Penny wise…
Oh, that’s interesting – Trump isn’t just looking the other way and trying to bully everyone else into looking the other way, he’s actively trying to help the virus kill us all.
The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday.
I suppose this is tied to his firm belief that if you don’t test you don’t have as many cases.
The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad, the people said.
The administration’s posture has angered some GOP senators, the officials said, and some lawmakers are trying to push back and ensure that the money stays in the bill. …
President Trump has repeatedly questioned the value of conducting widespread coronavirus testing, arguing that if there were fewer tests conducted, the number of infections would be lower.
Yes, that’s definitely how that works. If you don’t know X then X doesn’t exist. If you don’t test for termites then you don’t have termites. Even if the house is a pile of dust, you still don’t have termites – you know this because you know you didn’t test for them.
At the same time they push cuts in testing and CDC funds, administration officials are trying to use the spending package to fund priorities that appear not directly related to the coronavirus — including a new FBI building, which has been a longtime priority for Trump, according to people involved.
Awesome. Don’t spend our money on resisting the coronavirus, but do spend it on a new FBI building. That’s all fine.
This ought to be stunning. The fact that it isn’t is just depressing.
It also makes me a little angry at the Civility Brigade, who mourn the good ol’ days when people didn’t say bad things about people from the other party. Why, we’re all just trying to do what’s best for the country, we just disagree on how!
Well, no. Not in this instance. I really do try to see things from the other side’s view. I can understand how you can talk yourself into the “regulations are all job-killers, what’s good for corporations is good for America” mindset. I can understand how people wind up as anti-choice. Etc.
But this is the leader of a country that is being devastated by a pandemic, actively trying to make it harder to identify and treat the sick, because he’s afraid it’ll hurt his re-election chances if people find out how bad it is. That is, literally, anti-American — a term that really does get tossed around too much, but it really is appropriate here. But of course if you use it even now when it is plainly justified, the Civility Brigade will tsk-tsk you. (Yet somehow they leave the Republicans alone while they run ad after ad saying that Joe Biden wants your children to be killed.)
Well, you can reach the same conclusion as Trump if you begin with the premise that getting the economy started again is more important than anything else. Or if you believe that covid will die out by itself or with a vaccine before too long. People are scared to reopen their businesses or spend money in other people’s because the real numbers are so scary. Tricking people into feeling safer will restart the economy. We’ve seen a lot of tell-tale statements by the UK government along these lines to: they’re more concerned with making people feel safer than their actually being safer.
If you begin there, you might be able to convince yourself you’re being pro-American because America is about more than individuals, in fact greater than the sum of its parts. Too bad if lots of them die, but it’s the best in the long run. Sometimes tough decisions have to be made. By tough guys. By tough, mask-refusing guys.
Perhaps Trump really does think that pretending covid has already gone away is the best thing for America. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. I doubt he has even thought about it in those terms. He just wants to be seen as a tough guy.
Maybe Trump will have his cosplay Border Patrol move on from shooting suspected graffitists in the face to disappearing sick people.