Brief Rant, [ugh, politics] Here's a Truck

Spotted this last spring, beautiful old Ford.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, read this in your favorite mafia movie head honcho angry voice:

Beyond all the offensive things that you’ve said and done, from generally transparent racism, to mocking the disabled, to literally calling other countries shit-holes; beyond all the questionable appointments to various offices, nepotism, crony-ism, obstruction of... everything; beyond the mountains of misleading statements and outright bald-faced lies spewing from your mouth every day; the absolute worst thing you have done is not take any leadership in the face of a real, actual crisis. Thousands of people - hopefully not more! -are going to DIE because of your utter incompetence.

When people say “unfit for office” they don’t mean that you can’t sit in the office literally, and do some things that the power of the office gives you by statute. Yah, you can do that. Any mouth-breathing jackwagon can do that. What people mean by unfit for THIS office, is that when faced with a true difficult decision, perhaps one of the most difficult decisions faced by a president in a generation, you are avoiding making actual hard decisions, sending mixed messages, ignoring the advice of experts, and now you’re saying you think everything will be okay in a little over TWO WEEKS? Literally no one believes that because there is, as usual, NO evidence, and in fact there are mountains of evidence that the complete opposite is true.

If we ignore the advice of other countries that have been here already that are literally piling bodies in ice skating rinks, we will soon be in the same situation. Some countries aren’t waiting for the bodies to pile up before listening. We need real leadership. And you have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you do not have what it takes to be a true leader. To unite your constituents, and make difficult sacrifices in the face of a common enemy, to defeat that enemy for our own good. The irony is, this is an opportunity to step up and really dictate to everyone what they must do to save lives - look at the Italians - and he can’t or won’t even do that.

COVID-19 is not Trump’s fault. But I fear that we are nonetheless in for a very difficult lesson here: that if we elect someone who is truly unfit for office, and keep him there because of some favorable policies that come as a result, ignoring the screams of incompetence and narcissistic personality disorder; a complete inability to unite anyone around anything, to take responsibility, to follow the facts, and to listen to expert advice in normal times, let alone a crisis; then when a true crisis strikes, we will pay for it with our lives. This is already happening. How many lives will it cost us to learn the lesson that a little humility in our leaders is not just admirable, not just desirable, but absolutely essential?

*update: here’s a kind-of counterpoint, at least in terms of what our overall strategy should be right now - a good read, in any case.