Tag Archives: covid 19 in White House

“I feel no sympathy. I repeat, I feel no sympathy! The German people chose their fate. That may surprise some people. Don’t fool yourself. We didn’t force the German people. They gave us a mandate, and now their little throats are being cut!”

Neither the President, the Vice President, nor their propagandists have any sense of compassion or empathy. In the days before he killed himself Hitler ranted to those who supposedly betrayed him in his bunker to an audience that including Albert Speer, who wrote of it:

“Everyone has lied to me, everyone has deceived me, non[sic] one has told me the truth. The armed forces have lied to me and now the SS have left me in the lurch. The German people has not fought heroically, it deserves to perish. It is not I who have lost the war, but the German people.”

Believe me, however the Trump administration meets its end, it will not be good as Trump trusts no one, even his family, or closest associates. I don’t know how the end of the Trump era will happen. I don’t know if it will be it a war that he stumbles into during the midst of the COVID19 Pandemic, maybe one that he wants to use to distract from the pandemic and his incompetence in dealing with it. It could a direct result of the massive number of lives lost to it and his incompetence in dealing with it, as well as the economic depression that will very likely near his name and his subsequent rejection at the ballot box in November. Either of those options could bring about chaos and draw Trump’s heavily armed supporters into the street.

Or of course through their staggering arrogance and lack of taking any social distancing precautions Trump and Vice President Pence could themselves fall victim to the virus, leaving Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as President. Admittedly the last is unlikely, but at least remotely possible, especially since during the past three White House Staff members, one President Trump’s Navy valet’s, Katie Miller, wife of senior Trump Aide Stephen Miller, who is Vice President Pence’s Press Secretary, and Ivanka Trump’s Personal Assistant have tested positive for the virus. Although Trump and Pence were test for the virus and announced that they were negative, it is possible that they still might be infected, if not through contact with the people diagnosed, but through others who had contact with them who have not been tested and may be asymptotic.

Because of possible exposure the head of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, all members of the Coronavirus Task Force are under self-quarantine and teleworking for the next 14 days. Even though the White House sent others home and is attempting to contract trace the sources of the infections, while claiming that social distancing was being observed, it is clear that there it is not. On Saturday the President hosted over 20 GOP Senators and Representatives, at the White House in which no one was wearing masks, and no social distancing was evident while the event was taking place. Earlier today Vice President Pence said that he was going to self-quarantine due to possible expulsion from Katie Miller, and later in the evening said that he would be back at work Monday. The virus has the potential of decapitating the Executive Branch and at least part of the Legislative Branch.

Katie Miller answering Reporters Questions Outside Nursing Home on 7 May

When Trump was informed of the infection of his valet he reportedly became “Lava Level mad” and blamed his staff for not protecting him.”  I find that ironic because so many who have been infected, suffered, and died from COVID 19 or has lost their employment, perhaps for months or years he is finally having to deal with actual reality, and not the conjured fantasies of his dark and uncaring soul. With Coronavirus now inside his White House fortress, he has discovered that he is not immune, and his fear shows in his actions and tweets. This crisis within the crisis has exposed his innate cowardice and lack of responsibility during a pandemic he could have done much to mitigate.

It’s the same thought that the graduate of a high school military academy realized just as he understood that military service in Vietnam could get him killed or wounded. Thus he used his family, business, and political connections to get multiple deferments from the draft, including one that he used a conjured medical excuse of having bone spurs even as he played college level baseball and was being scouted by major league teams. A coward will writhe in fear about the same danger they allow others to face, without the lack of protections afforded to them. By the way those are my words, not lifted or attributed to someone else. Everyone fears something, but only cowards force others to die for conditions that they help foment. As Stephen King said: “A coward judges all he sees by what he is.” 

In every previous crisis, the President, his political, media, and religious sycophants were be quite similar to Goebbels and Hitler in the Final days. The crisis is everyone else’s fault, including those who believed in them, and faithfully supported their policies, and followed them into the abyss.

