Sunday, April 5, 2020

Right Now | Lefsetz Letter


Everybody’s freaking out. And it’s not about the coronavirus, but the government.

If you’re intelligent and informed, you’re staying at home, wearing a mask in public, doing your best not to catch the virus. But every day there’s more governmental insanity and you get scared for your future.

It was never like this, even in the heyday of Nixon.

Well, Nixon could send you off to battle, irresponsibly, for a war that could never be won. But now Trump is putting your life at risk and everybody feels powerless.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The nuclear codes, the button, that’s what we were all worried about. Everybody said there was only so much damage Trump could do.

They were wrong.

It comes down to the courts. They’re gonna lean right for the rest of your lifetime.

And it comes down to credibility and the rule of law, they’re now meaningless, out the window.

Now when I went to school we had fire drills, and nuclear drills, even though we subsequently learned hiding under your desk was not going to save you.

Now schools have active shooter drills. The thought of a gun on campus? Never crossed our minds. Boys had cap guns, and maybe BB guns, and if you went to camp you could shoot a .22, but most people didn’t own guns, you had a hard time finding someone who did, at least if you grew up on the east coast, in the suburbs, where I did. But now, gun sales are through the roof. Think about that, why? These people are obviously expecting bedlam. We had bedlam in the sixties, riots. But they were over race relations. What kind of riots are these people preparing for? Ones in which the rule of law is out the window and it’s every person for themselves?

So, they blew the testing. Today Newsom apologized, said it was on him, even though really it’s on the federal government, and if anything Newsom should be lauded for shutting down California early, at least compared to the other states. But the right now controls the narrative on California, it’s a state where real estate is through the roof and homelessness is rampant and taxes are out of control, so whatever California does is written off as insane and inapplicable, truly.

But Trump has never apologized, nor owned his failures. And if you’re paying attention, all you can see is incompetence. I’ve never met a person like this in my life. Maybe, just maybe there was someone in school or in Boy Scouts who was power-hungry and crazy, but we quickly cut them off at the knees. Meanwhile, Trump keeps gaining more power.

Yes, he missed on testing. Yes, he missed on self-quarantining. Yes, he missed on masks. But now that the government is finally getting up to speed on masks he refuses to wear one. Isn’t this just like the people refusing to stay home, refusing to stay off the beach?

And there’s that insane governor of Georgia, insisting the beaches stay open. Why? You read about those Texas college students who went to Florida for spring break, there were 70 and 44 came back with the coronavirus. What part of “infectious” do people not understand?

And then there’s “exponential.” We’re seeing that right now, in NYC, and also in the country at large. But New York is Cuomo’s fault. Yes, I know your head is spinning. Cuomo did not invest in ventilators and all those elite New Yorkers were asking for it. Read the right wing press, it’s horrifying.

Kind of like Hannity insisting Cuomo give patients chloroquine.

This was started by a doctor in France, Didier Raoult. But the truth is there were only 24 patients involved and they had mild symptoms when they started treatment. But do you know who is to blame that everyone is not taking chloroquine? THE JEWS! I kid you not, it’s a conspiracy! Big Pharma is controlled by Jews and chloroquine is not patentable, so they’re preventing its distribution. And Jews in the government are trying to kill off the elderly. You’d think I’m making this up, but it was in “Le Monde.”

But Trump isn’t quoting the progenitor, he’s quoting a doctor in New York who seems to have pulled his statistics out of his rear end. Isn’t that what they teach you in high school biology, the scientific method? But there’s no science anymore, just emotions, facts are irrelevant, if Trump says there’s a cure there must be.

And the person holding power over Cuomo is Jared Kushner, who made one of the worst media deals of all time, buying the “New York Observer,” overpaid on his family’s one big real estate deal and this is the guy managing the operation, one whom we did not even elect?

And then, in the midst of all this, Trump fires the intelligence community’s inspector general, because he forwarded the whistleblower complaint that ultimately got Trump impeached. Who the hell is gonna blow the whistle in the future, who is gonna stand up to Trump? Not even Fauci can, really, no one can!

And it gets worse and worse. There seems to be a Trump connection in the firing of the of that aircraft carrier captain trying to get attention for the coronavirus outbreak on his ship. The cover is he wasn’t following the chain of command. But the chain of command wasn’t responding and the sailors were all getting infected. Didn’t we used to applaud initiative in America, didn’t we used to laud mavericks?

So, you obey the rules until the ruler changes them.

And you’ve got the left saying the election will happen and if Trump loses he’ll leave because that’s the law…SO WHAT?

Meanwhile, the right doesn’t want voting by mail, doesn’t want any change because they’re afraid too many people will vote and they’ll lose! Their whole campaign is based on voter suppression.

I don’t care if you agree with me or not, I don’t even care if you’re a Trumper, science knows no bounds, you’ll wake up when the virus hits your neighborhood, maybe even your family.

But that’s not my point.

Let’s say a Democrat gets elected. Let’s say Biden. Do you think the 30%+ who are Trumpers are just gonna roll over and accept this, even if both houses of Congress turn blue? No way!

As for Biden, he’s got so much dirty laundry. Today Sarah Silverman retweeted news video from 1988 about Biden’s plagiarism: bit.ly/2wifauM Do you think the right is not going to harp on this?

Our country is so broken it’s nearly unfathomable.

We can’t agree on the facts, Kellyanne Conway says there are “alternative facts.” This used to be funny, but not anymore.

And Trump plays favorite with states, you’ve got to be nice to him or you don’t get supplies to combat the coronavirus.

And it doesn’t stop there, Trump excoriates corporations too, even when they’re doing what he’s asking them to!

So what happens now?

Some people will recover, some people will die, and at some point in the future we’ll go back to business as usual, even if it means more people dying.

And the believers in Jesus will try and pray the virus away, but even Rod Dreher in the “American Conservative” said no smart Christian would jump into shark-infested waters and that “all of us lock our doors at night, do we not?”

But reasonability has gone out the window.

And politics is a team sport. If Trump was convicted at the impeachment trial, the Republicans still would have held the Presidency, but it’s equivalent to the police blue line, cross it and you become a pariah.

But, once again, the he-said, she-said is no longer really that important. What we all can agree on is we’ve got a President who acts on whims, denies what he just recently said and demands total fealty, cross him and you’re done. Is this the country we want to live in?

But the right says the Democrats are so evil they cannot hold power.

Meanwhile, if you want an abortion, go to the back of the bus, we’ve got to focus on Covid-19 patients first. But they also have closed down abortion clinics and said you can’t get an abortion after a certain point in your pregnancy.

And then they say college campuses are bastions of liberal ideas, that they’re filling the younger generation’s heads with falsehoods and this must be stopped.

What they’re really saying is education, thinking for yourself, must be stopped.

The right is fighting on every front, and the left doesn’t understand this.

So, if Trump gets re-elected, and this could happen, what will the left do? NOTHING!

But if Biden wins…

Hold on to your hat.

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