With another modest surge of the Covid-19 underway in mainly under-vaccinated states, or in Republican states that have banned locally-mandated safety measures, how this will all shakeout is already being depicted as what will “define” the Biden administration. Of course if the pandemic was clearly on the way out, political commentators would find other “problems”; for a while there, immigration was the top target of the right-wing and hand-wringing “liberals,” but that has drifted (slightly) into the background as both the right and the left have taken the administration to task on its “contradictory” response to the current surge in virus cases, after the goal for total vaccinations and the subsequent “end” being in “sight” not quite where the administration was hoping for.
Of course the media from both ends is playing this for all its worth for their own purposes, anywhere from vaccines “proven” not to work (Tucker Carlson), to governors being accused of being “pied pipers” enticing ignorant fools to follow them (Ron DeSantis). The truth of the matter is that this country has seen “waves” of diseases before, and the H1N1 virus, which triggered the 1918 influenza pandemic, is still around, mutating every year. If anyone is wondering what people did to avoid contracting it, perhaps this photo from the files of the Seattle Police Department at the time should give one a clue:
The last significant iteration of the H1N1 virus was the one that caused the so-called “swine flu” epidemic of 2009. Mutated strains of the virus come and go every year, with varying degrees of troublemaking, and people have learned to live with it to the point of it not even being something of concern, although people are advised to get a yearly flu shot for the latest version (although relatively few do). With the Covid-19, we are seeing one mutation that appears to be at least more contagious than the original strain (Delta), and another—Lambda—that appears to have a protein spike that is resistant to current vaccines, but has remained situated largely in South America. We will probably be living with mutated versions of Covid-19 for years to come, until enough “herd immunity” occurs so that cases are mostly either mild or asymptomatic. In the meantime, getting vaccinated and following common sense to avoid passing the virus around will at least buy time for the human body’s immune system to adapt without too many people having to die first before people with thick skulls (DeSantis) decide that there is a “problem” they should be bothered with.
In the meantime, we have to go through the attacks on the Biden administration by Trumpists and handwringers. One of them is Conrad Black, a Canadian-British “media mogul” whose tanked his business and mostly makes money writing historical fiction and right-wing commentary, was appointed a “baron” by the Queen without much thought concerning his ethics; all you have to be is “famous,” British, and live long enough. This right-wing felon who was convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice (he and his chauffeur were caught on security camera removing a dozen boxes of financial documents from his office) and spent over three years in prison, wrote an overly rosy (i.e. fictional) “bio” of Trump (a former “business” partner), which of course did what it was supposed to do—secure another controversial pardon.
Of course neither the Queen (who did not rescind his peerage after his conviction), nor The Hill thought that being a felon (“pardoned” or not by a man who is clearly a crook himself) was reason enough to ostracize him, and so he is still allowed to write an op-ed in The Hill this week in which he proclaimed that the Biden “honeymoon” is over, and Americans may want a “divorce.” Why? His handling of the pandemic, of course, which he says is what took down Trump, and not all those moral, ethical and impeachable offenses reasons. Black claims it is a “matter of dispute” whether the “uproarious ambience” of Trump was “chiefly the fault of the president or of his “mortal enemies.” But while “Trump was in the country’s face every day and tweeting at it every night” he has been replaced by a “regime that is not just quiet but often almost comatose.” Well, if we are speaking about twitter that is certainly true, but compared to Trump’s whitehouse.gov, the Biden administration seems like it is on steroids.
Black goes on to say that while it may be a “balm” for the country’s “nerves,” being relatively reserved, it isn’t the “answer” to its public policy wishes,” whatever that means. One remembers how Biden in the past was apt to go running away at mouth, which he has managed to control somewhat—and is actually proof that he isn’t suffering from dementia like some suspect Trump is; just because it was Trump who “normalized” ignorant doesn’t mean that there isn’t something wrong with being ignorant.
But in regard to the pandemic, Black claims that the “Trump-hating political media created a state of national hysteria over the coronavirus and then hung it around the president’s neck like a noose.” But it was Trump and his friends at Fox News who were chiefly to blame for people to wonder WTF. Why wouldn’t people be appalled by a president who only thought of himself while a half-million died on his “watch”? Because he was plainly “irritated” that the media kept asking him what he was going to do about, when he really doesn’t care about all those nameless “little people”? Trump never accepted that pandemic was anything but some invented “conspiracy” to hurt him politically.
For almost two months Trump poo-pooed the virus as nothing more serious than the sniffles, and it would “go away” in a day or two. Once it was in full swing, he still refused to show leadership; he hoped that the vaccines would be developed quickly only because he wanted that “magic bullet” to save his regime. But wait, Black proclaims: Trump was the “mastermind” behind the vaccine. Oh sure. Trump is too intellectually incompetent to have had anything to do with the development with vaccines; he just authorized as many corners to be cut, and not because he thought it was “safe” to do, but because he still wasn’t willing to listen to or give credit to scientists he had repeatedly demeaned in the past.
Black doesn’t mention that Trump never came out publicly and advised people to get vaccinated. It can be a hair-pulling experience to listen to a Trump supporter even today concerning the virus and vaccination. After expectorating paranoid delusions about the safety of the current vaccines, one individual where I work claimed that his mother had told him that there had been no other occasion in the past where a vaccine was “forced” on people against their wishes; I pointed out that 600,000 people hadn’t died before, either. It’s amazing how annoyances like facts can shut a moron up. The hypocrisy is mindboggling; Black wants to give Trump undeserved credit for the vaccines, but empirically speaking, the only thing Trump can take “credit” for is how we see his most ardent supporters (like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert) “interpreting” his views on the virus and vaccinations, although I have not yet heard Trump make the Nazi and Holocaust “analogies” that Greene and Boebert have been making.
