Broadly desensitized to mass death

Today I learned: The day after “May the Forth be With You” is “Revenge of the Fifth.”



The nasty guy is known for crowing about how successful he’s been at combating the coronavirus, though what he considers a “win” keeps rising. Now that we’ve passed the 60,000 deaths that he thought was a win, and have crossed 70,000 deaths, he now thinks 90,000 deaths is a win.

Which prompted Alan Austin of the Daily Kos community to ask, “If this is a success, what does failure look like?” Austin also posted a chart with the number of active cases per country or region as of yesterday. The United States has about six times the number of active cases than the next highest country, Britain.

I’ve mentioned before the nasty guy, and the GOP as a whole, appear to want us dead. So perhaps he isn’t saying: See what a great job I’m doing – I’ve kept deaths from rising above 70,000! I think instead he’s saying: See what a great job I’m doing – I’ve already killed off 70,000 people!



danield90909 of the Kos community takes a look at the number of COVID cases in Wisconsin after their in-person primary on April 6. The number of people who got infected as a result of the vote is officially 50. But daniel looks at the number of new cases per day. Starting about a week before the vote the number of new cases a day was 160 and trending downward. Two weeks after the election – accounting for an incubation period of about two weeks – the trend switched to up and is at 279 new cases a day. Meaning the election resulted in not 50 cases, but over 1400. Thank the Wisconsin GOP for demanding this vote. We should not have to risk death to vote.

daniel is also annoyed with the Supreme Court, which allowed this in-person vote to proceed. That same Supreme Court didn’t hold oral arguments in April and is now conducting them by conference call.



Kristin Rawls tweeted:

It's very weird how there's been no collective mourning for all the dead. No television specials honoring them, almost no mention of them, nothing at all.

She describes a couple ways this could be done even with physical distancing.

People are pushing to reopen things as quickly as possible. Democratic and Republican governors are happily going along with it. The only way this is even thinkable is that we've refused to grapple with the losses. Tens of thousands more will die as a result.

I'm a little disgusted with all the people telling me this is because Trump has no empathy.

It follows that no one else can have empathy how, exactly?
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A polity very broadly desensitized to mass death, one that refuses to acknowledge let alone mourn it, would be very useful to a fascist tyrant.

We are showing what we will tolerate right now.

The racial disparities of those affected by this virus continue to be discussed in social media. I’ve mentioned it a few times. Those disparities include who tends to catch it, who tends to die from it, who tends to have to work those “essential” jobs without sufficient protections, and who tends to not get government relief money. Those inequalities prompted Marco Rogers to tweet:

One thing you learn as you study the history of white supremacy is how policy has always been *in service* of maintaining inequality. These programs are *designed* such that they can applied unevenly. For some in govt, that is the express goal.

What follows from this analysis is even less obvious. This is the real impact when we talk about Democrats making "concessions" on these bills. Those who say "it's better than nothing" are saying they accept the continued oppression of black ppl and others so a few can survive.

Jenn Budd, a former Senior Border Patrol Agent turned immigrant rights activist, tweeted:

There is no excuse for any political leader to not be calling for the removal of Trump. They should all be on every radio, tv and streaming service demanding this. He is responsible for the death of over 50,000 Americans and likely thousands more not counted.
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The Trump #coronavirus response plan is about stealing as much as they can, destroying as many American institutions as possible while the gettin’ is good. This is a criminal organization destroying our country and the best our leaders can say is, “Let’s vote in November.”

How many Americans will be dead in November? 100,000? 200,000? How many hospitals will still be functioning by then? How many people will be unemployed and homeless by then? And all they can say is wait until November?
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You need to say that we have enough of Trump killing Americans, that we have had enough of the grifting and corporate theft, that he is a danger to this country and the millions of people in it. This is your job as elected leaders...to lead, to protect your nation and your people.

Anything less than an aggressive, boisterous unified demand that Trump be removed from office immediately is an indictment of your failure as a leader in this moment. No more dealing, no more begging for scraps from this man. Remove him!

The wonderful chef José Andrés compared two pictures. One is of mountains of potatoes dumped in Idaho because the processing plants are closed. The other is of 10,000 cars waiting outside the San Antonio Food Bank.

How is it possible these two photos exist at the same time, in the most prosperous and technologically advanced moment in our history?

Andrés and his team are doing all they can to get food to people who need it. But we all need leadership from the top – the nasty guy, Moscow Mitch, Speaker Pelosi, Congress, US Department of Agriculture (which has been mighty slow to respond), FEMA, the national guard, governors and mayors. So call them!