The Carpentariat

"I'm not going to do anything rash" - Trump, 25 March

​​​​​I don't live in Chicago, but many times I have walked by the eponymous obscenity above — and yet never noticed, above me, that monstrous surname hovering. Mental self-preservation, I suppose.

At any rate, this, from the Washington Post, should explain why Trump has been frazzled with worry right down to his little orange fingers and is so anxious to reopen America:

"Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue."

On a related note:

"On Sunday, he was asked if his business would abstain from any federal bailout. He did not give a clear answer. 'Everything’s changing, just so you understand, it’s all changing,' he said. 'But I have no idea.'"

He does now. A HuffPost headline:

"Senate Coronavirus Bill Prohibits Trump’s Hotels From Receiving Bailouts:
Democrats pushed to ban Trump family businesses from cashing in on the Senate’s $2 trillion rescue package."

Shakespeare aside, those are the most beautiful words ever written in the English language.

Republican humor from a really honest Republican

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Commenter Peter G. recommends, in one of this site's comment sections, the universal reading of English poet Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est," an utterly ghastly telling of The Great War's gaseous "green sea" and trench-scarred battlefields. Its contemporary relevance is too bloody obvious to spell out.  

 

***

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

***

Which is to say:

It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

Stunning. Absolutely stunning.

Perhaps even worse than our wealth inequality problem is our intelligence inequality problem. 

Whom do you trust for #coronavirus info:

Dems:

CDC 87%
Your governor 75%
National media 72%
Friends/family 72%
Religious leaders 44%
Trump 14%

Republicans:

Trump 90%
CDC 84%
Friends/family 81%
Religious leaders 71%
You governor 65%
National media 13%

-CBS/YouGov

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) March 25, 2020

While it's true that the United States has become another Gilded Age's Two Americas, the poor and the rich, it's also true that these Two Americas are partitioned in terms of the informed vs. the ignorant (which, of course, feeds wealth inequality, too).

Polarization? Negative partisanship? Yes, but our equally deplorable Two Americas battle is one of conflict between brains and Trump-loving, media-hating, Bible-pounding brawn.  

A sprinting virus

How well have containment-mitigation efforts fared to date? Shown below is a partial, states chart, courtesy NPR and the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, of covid-19's expansion over just the last three weeks:

As of 14 days ago, every state was affected.

Hence covid-19's exploding status quo, if you will, even with, in many areas, a rather severe regimen of containment-mitigation efforts — a regimen that Donald Trump now suggests should be lifted.

I'm no epidemiologist, but his logic would seem to be … uh … crackers.

Perhaps a few of us lucky ones can hang on, disease-free, for 222 more days — Election Day.  

Virus containment X 50

This is just one problem with having 50 relatively sovereign states — along with their 3,007 counties, 64 parishes, 41 independent cities, and 19 boroughs:

"New York and California [are] already instituting strict measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, and doctors in Washington State [are] dealing with the bleak reality that they may have to decide which patients to prioritize for care....

"But even as the crisis escalated, the response to the pandemic has remained widely inconsistent….

"A regulatory patchwork has unfolded in recent days in Texas — which has 700 confirmed infections and 11 deaths — with restrictions, curfews and stay-at-home orders that vary from county to county."

As someone quipped the other day, "It feels like we're living under the Articles of Confederation."

The upside to having 50 states, etc.? Imagine if Donald Trump had been in charge — exclusively — nationwide: Today we'd be reading this corrected version of what the NYT wrote this morning:

"In New York, the epicenter of the crisis in the country, cases exceeded 25,000 250,000 statewide by Tuesday, and in California, at least 2,500 25,000 cases had been confirmed."

Born to be dead

Yesterday I was about to note that composers such as Haydn — 104 symphonies — Mozart and Beethoven make me realize just how little I've accomplished in life. I demurred. 

Yet I've suddenly come to understand that I'm vastly worthier than any of those eminently gifted gentlemen. For according to Donald Trump, Mitch the Grim Reaper, Palin the death panelist and swarms of their ghoulish friends, I was born to die in the noble service of saving the United States economy — the world's largest, greatest, best.

Could Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven have made claim to such an esteemed and historic accomplishment? Pshaw. They were but pikers.    

Wildly. Dead.

Sen. Burr set to star in "Hoarders" reality show

I simply cannot resist Borowitz (until he sues me for copyright infringement).

A Democrat's suicidal - or expatriate - musings

Yesterday, New York's brilliant and refreshingly articulate governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that he held the ancestral philosophy of "prepare for the worst, hope for the best."

I have realized of late that I've overindulged the latter, and addressed the former as would Trump a killer virus.

See below, two posts, for your own epiphany. If the poll posted had a margin of error as high as even 10 or 15 percent, I'd still strive to stick my partisan head in a gas oven, or, as übermanly Papa Hemingway did, blow my head off. As epiphanies go, mine is a finishing whopper.

For nearly four years we've endured not just the worst-ever president, but the worst-ever inhuman being — discounting, perhaps, a few mass slaughterers of yore, although sociopathic Trump has seven months yet to go.

Hence it remains inconceivable and indescribably painful, to me anyway, that this guttersniping jackanapes of a POTUS could nevertheless register a 48 percent job-approval rating — that being higher than the electoral percentage that dumped his criminal ass in the Oval Office's executive chair, previously occupied by a man of virtue.

That statistic — along with the poll's numbers, below — is not only obscene to anyone with even a brain-damaged conscience, it signifies that, whatever its faults, this once-great nation is stubbornly populated by an ethically diseased minority-cum-majority.

