Chronicles in Ordinary Time

Picture to yourself a man who has risen to wealth or power by a continued course of treachery and cruelty, by exploiting for purely selfish ends the noble motions of his victims, laughing the while at their simplicity; who, having thus attained success, uses it for the gratification of lust and hatred and finally parts with the last rag of honour among thieves by betraying his own accomplices and jeering at their last moments of bewildered disillusionment. Suppose, further, that he does all this, not (as we like to imagine) tormented by remorse or even misgiving, but eating like a schoolboy and sleeping like a healthy infant-a jolly, ruddy-cheeked man, without a care in the world, unshakably confident to the very end that he alone has found the answer to the riddle of life, that God and man are fools whom he has got the better of, that his way of life is utterly successful, satisfactory, unassailable …. Supposing he will not be converted, what destiny in the eternal world can you regard as proper for him? … Even mercy can hardly wish to such a man his eternal, contented continuance in such ghastly illusion.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain [1940]

At the NBC Town Hall, the President Demonstrated That He Is Completely Insane

NBC was kind enough to broadcast to the world, yet again, that the President of the United States is completely insane. At one point during a town hall in Miami on Thursday night, Donald Trump explained that he shared a conspiracy theory with his 87 million Twitter followers alleging Joe Biden helped orchestrate the killing of Seal Team 6 members—to cover up that the Osama bin Laden assassination was, in this formulation, faked—on the following basis: “That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody. And that was a retweet. I put it out there, people can decide for themselves.” Elsewhere here, the president was able to simply denounce white supremacy this time, having kicked off a flurry of excitement and activity among the right-wing paramilitary set with his inability to do so two weeks ago. It’s a low bar, sure, but he failed to clear one of similar height when it came to a question on QAnon. But even beyond the nutso elements—on whether he got tested before the last presidential debate, the president offered, “I test quite a bit, I test all the time, I don’t even remember, I probably did, I possibly didn’t”—there is the more basic element that the president does not have any goals or plans for the country he’s asking to lead for four more years.              By Jack Holmes  , Oct 16, 2020

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a34388971/nbc-town-hall-trump-recap/

Tonight, my adult daughter, 1000 miles away, is crying and trying to keep her emotions together as she struggles with a ‘mild’ case of COVID-19. She alternates between fevers, nausea, dizziness, and now the thing that thousands of COVID-19 infected people deal with: they call it COVID Brain-Fog. My daughter has always had confidence in her highly trained brain, which at the moment has trouble remembering simple tasks. She dare not hug her 18-year-old daughter at the other end of the house, who hasn’t displayed any symptoms. They text across the house, and when they need to be in the same room, they both wear masks.
My daughter was infected by her husband, a Long-Haul-Trucker who thought he had caught a cold. Now he’s gutting-it-out driving to Maine and back, eventually to Colorado. He is masked every time he leaves the truck. He apparently caught the COVID-19 virus in Texas, where he spent time with friends.
My daughter has been in Colorado for a long time; I am still her father, and I am angry with every idiot in this country who ridicules mask-wearing. Over 8 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States, and more than 220,000 deaths. Our so-called President refuses to accept any responsibility for these deaths, and he does not even acknowledge the deaths. He does not acknowledge the refrigerator trucks at hospitals across the country, because the dead outnumber the refrigerators in the Morgue. He does even acknowledge the mass graves in New York City.

Mass Graves in the United States.

We have become one of “the shithole countries” the President talked about in 2018.

Trump views 200,000 Covid-19 deaths as a PR problem. We should view them as someone’s loved one

Opinion by Dean Obeidallah
(CNN) On Monday, [9/21/2020] with the US on the verge of reaching the solemn number of 200,000 dead from Covid-19, Donald Trump appeared on Fox News where the topic of the virus was raised. Did Trump express sympathy for the heartbreaking losses caused to families across the nation from this deadly pandemic? Nope, instead he patted himself on the back for doing what he called “a phenomenal job” in handling Covid-19, giving himself an “A+.” The only criticism Trump would offer was regarding the public relations for the virus, saying in that area, “I give myself a D.” He blamed the low grade on “fake news.”
…they all deserve a better response from the President. They are not a PR crisis to be managed—they were someone’s loved one. They were beloved mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. They were grandparents who taught their grandchildren about life, teachers who made students smarter, coaches who pushed their players to be better, deli owners who remained open so neighborhoods would have food during lockdowns. They were doctors, nurses, police officers and others who worked while many of us were able to stay safe in our homes. They were the apple of someone’s eye, a soul mate, a reason for living. The people who died were not only like us, they often were the best of us.

U.S. Records 70,000 New Cases in a Day for the First Time Since July [10/17/2020]

Epidemiologists warn that nearly half of the states are seeing surges unlike anything they experienced earlier in the pandemic.

How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest
Within weeks of the gathering that drew nearly half a million bikers, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita…The surge was especially pronounced in North and South Dakota, where cases and hospitalization rates continued their juggernaut rise into October.
Experts say they will never be able to determine how many of those cases originated at the 10-day rally, given the failure of state and local health officials to identify and monitor attendees returning home, or to trace chains of transmission after people got sick. Some, however, believe the nearly 500,000-person gathering played a role in the outbreak now consuming the Upper Midwest.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10/17/sturgis-rally-spread

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