He campaigns on panic, lives on panic, breathes panic

Meteor Blades, in his night owl for Daily Kos, quoted David Dayan of The American Prospect who wrote the 78 days between Election Day and Inauguration Day will be “one of the most politically, economically, and socially fraught periods in American history, one that could set the trajectory for the nation’s future.” The one in 1932 as Roosevelt took over from Hoover was so bad the transition was shortened by a month and a half. This one will be much worse.

The night owl tweet of the day refers to the nasty guy scolding author Bob Woodward for not warning Americans about the severity of the virus, something a president should do. I wrote about this yesterday. That incident prompted Michael Mann to tweet:

"If you knew I was misbehaving, you should have told my mommy."

- POTUS

And the quote of the day:

Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”
~~Wendell Berry

Also from yesterday I scoffed at the nasty guy saying he didn’t warn Americans about the severity of the virus because he didn’t want to cause panic. This is related to his exchange with Bob Woodward. Mark Sumner of Kos scoffs better than I do.

Donald Trump isn’t concerned about panic. He campaigns on panic, lives on panic, breathes panic. He just wants people to panic about the right thing: Which is always, always, always, the threat that white nationalists might have to surrender some fraction of their power.
…
And Trump very much wants white Americans to panic. Because if there’s anything else that Donald Trump represents, it is fear. He knows that if he cannot panic white Americans with the idea that they might have to associate with people of color, there’s nothing left of his campaign. Because there never was.

A third thing from yesterday, I wrote about Moscow Mitch getting the Senate to vote on a bill that he knew wouldn’t get enough Democrat votes to pass, for the purpose of blaming those Democrats. Joan McCarter of Kos reports that the ploy worked. All the major media outlets fell for it, reporting the Democrats were to blame.



Yes, this is the 19th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the attempt on the Capitol (that crashed in Pennsylvania). One way you might honor those who died is listen to On The Transmigration of Souls by John Adams.

However, there are also today’s dead to honor and mourn. Dr. Tom Frieden tweeted:

Every 9/11, I think of the people killed on that day.

Every three days in the United States, COVID-19 kills more people than we lost on 9/11.

The fire season in the west this year is the worst in history and there are still two months to go in the season. It’s not just California, it’s also Oregon and Washington. And people find ways to make it worse. Far right activists are spreading hoax rumors that the fires were started by Antifa arsonists. Of course there are confrontations, some with guns. Antifa is being blamed yet again. This is going to get ugly.



This evening’s opera is Les Pêcheurs de Perles by Georges Bizet, of Carmen fame. I don’t dare try to pronounce the French. Its also known by its English title, The Pearl Fishers. Its fame rests on an Act I duet in which two men Nadir and Zurga pledge their friendship that began as children will last as long as they live. Of course, it doesn’t and, of course, what comes between them is a woman. I’ve heard the duet many times and wanted to see the rest of the story, as obvious as it may be.

The story is set somewhere in Southeast Asia (a discussion with the director at the end said the setting is Sri Lanka) in a community that makes their living diving for pearls. Part of this is European fascination with exotic locales in the late 19th century, though Bizet doesn’t use any Asian influences in his music, such as Puccini did with Madame Butterfly.

The story has its complications – it wasn’t as obvious as I thought. The beginning seemed so straightforward, but there were a few plot twists. Act III is quite dramatic. I thought Scene 1 of Act III was out of time – it takes place in Zurga’s office and includes a laptop on the desk and a small TV on a stand. But the director said the whole thing was moved to the modern age. I had seen in Act I the chunky watch Zurga was wearing and thought the actor had forgotten to take it off. But later I saw some of the platforms in the village are shown to be floating on oil drums.



ABC News has a story with a summary, “French government to continue paying up to 84% of salaries for furloughed workers "until next summer" due to prolonged economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.” In response Scott Madin tweeted:

Oh wow you can just do that, huh.