This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Tagged with: Covid-19
As the 2024 election approaches, we will hear much more from Ron DeSantis. His sterling educational resume and reputation for having a sharp intellect will be part of that narrative. There is ample reason to believe that DeSantis is a smart man, but that only makes him more responsible for the terrible and deadly decisions he made in the face of a global pandemic.
Regardless of who precisely is dying of Covid, the numbers demonstrate that it is still a very big problem in the US. However, Americans across the political spectrum seem to have arrived, through some combination of their own health, Covid fatigue or perhaps Covid discourse fatigue, at the untrue conclusion that Covid is over. It is now at the point where to mention Covid or a suggest that you or somebody else take a Covid related precaution is socially awkward, like making an off-color joke at a cocktail party.
Trump’s Covid policy, and recent revelations about how he endangered the life of Joe Biden are not just stories that demonstrate his erratic behavior and tenuous grip on reality, but a reminder of the danger Donald Trump represents in so many different ways and that even though the disgraced former president has always been a big buffoonish, we must continue to take him very seriously.
Many Americans live in a flawed but largely functioning democracy that has a weaker social support system than many affluent countries, but still has a commitment to some equality and government services, but other Americans live in right-wing states that are the policy love-child of Ayn Rand and Jerry Falwell and whose leadership continues to participate in the Trump death cult.
Cutting back on activities to save the elderly, the most vulnerable and ourselves in the face of a genuine public health threat was one thing. Staying home in the middle of summer or not sending children to school in the fall because of the beliefs of a deeply deluded, uncaring, selfish and reactionary political party death cult hybrid is an entirely different issue.
As the Covid-19 pandemic now enters its second year, it is useful to assess its global impact. As of New Year’s Day, roughly 1.8 million people around the world had died of Covid-19. However, the death toll from Covid-19 only tells a small part of the story because had people around the world not radically changed their behavior, that number would have been much, perhaps exponentially, higher. Thus, theimpact of the Covid-19 on things like economic activity, mental health, years of education lost and the like are major parts of the toll of this pandemic.
The political, medical, financial and logistical difficulties may be overwhelming, but global leadership is only meaningful if it helps achieve the most difficult goals. For the US, leading a massive international vaccination is a rare confluence of the national interest and the ethically right thing to do. If the Biden administration can take this on and succeed, it will repair the damage of the Trump administration and make it clear to the rest of the world that American leadership is more than just a platitude.
he American ethos of rules not applying to us has not only helped define our terrible response to the Coronavirus pandemic, but also is key to understanding American foreign policy. America’s relationship to the rest of the world frequently can be summed up by the idea do as I say, not as I do. The US urges countries to conduct democratic elections while we conduct our own elections using antiquated structures that do not value each vote equally. We seek to promote human rights around the world, while asking the world to ignore the bombs we drop, the children we put in cages and the long and horrific history of American racism. We invade foreign countries with chilling regularity while demanding that the rest of the world honor international borders. The ubiquity of this dynamic of America’s relationship to the rest of the world is hard to miss and suggests that while the hypocrisy of Governor Newsom, Mayor Breed and others is stark, it may just be the American way.
Although it was Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, a mishandling that amounts to a crime against humanity, that has put America in such a terrible place regarding the pandemic, on January 20th, Coronavirus will become Biden’s problem.
Thursday night’s debate, mercifully the last in this presidential election, revealed two very different understandings of and approaches to governance. Moreover, it highlighted how Donald Trump’s failure regarding the Coronavirus pandemic was, among other things, an extraordinary failure of governance.
The paradox facing Biden is that if he wins, he will preside over a country whose ability to lead internationally, and whose role in the world, has changed dramatically over the last four years. The combination of Trump’s foreign policy, the terrible damage Covid19 has done to the US, the weakening of American democracy over the last four years and the real possibility of instability here, even if Biden becomes president, means that the US will be in no position to simply reassume the mantle of global leadership. Additionally, the American people, worn out by all these problems, have become reluctant to become too involved with the rest of the world.
The impact of the virus has been so devastating in the US in large part because of our own preexisting conditions, not as individuals, but as a society. The deep racism in America which means that so many aspects of life, from public security to housing to work is experienced differently depending on race, a healthcare system that leaves many with inadequate coverage, income inequality that forces many to work in unsafe jobs and in unsafe conditions and the lack of a social safety net all made the Covid-19 hit the US particularly hard.
In Trump’s increasingly diseased mind, the American people should risk death not to defeat fascism, bring down totalitarian Communism, protect our country from Jihadist terrorism or to build a stronger, freer more democratic America. Rather, Trump is asking the American people to do this so he can get a few more shots of the political adrenaline, in the form of temporarily improved poll numbers or a few more retweets, that he so intensely craves.
This toxic stew of white supremacist protestors calling, often while heavenly armed, for the various states to lift social distancing related restrictions, presidential leadership that is essentially in denial about the pandemic, projections for total deaths that have doubled in the last week or so, and indications that the Coronavirus is now spreading to smaller towns and rural America will be devastating for America. Leaving aside the human co
The recent months of the Covid-19 pandemic have made Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses and mental instability, as well as the cult-like loyalty of his of his followers, even more apparent. In the last few weeks, even in the last few days, as Donald Trump has asserted his “total” authority while continuing to suggest that, in so many words, universal suffrage is prima facie election fraud, the acceleration of democratic rollback has increased substantially. Queries and earnest commentary about whether the US is in the beginning of a Constitutional crisis seem positively quaint now. We are not at the beginning of that crisis, nor, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, are we at the end of the beginning. We are in the middle, or perhaps more alarmingly, approaching the end of that crisis-and democracy is losing.
The most important thing happening in American politics today is not partisan fighting, the latest polling on Donald Trump or the election, Trump’s daily disinformation show or the minutia of how one state is trying to disenfranchise voters. Rather, it is the bigger picture-that the ruling party is trying desperately trying to consolidate a nondemocratic regime before they lose the election-and they are doing this under the cover of the darkness and fear cast by a genuinely dangerous and frightening pandemic.
Trump and Paul share a core inability to accept scientific reality when it gets in the way of either ideology or partisan interest, as well as an astonishing inability to recognize how this pandemic is already affecting millions of Americans. These two powerful politicians are completely buffeted from the economic uncertainty and lack of access to healthcare that frame the crisis for the rest of us. Thus, it is no surprise that they can blithely issue statements about getting tested because they are “concerned” or say things like “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem.” Like most Republicans Paul and Trump know and clearly don’t care that the lives and livelihoods that are lost because of their decisions are unlikely to be their own.