Doug's Darkworld

Above is Trumptopia’s version of “We’re winning against Covid-19!” The Bart Simpson version of winning I suppose: “We’ll choke their rivers with our dead!” In more Covid-19 bad news “Nevada man had Covid-19 twice.” Twice in a three month span. And not only didn’t his antibodies from the first case prevent reinfection, his first case was relatively mild, his second case required hospitalization. What this is all starting to mean is that the era of widespread travel, especially international travel, may have ended. That week in Hawaii or Paris is going to be a lot less attractive and economical if there’s two weeks of quarantine at each end. It may well be that the only way a country can keep Covid-19 under control is by strictly limiting travel, especially international travel, coupled with robust testing, tracking, and quarantining to suppress outbreaks as soon as they happen. Maybe there will be some amazing breakthrough in a vaccine or a cure, but while miraculous endings are common in movies, in real life not so much.

What a lot of people don’t really understand is that the global ”civilization” humans built since the end of World War Two was basically built on sand. The fossil fuel industry and air travel were both massively subsidized. Environmental and health costs largely ignored, passed onto the future in other words. Books have been written about how it was all based on rich nations exploiting poor nations. And the ever present risk of something like Covid-19 or the inevitable end to the stable climate the world had enjoyed for centuries was ignored. It was basically a fantasy world where the rich got richer and the fractured foundation it was built on was ignored. Most of the world has figured this out to one degree or another and is making adjustments. Not Trumptopia though, in Trumptopia Covid-19 has been defeated and everything is going to get back to normal in just a month or two. And if Trump can keep his base believing that for a few more months, he might even get reelected.

One of the biggest catastrophes of modern American history was the occupation of Iraq. The Bush administration literally  had no plan for how to occupy a large diverse country, and apparently thought the Iraqis would be so happy to have their country overrun by an invading Christian army that it would all just magically work out. Resulting in the worst humanitarian crisis in the Mideast since 1948, hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced. And Iraq has yet to fully recover in any real sense of the word. (If Trump had been president, he would have blamed the chaos on the Dems. Jesus wept.)

And now we have Trump, who apparently had no plan for how to govern America, and has even less of a plan about how he’s going to govern America in his second term. But we’ve got to reelect him so that Biden won’t destroy the country, because that’s Biden’s secret plan. Right. To get elected the first time Trump at least made some promises about governing the country. Renewed infrastructure spending, replace Obamacare with something better, tax the rich, drain the swamp, etc. Granted he broke all those promises, but this time he’s not even promising anything. He’s just going to prevent the mess the country is in from getting worse? He wasn’t able to prevent what’s going on from happening, but he’s going to fix it and Biden is plotting to make it worse?

Weirder and weirder every day. I wish Trump governed some far off land, it would make it easier to laugh at him. Alas, I’m stuck here in America. In Iowa even. I see my lovely adopted state of Iowa was America’s premier Covid-19 hotspot today. How a state that prides itself on being sensible is a blue state with an incompetant GOP governor is, well, a sign of the times.

So a comment on yesterday’s blog:

It’s already happening to an extent, the other day Russia buzzed the US border with some fighter jets. But even if you are a country that doesn’t like the US, do you really want someone so unpredictable in charge of the largest military arsenal in history? I’m sure global politics and strategy is playing out, but our greatest dangers are within. The last 2 weeks more than one million more unemployed, each week. Mortgage delinquency edging up towards 10%. Civil unrest in the streets. Lots of small businesses closed permanently. Yet the stock market sets records and Jeff Bezos just became the first 200 billion dollar man. It’s an unjust and unsustainable system.

Well, Russian jets on the US border is nothing new. And now that Trump has decided to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, we can expect more of the same. The US refuses to commit to a “no first strike” policy, so of course the Russians are going to keep as close an eye on us as they can. And for those unfamiliar with history, America has a long standing policy of skimming along designated enemies’ borders to intimidate them and/or provide a casus belli. The Tonkin Gulf Incident, the justification for the Vietnam War was the result of this policy.

In any event, yes, our allies no doubt would prefer a non delusional US president. The nations we insist on screwing, Iran, North Korea, Russia, China … they’d likely prefer a delusional lunatic like Trump. He’s so predictable it’s kinda scary. That was basically the point I was trying to make. And yes, we are our own worst enemy at this point. It’s more than likely our friends and enemies will just stay clear and see what happens. Still, Trump couldn’t defend America against a virus, a random enemy human science has a decent clue on how to fight; we’re really screwed if we have to defend against a sophisticated targeted attack.

Strange times. Just cost me my fiance. She’s one of the people who thinks this will all blow over and things will soon get back to a pre Covid-19 America. So she couldn’t handle me being immersed in the news and blogging every day. Oh well, wish her the best, but I must keep blogging. Writing is what I do, trying to make sense of the world is what I do. I get enough positive feedback that I know I’m contributing something. Hell, a world leader asked my advice once. Pretty sure that means I’m doing something right.

65 more days. Oh dear. Stay safe everyone. #StaytheFHome #WearaDamnMask #UtMelioremPeiusAnteTempora

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: A tweet from Brian Klass on Twitter. Claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law.)