Addendum, Monday, March 16
Both links to the Post articles no longer work. That was faster than I thought might happen. The url may have changed or they may have both been scrubbed. In any case, my post received nearly a hundred hits and the links to Tabbi and the Atlantic remain active.That Atlantic link, published two years ago, is highly recommended.
Shorter story -- the first Post article, two years ago, was published when an entire section of Health and Human Services was dismantled, the one dedicated to dealing with pandemic responses. That left this administration without badly needed infrastructure as the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded.
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I have been reluctant to mention politics lest I get criticized for "bringing up politics" at this time. But I have decided that this is precisely the best time to discuss politics.
This disease and resulting pandemic may not have been the result of politics -- at least not American politics -- but the dimensions of America's feeble response are definitely the result of dangerous politically-driven decisions on the part of the most pro-actively destructive president of our lifetime.
I have sitting on two links illustrating that problem but have not decided how best to post them, either at Facebook (where they will vanish into the archives) or my blog where I can always retrieve them later without a time-consuming search.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../a70de09c-6491-11ea...
• ...and this was published TWO YEARS AGO.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../top-white-house.../...
Matt Taibbi's righteous indignation is at the boiling point. His Rolling Stone commentary is what pushed me over the edge. What better time to speak of politics?
We are living the results of deadly political decisions. This is how it ends.
• ...and this was published TWO YEARS AGO.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../top-white-house.../...
Matt Taibbi's righteous indignation is at the boiling point. His Rolling Stone commentary is what pushed me over the edge. What better time to speak of politics?
We are living the results of deadly political decisions. This is how it ends.
But people should equally be furious that Democrats spent the last year whining about online insults, Russians, the honor of Hunter Biden, and a host of other non-issues, when they could have been confronting real problems. They engaged in smear-driven diversion campaigns instead of self-auditing, and are anxious now to escape discussions about the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, to get back to defining political virtue as “better than Donald Trump,” tantamount to no standard at all.
Bernie shouldn’t let them. If this “quarantine debate” is to be his last stand, he should make it count. As has now been proven over and over, politicians like Sanders gain nothing by playing nice with the Pelosis and Bidens of the world. It buys neither policy considerations nor even temporary immunity from dirty tricks and slander.
Sunday night, he should hammer the meandering Biden as a symbol of the party’s determination to avoid necessary change. He should make sure the debate audience understands that in this moment of extreme crisis, Democrats threw their institutional might behind a man whose handlers appear afraid to let him outside more than a few minutes at time.
If this is the way the 2020 primary race ends, it’s pure black comedy, and for the sake of everything he’s tried to accomplish in the last four years, Sanders has to make sure audiences don’t see him as part of the punch line. There may not be time left to win. But he can at least stop apologizing for trying, and restore his movement’s dignity for the sake of the next person who tries to push it up the hill.
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