Black goes on to claim that in regard to the current variants, they have “complicated Biden’s response to the pandemic. The administration has failed in its effort to have the entire population double-vaccinated, partly because of a substantial degree of suspicion of the vaccination process and its effectiveness…the administration has been reduced to the absurdity of speaking in various authoritative voices advocating contradictory courses of action.” Black naturally does not mention that it is Trumpist Republican governors and legislatures such as those in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and South Dakota which have fueled “suspicion” and failed in the their duty to protect their citizens. Black forgot to mention that it is Fox News personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham who have been spreading vaccine and virus misinformation amongst the far-right faithful; interestingly, last week normally reliable Fox sycophant Alan Dershowitz angrily told a flustered Ingraham that the Constitution doesn’t give virus-deniers and anti-vaxxers the “freedom” to make other people sick or die. By the way, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about murder, either. If the virus is in advance in states with low vaccination rates, then that is on Republican governors, not Biden. They need to “own” their own inhumanity and ignorance.
All of that is from the “right” side of the political spectrum; while convicted felons with no credibility are claiming that “credibility” of Democrats is supposedly deteriorating—overlooking their slim “control” in Congress—commentators like Chris Cillizza at supposedly “liberal” CNN are asserting that Biden’s presidential “honeymoon” has “officially” ended. Why? Well, because of the same reasons the right is giving: Covid-19 cases are up, and missed the target date of at least 70 percent of the population with at least one vaccination shot. It doesn’t have a single message as “guidance.” Biden was blamed for allowing the expiration of the moratorium on evictions, after he claimed he didn’t have the “authority” to extend it. Nancy Pelosi had already punted the ball to him and after claiming she didn’t have time create a legislative “fix,” so party disagreements had “exposed a rare divide between” Biden and certain members of his party, leading to “veiled accusations of who was to blame.” The CDC eventually stepped in and extended the eviction moratorium until October.
Bad news about Covid-19 even preventing the “left” from engaging full throat in that old standby to complain about if there isn’t anything handy—immigration, since Hispanics have no voice in the national media, so there is no one to upset if they are offended by racist slander. “The number of unaccompanied minors picked up at the US southern border likely hit an all-time high in July,” says Cillizza. “‘The sharp increases from June were striking because crossings usually slow during stifling—and sometimes fatal—summer heat,’ wrote the Associated Press.” I’ve always said that the supposedly “liberal” media has always added to the promotion of a “crisis” on the border, and unlike for other groups, migrants are just so many anonymous points on a graph; nobody ever asks these people what they are escaping from in the first place. These people have no stories, so they are looked upon as nothing more than vermin or pests to be “eradicated.”
Cillizza even throws shade on the Senate’s bipartisan agreement on a ‘hard’ infrastructure bill, arguing that “even assuming the legislation passes the Senate which it should, liberals in the House are already talking publicly and loudly about their dissatisfaction with some pieces of the Senate bill. ‘Good luck tanking your own party’s investment on child care, climate action, and infrastructure while presuming you’ll survive a 3 vote House margin—especially choosing to exclude members of color from negotiations and calling that a ‘bipartisan accomplishment,’ tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
And yet those are issues that most people will “forgive” Biden for that because neither migrants on the border nor the infrastructure bill will have any particular impact on their daily lives. But people are concerned about when they can get their lives back to pre-pandemic times—that does affect them at home. In June, a Gallup poll seemed to suggest that nearly 90 percent of respondents thought the situation was getting “better.” In the most recent poll, only 40 percent think things are getting better—a dramatic drop in the space of a month.
“Everything—I mean EVERYTHING—flows from the Covid news.” Cillizza asserts. “And the truth is that Biden’s ability to change the current story on Covid-19 in this country is decidedly limited.” But the “narrative” can be changed if the focus is placed where it belongs: not on Biden, but on the continuing idiocy of people like DeSantis, who continues to play Russian roulette with the citizens of his state, even signing an executive order barring schools from mandating masks during the latest surge in Florida, which is seeing some of its highest positivity rates yet. And this is why people should not be seeking a “divorce” from Biden just yet, as Black would suggest; if Trumpists had their way, “natural law” would prevail, and all those vulnerable to the virus, whether because of age, access to health care or the dangerous behavior of their neighbors, would just die off because that is the way “nature” intended.
The ‘ridiculousness” of some anti-vaxxers was the subject of a recent Yahoo Sports article, which quoted this from Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins: “If I get it (the virus), I’m just gonna ride it out. I’m gonna let nature do its course. Survival of the fittest kind of approach. And just say, if it knocks me out, it knocks me out, I’m going to be OK. You know, even if I die, I die, I die. I kind of have peace about that.” When asked if he felt his "rights” outweighed that of the team, he could only say that “we can agree to disagree.” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, angered that Cousins and two other quarterbacks are missing practice because of Covid protocols after one of them tested positive, expressed his frustration with the anti-vaxxers on the team: “These guys, some of them just won’t do it. I shouldn’t say it, but some of the things they read is just, whew, out there.”
What Biden can’t control and cannot be held responsible for is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem allowing another motorcycle gang super-spreader event, like the one which was held last year which led to the massive surge of cases and deaths in that state and surrounding states, and Marjorie Taylor Greene praising Alabamans at a recent political event for having one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country (to great applause) and “suggesting” that Southern crackers will “greet” FEMA workers with guns locked and loaded if they dare come to their doors. We don’t just need a “divorce” from those people, but put a restraining order on them too.
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