Death by Stupid

I’ve made a start on reading the new Bob Woodward book, and once again I marvel at what a clunky writer Woodward is. Mary Trump is a much better writer; her book is enjoyable to read. Michael Wolff, often identified as a hack journalist, is also a much better writer. When I read Bob Woodward, I am reminded how I felt when my third grade teacher assigned long division homework. It’s a slog.

Anyway, I’ve barely made a start, and so far I haven’t run into anything that hasn’t been discussed in the news. If you are reading it also and can recommend some juicy bits, do speak up. I anticipate skimming through a lot of this. Still, I appreciate that he conducted the interviews. And I don’t believe for a minute that it would have made any difference if he had released his “downplayed” tape when it was new.

Here in Trumpland, the covid cases keep going up. Missouri is one of the worst states to be in right now, and St. Francois County (where I’m living) is the worst county. Bollinger County, south of here, has a higher cases-per-100,000 population rate, but there are maybe three people living in Bollinger County.

So the country administration met and voted for a mask mandate, to begin Monday. Naturally there were sign-waving, maskless jerks at the meeting arguing loudly against it. Since then, county administrators who voted for the mandate have been getting death threats. People are writing letters to the local paper warning of communist mask conspiracies. A petition drive is being organized. It’s a bleeping piece of cloth, people. What’s the deal? 

So I don’t go anywhere. Not that I’d been going anywhere since last March. Things won’t get better until a lot more people get sick, I fear.

And so much for Trump’s argument that our covid rates would be better if we ignored the blue states. In fact, from what I see, they’d be better if we ignored the red states. This says the top ten states for covid rates are Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Nevada, and Iowa. Texas is #11. New York has dropped to #13.

Trump, of course, is still promising a vaccine by election day or shortly thereafter.

Trump’s optimistic promises have left him in a battle with the realities of time, the deadline of the election, and the increasing skepticism of the stock market that he frequently cites as a barometer of his success. On Thursday, stocks continued a two-day slide, underscoring the skepticism on Wall Street that a vaccine is near.

On Tuesday, Trump said at an event hosted by ABC that it “could be three, four weeks, but we think we have it.”

On Wednesday, Trump said that vaccine distribution could start sometime in October. “That’ll be from mid-October on. It may be a little bit later than that, but we’ll be all set,” he said.

And on Thursday morning, Trump said a vaccine will be ready “either before or just shortly after” election day on Nov. 3. Taken together, Trump is promising a vaccine for some part of the American public between Oct. 6 and early November.

But Trump’s health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC director Robert Redfield, are saying that’s not going to happen. There may be a vaccine approved by the end of the year, but even then it will take several months to get doses manufactured and distributed. Redfield told Congress — yesterday, I believe — that a vaccine will be available to the public by summer or early fall of next year. About a year from now, in other words.

Trump insisted that Redfield was “confused.” The vaccine is almost here! Any second now! Just like Trump’s great health care plan that he’s been promising since 2016! Just another week or two!!!!!

Today, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told the Fox and Friends crew that Redfield just didn’t have his facts straight.

“I think that we’ll at least have some results in October,” the White House senior official said. “And as we start to look at those results, I can tell you the President is pushing very hard to make sure that we’re delivering a vaccine before the end of the year.”

“So I’m not sure where Dr. Redfield got his particular timetable, but it’s not based on those that are closest to the process,” he added.

I’d like to know who is “closest to the process” if not the CDC director. Jared and Ivanka, maybe?

Nobody who knows anything about vaccines thinks this is possible. See also Greg Sargent, Trump Is Losing Control of His Own Propaganda.

At the Atlantic, Deborah Pearlstein writes about all the ways our government has become less and less competent over the past fifty years. Reforms are proposed. I’m going to skip to the last paragraph:

A final step works across the whole of constitutional democracy, as Americans’ all-time ignorance of the fundamental structure of government has become visible in recent surveys revealing, for example, that nearly 75 percent could not name the three branches of the federal government at all. As long as ours is a representative government, this staggering degree of basic incapacity will be represented among our elected officials and their staff. Part of the correction here will require improved civic education in elementary and secondary schools; one in five states, for example, currently has no civics requirement for graduation at all. But another part can be implemented more quickly, as soon as a new administration takes office. Just as congressional and government ethics offices have traditionally trained all new federal employees and even transition teams in the rules of ethical compliance (financial-disclosure requirements and more), it is easy to imagine requiring new hires to receive a refresher in constitutional civics. Among the essential topics: the duties of Congress, the president, and the courts, and the purposes of separating powers in the first place. Because core among those purposes was promoting the Hamiltonian value of good government from both reflection and choice.

And better science education would help, too. See also Matt Yglesias, America Needs a Democratic Revolution.

11 thoughts on “Death by Stupid

  1. Fact Checking Maha…

    St. Francois County – Missouri (2010 census) 65,359

    Bollinger County – Missouri (2010 census) 12,363

     

    It was decades ago but having lived in the state of Misery (Cape Girardeau / St. Ann / Bridgeton) for a period of years and never having awareness of St. Francois County, I had to look them up.

     

  2. I've been in the bandwagon for years and years, advocating for more – or ANY at all – civics training for young people.

    In my 3 decades as a corporate trainer, then training manager, and training director, I trained several hundred people. In college, when I was an adjunct, I taught about a hundred students.  And in both situations, often, during breaks from learning, we'd talk about a wide variety of topics – including politics and government.  And at some point, I'd ask, "What does the word 'bicameral' mean, and why is it important?"

    And do you know how many trainees/students knew!  One person.