The United States has become the most roguish, blinkered, inexpressibly dumbfucking nation on the globe. And the thought of squandering another four fucking years of otherworldly Trumpian corruption and chaos has me wondering.

Oven, shotgun, or passport?

Were I Joe Biden - terrified, part 2

Sorry to add more quantitative evidence of a boneheaded country that put a bonehead in the White House, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, Mary Lou, and I've got to go rope stupidity:

Naturally, men, being men, which is to say, Cro-Magnons, outnumber women in witlessness, and white folk with more comfortable salaries and manicured lawns dominate blacks in stupidity, 49 to 24 percent.

Just as naturally, those with a conscience and reasonable worldview who temporarily believe things are just peachy pale in numbers — 21/18 percent — next to the unspeakable morons who brought us Donald Trump, 74/70 percent.

Last night and right up to the matutinus hour of 6 a.m. I slept not at all — trazodone can be a hit-and-miss cure for neurotic sleeplessness. I thought that would be the worst of today. Wrong. I arose, turned on my laptop, and was immediately, maliciously punched in the face by this CBS/YouGov poll.

But of course it wasn't really the poll that decked me. It was the towering cluelessness of my American brothers and sisters, fellow Cro-Magnons and the keep-the-cavefire-burning women who sleep with them.          

Were I Joe Biden, this poll would keep me up at night

That's it. The numbers are in, the people have spoken, and I'm glad I renewed my passport. See, in particular, #4:

With a margin of error of only 2.3 percent, a majority of this nation's fevered brains believe Trump — that would be Donald J. Trump, the bungling twit in the White House — is doing a somewhat to very good job in this deplorable instance of a mishandled crisis. 

This is a poll no rational person could fathom; a poll that reveals the intellectual backwardness of most Americans; a poll that unearths the ethical rot of a nation in decline; and a poll that should scare the bejesus out of the Biden campaign. 

Cranked headphones required, later deafness not optional

While driving and listening today to NPR's afternoon classical music host, that marvelous woman with the sweet soothing voice and outstanding knowledge of the genre, and whose name I can never seem to remember, cued up one of Haydn's Top 40, "The Drumroll Symphony," his 103rd (and penultimate). For 29 minutes — his movements always scooted right along, this one in four — I was in heaven. If you wish to join me, slap on your headphones, and enjoy. (I needn't advise but I will: Rev up those phones so that you feel as though you're sitting main floor, Vienna Symphony.)

        

After this unprecedented crisis, the unprecedented crisis of a POTUS who won't leave

The Associated Press:

"TRUMP, Saturday: 'General Motors, Ford, so many companies — I had three calls yesterday directly, without having to institute like, "You will do this" — these companies are making [ventilators] right now.'

"FACTS: No automaker is anywhere close to making medical gear such as ventilators and remain months away — if not longer. Nor do the car companies need the president’s permission to move forward."

As we all know, Trump's habitual, wide-ranging, official lies — i.e., everything he says — can't stop until at least the afternoon of 20 January 2021. And since he can never admit defeat, I expect those lies to instantly confine themselves, from the night of 3 November 2020 and on through Jan. 20th, to assorted conspiracy theories about how Democrats and the deep state rigged Joe Biden's victory — and the virtuous means by which the illegitimate 46th president can be kept from office.

As we also know, presidential norms, traditions, constitutional restraints and just plain decency went into a previously unplumbed, fiery pit on the afternoon of 20 January 2017. Of those four customary leadership qualities, not one has evaded Trump's hellbent and total evisceration. Thus I, for one, and not improbably you as well, anticipate a political bloodbath in the manner of an asinine constitutional crisis, or, perhaps, a literal bloodbath in the streets. It wouldn't be Trump's blood, so why would he care?

And finally, again as we all know, there is comprehensively nothing, no matter how insane or bizarre or criminal, that Trump believes he cannot do, and that he'll not get away with. From Daddy Fred to crooked lawyers to Republican pols and hayseed haters, he has always had guardians of his megalomaniacal aggrandizement. So is it plausible, even imaginable, that he'll just pack his suitcase and accommodatingly head home on the evening of Jan. 20th?

"Priorities Biden" super PAC

Were I Michael Bloomberg, I'd give a few billion to Priorities USA Action PAC, formerly an unofficial arm of President Obama's reelection campaign, principal super PAC contributor to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and presently gearing up to eradicate the inhuman pathogen below.   

How a sociopathic president reads crisis news

I watch and listen to the Fake News, CNN, MSDNC, ABC, NBC, CBS, some of FOX (desperately & foolishly pleading to be politically correct), the @nytimes, & the @washingtonpost, and all I see is hatred of me at any cost. Don’t they understand that they are destroying themselves?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020

All he sees is hatred of him.

His eyes pass over the human misery, the sickness, the deaths; he's blindly indifferent to the unfulfilled needs of hospitals, doctors, nurses; he's bored by non-Trumpcentric crisis reporting, what with its same-old, monotonous stories on medical shortages; he finds nothing of interest in the depression-bound economy, except for how it might affect his reelection campaign; he knows everyone but himself is to blame for this crisis, and he's pissed that they aren't being roasted; he's a multimillionaire who brags about not taking a presidential salary, yet is unconcerned — in view of his backing the Republican Senate's cruel stimulus bill — about the poorest who have no salary to ponder.

In short, he's fixated on crisis-reporting, but not what's in it. Except himself.