But, even then some of the closest and longest loyal supporters of Hitler including Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler abandoned their Fuhrer in order to save themselves, not because they are brave or heroes. but because they decided to face the reality of Germany’s defeat, in order to save themselves, because they were cowards who were so morally blind that did not understand their complicity in Hitler’s rule, the war, or their own personal responsibility in it. Hitler found out about their disloyalty, excommunicated them from the Nazi Party and condemned them to death. Himmler only lived until he was discovered by the British while masquerading as an ordinary soldier, and then committed suicided. Goering surrendered before Hitler’s loyalists could catch him. He was convicted on all four counts at the Major War Criminal Trials at Nuremberg, sentenced to death, but killed himself prior to his execution.

President Trump and his inner circle are not Nazis. Trump is not another Hitler, but he and his loyalists demonstrate the same lack of concern and empathy for the people who followed them into the abyss that they created, as did the the Nazis. Right now, we are not technically at war, though Trump could easily lead us into one simply because he needs a diversion that will somehow aid in keeping him in power. However, the crisis he and his cultists have brought upon us, is a crisis greater danger than any war or crisis the nation has faced since the World Wars, the Great Influenza, and the Great Depression. Sadly, they are incapable of mastering it, and I sincerely doubt that anything but a massive electoral loss in November will change anything.

I do pray that I am wrong but I cannot see how this will end in anything less than a disaster, even with a loss in the November election. These people are apocalyptic in their ideology and would rather destroy everything than to allow any opponent to take power, even if it means them bringing on the Boogaloo, their code name for civil war and the extermination of their opponents.

Again I pray that I am wrong, but my study of history and human nature shows that I tend to be more right than I want to be in my analysis to be. That being said Hannah Arendt wrote:

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” 

Yes there are people who will commit evil even against their followers, they are perpetrators. Likewise, there will be others that never say a word or lift a hand against what their heart, soul, faith, ethics, morality say is wrong. To preserve themselves they remain silent, they are bystanders, then there are the victims. Human nature is the one constant in human history, and to understand the reactions of world leaders, and especially our own, as well as ordinary people in times of crisis. Yehuda Bauer wrote:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”

Bauer also wrote: “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

Those words are more important now than they have been since the crimes and genocide of the Nazis against the Jews. This time it is all of humanity that is at risk, and even then the penchant for people to insist on their own freedom, prosperity, and social irresponsibility, even if it means the needless sacrifice of others is incomprehensible.

So I have to ask what role each of us will play in a global pandemic that has infected over four million people, killed close to 300,000, including more than 80,000 Americans. Will we be perpetrators who through our actions and words are responsible for the deaths of others? Will we be victims, devoured by the disease and the actions of government leaders and fellow citizens that do little to stop it, or actually encourage it’s spread? Or will we be bystanders who turn our backs and look away as the perpetrators commit their crimes and more victims die?

That is the question that all of us have to ask ourselves. But there is one more choice. We can decide to rise above the fear for our own lives, sacrifice certain liberties, and give our lives to help alleviate the suffering and death of others. Likewise we can protest the inhuman and fetid policies that allow people to suffer and die when there were earlier options that could have mitigated this, or which even now, late in the game could help stop the rampage of the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic. Of course we could also confront those who are using displays of force to try to coerce officials to abandon policies that save lives so they don’t have to be inconvenienced.

The German Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp in April 1945 on the direct order of Adolf Hitler wrote:

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”

He also wrote: “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Those are our choices. We can be perpetrators, victims, or bystanders, but we can also speak out, protest, and resist in order to save lives. That is the harder and more dangerous choice, especially when heavily armed and lawless men under no authority threaten those who do so, be they government officials, medical personnel, or citizens actual practicing social distancing and masking. Online and personal intimidation and threats are growing, and being encouraged by the President, and members of the Right Wing Media.

This requires courage which General William Tecumseh Sherman defined: “Courage – a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.”  We also have to be able to face down our fears. As Nelson Mandela wrote: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” 

If we are to stand a chance against the dual threats of the novel Coronavirus 19 and the incredibly stupid people who care nothing but their own convenience and nothing for the lives of others, we must overcome our fears and display moral, spiritual, and physical courage in the face of a deadly virus and violent people who live by apocalyptic ideologies, are motivated by conspiracy theories, despise experts of any kind, and will do what the man they idolize like a god will tell them to do. When that man is the President, who has a long history of inciting his followers to violence there is no telling how far they will go.

Until tomorrow, please be safe,

Peace

Padre Steve+