    One person!

    ONE!!!

    On top of all of the critical things Biden and Harris will have to do – providing they win* – they'll need to start making civics classes mandatory for every grade from grade school through high school! 

    *If they lose, forget civics classes.  Not having them will certainly be the least of our problems!

     

  3. I remember watching Jay Leno doing his man on the street segment where he would go out in public and ask basic questions of passersby about history, geography, government, and other subjects that you would assume could be answered easily by the average person. When I saw the level of ignorance and lack of knowledge displayed I would wonder whether the segment was all just a put on for comedic effect or whether he was presenting a true reading of the level of knowledge among our populace. I don't think it was a put on.

    When I see Trump making statements about covid deaths where he uses a nebulous and dynamic political factor (red & blue) to make to make a scientific assertion. It just blows my mind. On the face of it he's trying to extrapolate a truth to defend his position by comparing data from two different dimensions. A right thinking person would know that you can't get there from here and Trump is just talking shit.

     What pains me is…This is our President. How'd we ever get into this mess. And what calms me is the shift from the early Trump days where the press would gingerly dance around Trump's character by saying he's prone to exaggerations, he's fond of superlatives, he has a tenuous relationship with the truth. Now they are straight out calling him what he is… He's mentally disturbed and he is a Liar.

    Whatever you do America…Vote this clown out in November.

  4. Somewhere in the afterlife, hordes of Germans and Japanese from the 1940s are wondering how in sulfuric HELL they ever lost that war.

     

    Of course, back then, this country was run by more liberal politicians, at least more liberal on economic matters. Just sayin'…

    • To be a bit pedantic, the Germans would have no question of why they lost the war; the USSR was probably close enough to sufficient that even a weakened/clumsier US wouldn't have changed the outcome from Germany's standpoint. Which is not to say that it wouldn't still sting to realize "and the mighty USSR is now just Russia, and the USA is… well, run by Donald J. Trump."

  5. My daughter is a Senior in HS. She's very aware of the state of the world, the role of  corporations in exploiting the planet at the expense of the people they sell stuff to. When I ask, "Have you heard about…" there's a 50-50 chance she has. Before me.  Sometimes I have to discourage pure idealism with the topic of this post. She's in the vast minority as an informed human with strong ethical beliefs. That can change a lot but it's a cultural attitude that won't be reformed overnight. We've handed out the right to vote, even to idiots. I'd limit the right to vote to informed people with a working conscience if there was a way to prevent the process of selection from being perverted. 

    The solution to the Dunning-Kruger effect when the majority of voters are too stupid to know how stupid they are, is to offer a higher grade of candidates. This doesn't mean more liberals, it means more candidates whose sincere intent is to improve society. That might be do-able with one major 'filter' that most would agree with on both sides of the electorate. Get big money out of politics, before, during and after a term of office. That's campaign finance reform, a ban of insider trading by a mandatory blind trust, and a small independent agency who would watch the finances of any ex-member of Congress for any financial deal that has the appearance of impropriety. Not proof of intent that it was a bribe made legal by delaying the payment (as bribery is legal today.) 

    Here's the thing. Ban big money in politics and the scoundrels will self-deport. The crowd who replaces them has to accept that 181,000 is all they are going to make from service in Congress. You have a vast majority of people in Congress with widely divergent views HOW to fix things, but all are there for the right reason and all are immune to the temptation of vast riches (because that's a ticket to prison.)

    This 'filter' wouldn't be as effective as one requiring education and ethics, but no one has come up with an equitable way to apply that better filter. The coarse one I propose, a ban on big money in politics, can be defined and have vast support from the left and the right. And the coarse filter would improve the quality of legislators enormously almost overnight.

     

    1
    • The coarse one I propose, a ban on big money in politics, can be defined and have vast support from the left and the right.

      I wish that were true, but it just isn’t. The 1% will mobilize the rubes against it. The rubes do not want to give up their advantage (over the libs) no matter what. It’s a similar argument to eliminating the Electoral College. You can’t convince the right wingers to get rid of this either, for the same reasons.

      Your daughter sounds like a lovely person, and I’m so encouraged by her and her generation.

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    • Civics if it is conventionally taught (but sometimes it's taught as a subversive activity) is much about how the U.S. government in some idealized conception (which right wingers not the left is enthralled with in their way) should run. 

      How it actually runs with votes being worth much less than campaign money, with any spending for the people going through and being blocked by the House, Senate or the President and all money for the rich being fast track through the Fed backdoor, is another thing entirely. 

      Plus our form of government although I don't expect it to change and our constitution are backward anyway.  The electoral college is patently undemocratic as is the Senate (never mind the filibuster).  Most modern constitutions and the U.N. guarantee economic and other rights, but no not ours.  One of the oldest constutitions and some of the oldest political parties on the planet.  Progress has been made since then elsewhere.

    • Civics if it is conventionally taught (but sometimes it's taught as a subversive activity) is much about how the U.S. government in some idealized conception (which right wingers not the left is enthralled with in their way) should run. 

      How it actually runs with votes being worth much less than campaign money, with any spending for the people going through and being blocked by the House, Senate or the President and all money for the rich being fast track through the Fed backdoor, is another thing entirely. 

      Plus our form of government although I don't expect it to change and our constitution are backward anyway.  The electoral college is patently undemocratic as is the Senate (never mind the filibuster).  Most modern constitutions and the U.N. guarantee economic and other rights, but no not ours.  One of the oldest constutitions and some of the oldest political parties on the planet.  Progress has been made since then elsewhere.

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