Sometimes I really don’t know where to start when I write these posts. It just seems like there is always such a cornucopia of news and controversy stemming directly from the White House that its hard to know what to tackle. But today, although I’m not sure where this will end, I do know where to start. Yesterday was my birthday and many thanks to the people who sent good wishes on my Facebook page. They are all greatly appreciated.
I had the privilege to receive all kinds of well wishes from my friends and family but it made me think of the more than 190,000 Americans who have died as a result of COVID 19 and how none of those people will have the privilege of celebrating another birthday. That is a staggering number. I live in Bozeman, Montana with a population just shy of 50,000 people. Imagine – four cities the size of Bozeman wiped off the map. That’s what this is like.
One of the most used models is projecting that potentially 400,000 Americans will have perished of COVID by the end of this year. If that occurs, that is 8 cities the size of Bozeman completely wiped out. It is roughly the same number of American deaths due to World War II. [ 291, 000 combat deaths; 114,000 non-combat deaths]. And that occurred over a 4-year period. The COVID deaths in the country are over a period of LESS THAN ONE YEAR!
Make no mistake about it – we are at war. Unfortunately, we have a Commander-in-Chief who is not only incompetent but refuses to take responsibility for anything and is making things worse. In spite of virtually all credible medical professionals agreeing that lots of hand washing, wearing masks, social distancing and wide-spread testing are keys to getting this thing under control, the President continues to violate those guidelines. Consequently, many of his supporters are also willing to violate those guidelines. A recent poll showed that something like 80% of Democrats and Independents wear masks when in public whereas something like only 46% of Republicans follow the guidelines.
Trump virtually never wears a mask and mocks Joe Biden for doing so. At Trump rallies and events held at the White House, masks and social distancing are a rare sight. If Trump were to get behind wearing masks and enforcing social distancing, his followers would be much more likely to do the same. He could do so much to help and he has chosen to throw gas on the fire instead.
In a post last week, I talked a little about the branch of mathematics called Chaos Theory in which one of the key tenets is that the outcomes in highly complex, dynamic systems can be extremely sensitive to the initial conditions. There have been numerous articles written discussing how things would not have gotten this bad if Trump had acted more forcefully even one week or two weeks before he initially started implementing restrictions. Failure to act then cost American lives and failure to act now continues to cost American lives.
Much of the news in the last few days has been about the story in The Atlantic reporting that Trump used derogatory and dismissive language against our military personnel. The story in The Atlantic has been corroborated by other news organizations and I personally have no doubt that it is true. After reading how Trump’s father, Fred, disparaged Trump’s brother for wanting to join the Air Force and how Trump was able to get his deferment for bone spurs, it should really come as a surprise to no one.
This incident does, however, provide yet another window into Trump’s transactional view of the world. When confronted with this story, after his denials, his ‘go to’ response was to talk about money. He talked about how he had raised the military budget and he talked about pay raises for the military personnel (which are somewhat automatic despite what Trump claims). With Trump, it always comes back to money.
The bottom line is, American citizens are dying from COVID 19 at a faster rate per day than soldiers were dying in World War 2 and we have a Commander in Chief who disparages his military and has no plan as to how to win this current war.
If Trump were in charge of D-Day, we would have failed because analogous to what is happening today, Trump would not have an overall strategy that encompassed the entire landing assault but would simply be telling the commander of each ship and assault team to work on their own. And to make matters worse, he would allocate resources like ammunition, diesel fuel, and artillery to only those units that he knew ‘liked’ him. D-Day under Trump would have been an abysmal blood bath and failure. Kind of like what is happening now with COVID in the United States.
I feel privileged that I got to celebrate another birthday when so many did not. My birthday wish is simply that Trump gets voted out of office so that we can get a Commander-in-Chief that is worthy of the title. Trump may be a lot of things- Tweeter-in-Chief, Blamer-in-Chief, Reality Star-in-Chief – but he sure as hell is no Commander-in-Chief.
I am very proud of you to be able to put into words that I can not, but expresses how I feel. My heart screams out to all the Veterans that have forsaken what we served for, when Our President, called John
Mc Cain a loser because he was shot down and taken Prisoner for 5 years of pure hell. My job in the Army was doing the paper work for discharging the men coming home from the Korean War and I heard many stories and they were not losers or suckers.