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30 April 2020

Trump’s Sycophants 






One of the latest demonstrations of the obsequiousness surrounding President Trump was the appearance of Vice President Mike Pence at the Mayo Clinic without a face mask.  Like the respected medical science authorities on the White House pandemic task force and, just yesterday, with the congratulatory statement of Jared Kushner, it appears that those who may have some inkling that they might someday be in a position to rescue the country from complete disaster are afraid to set Trump off by  contradicting him publicly.  They are probably smart not to rely on the constitutional method for removing him from office, given the reluctance of the Republicans in control of the Senate to jeopardize their presumed reelection chances by convicting him in an impeachment trial. 



What a fix our founding fathers put us in!  It is as important, therefore, that the election campaign this Fall devote itself as much to aligning both Houses of Congress in opposition to a Trump White House as to simply replacing the President.

21 April 2020

Coronavirus Testing 




The most important function that can be performed by universal testing of infection by the virus that causes COVID-19 is to help promote the adoption of behavior that prevents the spread of the pandemic. Testing is a political tool that will provide the information that can be used to convince the public of the effectiveness of social distancing and other practices that will tame the virus and  give us the time needed to develop a vaccine as well as to enable our healthcare system deal with a manageable number of infected persons in the meantime.  Secondarily, it will also guide us in identifying hotspots where medical attention can be concentrated and allow us to phase in the re-opening of the economy.  But it is crucial that the health benefits of testing be realized first in order to assure our ability to restore the country’s commerce.

19 April 2020

Trump Thinks He’s Entitled 




President Trump may have been elected in 2016 because his voters thought they were as entitled as he thinks he is.  Indeed, the Donald was endowed by his father with a real estate fortune and America has been the wealthiest, technologically and, arguably, aesthetically leading nation in the world since the middle of the last century.   Because of these advantages Mr. Trump has really never had to worry about the consequences of financial failure.  The people who supported him four years ago thought that they too should be able to enjoy the rewards of global dominance.  They admired Mr. Trump for his experience in living that way.


The coronavirus pandemic does not respect entitlement.  It soes not skip over the U.S. or other wealthy nations.  And its resolution cannot be achieved without sustaining unimaginable pain snd suffering.  No one is “entitled” to govern a democracy of 330 million people, particularly when it is faced with an inevitable crisis.  Moreover, no earthly nation can hope ultimately to escape anomalous tragedies without responsible leadership.


There is nothing in President Trump’s background that demonstrates any concern for others, either contemporary or future.   If he is to be replaced in the While House, It will require an effective campaign to convince Americans that their only lasting right is vigilantly to select leaders who will govern in their best interest, not in order to achieve personal magnificence.

16 April 2020



Donald Trump’s Impetuosity



The total disregard that Donald Trump displays for civility and conformance with societal rules of behavior in politics, finance, or in personal life, must derive from the way he was raised.  I imagine that his parents, Fred and Mary Anne, did not discipline him as a child.  They must always have bailed him out of costly mistakes.  Aparently they thought that It was enough to enroll him in military high school and left it up to his instructors to rein him in.  Unfortunately, that didn’t work, to the regret of several contractors, banks, students and investors.   His election as President of the U.S. was the result of a lucky combination of America’s peculiar electoral system and the public’s weariness with “political correctness.”



Of course, impetuosity is not grounds for removal from office, either by impeachment and conviction or by electoral defeat.  However, if his sense of autonomy or self-sufficiency has led him to violate the Constitution, either the Congress or the electorate at large must rid our country of a scourge that could destroy confidence in the ultimate fairness of the American nation. 


10 April 2020

IG Independence and Press Freedom 


An Inspector General is supposed to be independent of the agency he works for so he can root out corruption.  However, how much honesty can he assure in the Presidency, from which he apparently is not independent, particularly when his presidential appointment is only “temporary.”   Can a Congress that is stymied by the President’s toadies prevent White House corruption either?   Some in the Press have been trying to perform that function.  They have to rely on making the electoral process transparent.  However, they may ultimately be vulnerable to the same fate as the recently fired Pentagon IG and others.  It has happened before, in other countries over the years.  What will it take to prevent it from destroying the freedom of the Press this time?  More importantly, what will it take to assure that the public pays attention?

