Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Do the British show more "leadership" on how to run a country? The evidence suggests not



Over at the Donald Trump “brain trust,” Fox News, it is being declared that when the economy presumably starts improving by election time, Trump will triumph because of his “leadership” on the COVID-19 pandemic was just right. Who knows how many people will die by then—perhaps 200,000 or more—but the country “survived” it and everything is just fine now, presuming that the expected resurgence of the virus is no worse, and the economy doesn’t tank again, and voters will not wonder why they foolishly trusted a man who again proved once that he doesn’t care if people die, just as long as it isn’t a member of his genetically-superior family. Trump has been tweeting about his discredited "cold case" conspiracy theory involving a staffer who worked for then congressman and now MSNBC host Joe Scarborough--when there is still the "hot case" of how many people needlessly died because of the Trump administration's heedless actions early in the pandemic.

Trump wants to reopen the economy now, but you would think that to stay on the safe side and show true leadership he would be supportive of measures to keep the virus under control and prevent a resurgence in doing so. Instead, he has been openly dismissive of wearing facemasks and practicing social distancing. Why is he doing this? Because as he has done previously, he is attempting to suggest that the COVID-19 is not just overblown but can be easily  “handled” by wishful thinking and partisan political aims, like insuring his reelection and figure things out later.  Sure, more and more people in “progressive” Seattle are not wearing masks on their daily walkabouts, but they still don't like the shame by being vicariously connected to a “leader” who is doing so because he is just not a very smart man.

Of course, for the “culturally” attuned, the land that spawned this country must surely know best. But as I once noted in a MAD magazine back in the day, anyone with a British accent can sell a gullible American a bag of dog-doo. The Brits are certainly no better at managing an economy during a pandemic--the government is merely disguising its failure by putting 7.5 million workers on furlough, meaning it is paying that many for not being on the "official" unemployment rolls. Meanwhile, a story in the New York Times reports that an aide to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is causing some controversy, which apparently is nothing new, since Dominic Cummings—like Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani—has been a “loose cannon” and verbal hand grenade. However, unlike those two Cummings remains Johnson’s right-hand man, despite Johnson taking a “breathtaking gamble with his own popularity,” allowing Cummings “to go public with a detailed, yet stubbornly unapologetic, explanation for making a 260-mile journey that broke lockdown rules and ignited a political firestorm in Britain.” 

Now, it doesn’t matter what Cummings story was; no doubt it was carefully crafted for effect before it was given, with a few truths thrown in with mostly lies. The point was that Cummings’ wife apparently came down with the symptoms of the COVID-19, and he broke the stay-at-home order, driving 260 to visit his her in Durham, contracted the virus himself, and then drove back to London, although not before taking another 60-mile cruise around the neighborhood to see if he “well enough” to make the journey, a story which no one believes. If Cummings knew he had contracted the virus, he should have quarantined himself in Durham. Instead, he drove at least a five hour trip back to London where he likely made more than a few stops to spread his virus around. There are apparently no images of him wearing a facemask, and the interview given shows him without a facemask speaking toward a very large microphone in his backyard, with the cameramen a safe distance away. 

Despite the firestorm, Johnson is retaining him; political commentators say this is because Johnson is the kind of “chess player” who can only think one move ahead, and he needs “smart” aides like Cummings who can think two or three moves ahead. But it isn’t a “minor” thing that Cummings did; per capita, Britain is being hit worse than the U.S. by the virus, and has the second most deaths and deaths per capita in the world. The lack of leadership shown by Johnson by retaining Cummings is purely for the reason for what he believes in necessary for his political survival, for Cummings has a greater “feel” for what the British right[wing voter really feels is “important.” 

Yes, Cummings knows that race is a “big issue” for most of white Britain, especially those who consider themselves of a superior "breed." Cummings in the past outraged some by advocating for the kind of eugenics policies that supposedly went out with the Nazis, and while Foreign Policy observed that although Cummings was angered by white supremacist demagogues for potentially undermining the Brexit vote—a majority of the population hypocritically does not want to be identified as being openly nativist—that didn’t mean that Cummings didn’t believe in the race-baiting anti-immigrant angle to pass Brexit; FP noted that he made the “sinister” remark “Immigration was a baseball bat that just needed picking up at the right time and in the right way.” At the present time Cummings is pushing, with the help of Home Secretary Priti Patel (whose name identifies her as the member of a privileged Indian caste), for the passage of an immigration bill that is specifically tailored to supposedly “high-skilled” Indian workers—you know, the kind of “high-skilled”  H1-B workers that Microsoft has been especially desirous of flooding the country with, the ones who helped create that monstrosity known as Windows 10, whose latest forced-fed “update” has been wreaking havoc on many computers?

One would not have thought it, but the English-speaking world holds a lot in common besides language—and one of those things is not being very smart when it comes to crisis. The U.S., the UK and Australia are all currently ruled by right-wing regimes; before the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia was wracked by deadly bushfires that right-wing politicians had “alternative facts” in explaining and not doing anything about. We don’t need to learn any lessons from them—we are already “well educated” by that dangerous ignoramus currently residing in the White House.

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