saying “You don’t have to be too careful.”

According to this piece in The Guardian, much of the violence is coming from the police. Trump’s response will only make things worse.

UPDATE 2: Twitter has removed an account that claimed to be representing Antifa, but was in fact created by a known white supremacist group. The account was inciting violence, according to Twitter. This is not the first time that a fake Antifa account linked to white supremacists has been suspended by the social media company.