Watching it burn holding a turned-off hose

I looked at Michigan’s COVID data based on data as of Friday, August 6. The peak new cases per day in the weeks of July 4 and 11 have changed only a little from when I last reported a week ago. So I’ll leave them out. For the last three weeks: July 18 – the week’s peak revised upward from 512 to 579 with days of 573 and 561 that week. July 25 – the peak revised upward from 662 to 802. August 1 – peak of 1150 with another day at 1083. The case rate for the state has now risen to 11/100K. In the last two weeks the deaths per day was at 12 for one day and 8 or below for the rest of the time. Thankfully, deaths per day has not been rising behind new cases per day. Back in April I wrote a program to draw Michigan counties and color them based on their viral spread. With a change of month I ran it again. In July (so already a week old), there was one hot county, Branch, along the Indiana border. In that county in July 0.05% of the population tested positive for COVID. A county at the west end of the Upper Peninsula had 0.035% testing positive. All the rest of the counties are under 0.025% testing positive. For populous Oakland County that can still be a couple hundred cases. A few days ago I wrote about the latest details about the Capitol attack that came out this past week. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos added an overall picture.

Donald Trump isn’t just a sore loser. He isn’t even just a sore loser who indiscriminately lashed out and encouraged his supporters to riot. Donald Trump was at the head of an actual, methodical coup attempt last December and January, a fact that’s starting to draw more and more notice as details emerge. ... CNN’s Zachary Wolf likewise pointed to how … intentional, and truly coup-like, this is all looking, writing that the details that have recently emerged “show that Trump's assault on democracy, which looks more and more like an attempted coup, was even more reckless and insistent than previously thought.” Yeah. And we still may not have all the most damning details. Anyone who doesn’t take this seriously, at this point, is laying the groundwork for a successful coup next time. Republicans from Congress to state legislatures are laying that groundwork very intentionally. But pretending it didn’t happen, and failing to see the continuing work Republicans are doing toward 2022 and 2024, is almost as dangerous.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic discussing Biden’s insistence on bipartisan deals and wondering if Biden understands the current GOP.

On the other side are Democrats who fear that Biden’s stress on bipartisan cooperation is normalizing the GOP even as the party is radicalizing on many fronts—from restricting voting and defending the January 6 rioters to opposing many public-health responses to the pandemic. These Democrats worry that Biden’s approach makes it easier even for voters who view Trump as unfit for office to back Republicans in upcoming down-ballot races.

Dworkin also quoted a tweet from David Frum:

Republican anti-vaxxism offers a fascinating study of relationship between right-wing elites vs. rank-and-file. Elites first fomented anti-vax feeling for partisan purposes. They succeeded so well that they cannot/dare not now reverse. Elite leads; rank-and-file then constrain.

Also a tweet by Scott Braddock:

It should be national news tonight that the biggest school district in Texas is on track to defy Gov @GregAbbott_TX's ban on local mask mandates.

Staying with schools – A week ago I quoted a tweet by Leah McElrath about Republicans using the pandemic to undermine parental support for public education. She added a couple examples. McElrath quoted a tweet from John Harwood who quoted Education Week:

"Tennessee aims to levy fines starting at $1-M on school districts each time a teacher is found to have 'knowingly-violated' state restrictions on classroom discussions about systemic racism, white privilege, and sexism, according to the Dept of Education"

Then a quote of Zeke Miller, quoting the Associated Press:

Florida approves private school vouchers if parents say children feel bullied by a district's mask-wearing rules.

A week ago McElrath quoted the Washington Post:

Perspective: Experts and writers who mostly disagreed with Trump — often vehemently — to look back on what he got right.

McElrath responded:

Trump attempted a coup and contributed to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans through his lies and inaction—and THIS is what the @washingtonpost is going with.

Author Celeste Ng wrote:

I feel closer to an actual nervous breakdown right now re: COVID stuff than I did in April last year. Maybe it’s because we have tools to fight it and we just aren’t using them? It’s one thing to watch the world burn. It’s another to watch it burn holding a turned-off hose. And I feel like our situation now is some of us holding a hose and wanting to use it, while some people push us away from the fire and also spray gasoline around. While waving the flag. Oh, and while saying the kids inside the building have a right to not get wet.

From another Dworkin pundit roundup from earlier this past week, Charlie Sykes from Bulwark.

On one level D’Souza’s mockery of police officers injured in the line of duty is just another example of performative assholery, but it also fits a pattern worth noting: Charlie Kirk mocks Simone Biles for “weakness,” Tucker Carlson cackles about critics, and Laura Ingraham ridicules victims of the January 6 riots. None of this has any relationship to the fight for freedom, limited government, or national greatness, or anything like a coherent set of ideas. But there is a through-line here: a strutting posture of faux toughness, and the celebration of the “strong” as opposed to the weak. We’ve seen this play before.

And a bit of fun: Comedian Vinny Thomas does a two minute routine about “The Galactic Federation Interviews Earth for membership.” It’s from last December and has gotten 4.9 million views.