07 April 2020

The Right of Kings 

The Right of Kings


President Donald Trump can’t understand resentment of his irresponsible method of governing. Although it may give him more credit for historical knowledge than is his due. he may believe that election to the White House is as empowering as legendary Divine Right.

The English had to accept the foibles of Richard III; as did the French those of Louis XIV. We don’t. The attempt to impeach Trump last year failed. The election of 2020 offers another opportunity that should not be wasted.


03 April 2020

Pandemics and the Immune System 


The virus that causes COVID-19 has been lurking inside certain animals (bats?) for no one knows how long.   It may have been created by a random mutation; but only now has it emerged as a human respiratory pathogen.   Because of its novelty, our bodies’ immune systems were not prepared by prior experience to annihilate or block it.  Perhaps those bats’ immune systems have evolved in a way to defeat the COVID-19 virus, and surely the search for a vaccine that will inoculate humans against this virus includes investigation of that mechanism. 



There is another lesson, however. to be drawn from the sudden occurrence of this worldwide disease.  The number of viruses in existence in the world has been estimated at over 50 million.   Some of them are useful in other organic or inorganic systems. Some are inert.  And others are pathological, causing an immunologic response in their hosts.  Harmful viruses may emerge only occasionally from their existence within host systems which are able to control their pathogenic effects.  However, as the experience of the black plague, measles, small pox, the 1918 Spanish influenza and the more recent polio, SARS, MERS, H1N1, and HIV epidemics have shown us. viruses continually disturb the healthy status quo.  Moreover, the ever-increasing density and easy frequency of communications of the earth’s population makes it more and more vulnerable to viral attacks when the chief means of combating them is a biological system that only slowly adapts to harmful novel agents. 



It must be hard to anticipate the next viral attacks, particularly owing to their random evolution.  Fortunately, modern science has improved our ability quickly to respond to what will become a more frequent threat to human life.   God knows how much longer it will take to end future viral epidemics if the same luddite and simplistic attitude toward them is taken as has been directed at COVID-19 by the Trump-led federal government.

01 April 2020

Do Facts Matter? 


To whom do facts matter?  There are those who believe that only matters that they experience themselves are important and worthy of concern.  These creatures think that anything that does not result from events while they are alive is imaginary.   They also dismiss as trivial the history of things that are supposed to have happened before their own existence.  While they may enjoy speculative fiction, they don’t think that accounts of past events are any different.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that the world and other creatures in it exist independently of their own consciousness.  They may believe in an afterlife and govern their behavior so as to conform with their assumptions about conditions and expectations of that subsequent supernatural order.  Alternately, they may, in a Rawlsian sense, base their behavior on the principle of altruism.

Facts of the world that is assumed to be real by the latter class of persons (the realists) are irrelevant to the behavior of the former (the solipsists).  However, certain realists may be attracted to the policies advocated by the solipsists.  The solipsist’s disregard for scientific findings and for the practices of democratic institutions can be accepted by realists when even only one of their results benefits their perceived self=interest.

When a calamity such as the COVID-19 pandemic breaks out or suffering from human inequality becomes unbearable, it matters to the realists that their leaders behave in a manner correctly to resolve the problem.  It is important to the realists that their leaders have the same realistic attitude towards social and governmental policy as they, whether or not they agree with all the consequences of particular policies.   Donald Trump does not behave as though the welfare of the realists has any importance outside of his own narcissistic mind.  Moreover, no facts exist because the rest of the world, against which truth may be judged, does not exist independently of him.  The only choice of realists is either to accept that they are nothing but figments of the solipsist’s mind or to deny him that power by depriving him of any means of control.

Of course, no realist could accept the solipsist’s monomania.  But it might serve certain realists’ objectives to empower him if the solipsist’s actions would help accomplish their goals.  They could achieve this strategy by helping to create allegiance to his ascendance to political rule.  The chief methods of establishing that dominance  have included obscurantism (willful denial of knowledge) fanning of prejudice or, as in the present case of Trump’s regime, corruption of democratic goals from serving the greater good of all to serving the greater good of each individual.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much guile to transform even a long-lasting democracy into a rubber stamp of immoral government.  It is not sufficient that  many of the realists who understand what has happened rely on the corrupted electoral process automatically to re-instill a commitment to democratic values in the voting public.   It will take an active persuasive effort to right the ship of state’s course.  I wonder if we have a promising leader to guide us to achieve that goal.

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