April Fools

Today, Forbes is once more bemoaning the difficulties of H-1B applicants—70 percent who come from just one country, and for some companies 99 percent of them—due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus problem. Contrary to popular belief the greater part of these “high-skill” visa applicants are merely glorified phone operators, who at least work for cheaper rates and receive fewer employee benefits. It’s hard for me to be sad for these people, because they have become part, willingly or not, of the foolish immigration and work visa policies of this country that decides in a completely arbitrary and prejudicial manner what constitutes work that has “merit. During this time of troubles, who are more “essential”—farm and food production workers or “information technology” phone operators? The latter may help solve problems that shouldn’t be problems in the first place, but the former help keep people alive to have “problems” to begin with. Hell, even the lowly janitor is more “essential” at times like this. 

Of course, the biggest problem this country has is Donald Trump, his Republican allies in Congress, and the right-wing media who take the American public as a whole as complete fools. During his daily “briefing”—or rather, a thinly-disguised campaign rally—the other day, Trump trumpeted out MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who did as hoped: he claimed that Trump was God’s “gift” to America. Yeah, OK, there are a few million evangelical so-called “Christians” full of hate for anyone who is not 100 percent pure white Anglo-Saxon American who actually believe that, but for most of the rest of us, to say that Trump was sent by God means either that this is proof positive that there is no “God,” or that God sent Trump to sow the seeds of the coming Apocalypse—or maybe in fact he was actually sent from Satan as the anti-Christ. 

Alright, so the last couple of items there are obviously a bit farfetched, but not any more so than what we are hearing from Trump supporters like Mitch McConnell, who is now claiming that Trump was “distracted” from dealing with the coronavirus because of the impeachment process. Well, we know how distracted someone who is as narcissistic as Trump can be; during the height of their impeachment woes, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton didn’t spend all their time complaining about the news media or calling people names for asking pertinent questions, like why he was telling people if they would just “keep calm” the virus would magically just go away. “Business as usual” for Nixon and Clinton meant the business of the country; for Trump, it means constant massaging of his megalomania and creating an alternate, anti-matter universe where there is "greatness" to all of his abject miscalculations and failures. 

Americans should be angry about what Trump is doing now and what he has done before, and we should also throw-in how his billionaire friends have been behaving. Corporations did not use those massive tax cuts they were gifted to shore-up their business and put money away in case of an economic downturn—they put it right in the pockets of top-level management and shareholders, and now taxpayers have to bail many of these companies out because of their greed and shortsightedness. With at least another 2.5 million people likely to apply for unemployment insurance, and no requirement that businesses receiving part of that “stimulus” money actually use it to keep people employed, those who were foolish enough to keep Congress controlled by  Republicans during Trump’s first two years in office are now paying for their foolishness. Had Trump taken seriously the coronavirus problem in a serious manner early on, it could have been contained enough to prevent the drastic measures being taken now to shore-up the economy. The fact that Trump agreed to pass the biggest stimulus package in history ironically shows how having his “priorities” screwed-up cost this country in more ways than one.

Perhaps not surprisingly given past history, Trump promptly made a complete fool out of poor old Mitch, when he told reporters he would not have done anything “different” in regard to handling the coronavirus issue regardless of the impeachment goings-on. Maybe McConnell doesn’t mind being made a fool of, but for most of the rest of us, we know that when it comes to Trump, anything that detracts from his “very stable genius” and that everything is “great” in America is the only thing that really “concerns” him. To Trump, the pandemic was just an annoyance that he could simply wish away, and those fools who continue to watch Fox News in record numbers believed him then, and still believe him now despite the obviousness of Trump deliberately allowing himself to be misinformed about what is happening on the ground in this country. 

For example, during a conference call with governors on Monday, Trump was repeatedly told that states were having trouble obtaining the PPE, ventilators, testing equipment and other items they desperately needed, and the federal government was in part to blame because it was ordering and purchasing large quantities of supplies, thus hampering the ability of states to purchase their own. Remember the Trump administration’s refusal to release disaster aid to Puerto Rico because of what it claimed were “corrupt” practices and withholding supplies unused? Well, the Trump administration appears to be doing either the exact same thing, impeding the distribution of supplies, although likely less due to incompetence but for deliberate personal political reasons—or doing something just as bad, pleading “ignorance” of any need at all. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told the New York Times that "It would be shocking to me that if anyone who has had access to any newspaper, radio, social networks or any other communication would not be knowledgeable about the need for test kits. I can be assured that the White House knows very well about this desperate need for test kits." Is this president just that dumb? Or maybe not: no doubt advisors like Stephen Miller are telling him that the problem won’t “look” as bad as they are if there are fewer tests being done. Such is the dangerous cynicism of this administration. 

But maybe people are not as impressed by Trump’s third-rate Benito Mussolini impression as he thinks; polls show Joe Biden with 6 to 9 point leads nationally over him. Trump’s abject failures in a time of crisis, and his unfitness for the office he holds can be no more stark. Just six days ago the U.S. passed China and Italy for most confirmed cases of the virus, with 85,000; today the number is over 186,000 with 3,600 reported deaths. Numbers don’t lie; it is Trump and those who apparently don’t care about his failures as long as he feeds their bigotries, paranoia and prejudices who lie to us and to themselves. Any true leader would have warned the country of the danger early on and mobilized all resources to defeat the disease. 

Trump, on the other hand, has repeatedly downplayed the problem, that all was “fine” and everyone should stay “calm.” The latest Nielsen numbers tell us that Fox News continues to be the outlet of choice for a majority of cable news viewers, and like the worst kind of fools those lemmings in human form are willing tools of conspiratorial propaganda, seemingly only concerned about the survival of Trump, and seemingly not even  their own family, friends and neighbors being stricken or dying of the virus will change that.