Has Trump finally gone too far?

Is Trump crazy, as in unhinged and self-destructive?

Or crazy like a fox?

Trump comes across as manic. Yesterday he had ten new statements on his Save America website, donaldjtrump.com.  The one that got the most notice was this one:

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ‘22 or ‘24. It is the single most important thing for Republican to do.

 

Won't vote! That must send shivers up the spine of GOP officeholders and candidates.

Five of his statements yesterday were original statements by Trump. Those statements included complaints about judges, election officials and "RINO" (Republicans In Name Only) officeholders who refused to support his effort to overturn elections in swing states. He used vivid, quotable language: "Most corrupt," "viciously," "disgrace," "partisan hacks," and sentences like this, "If we had an honest media this Election would have been overturned many months ago, but our media is almost as corrupt as our political system!"

No doubt these are welcome words to many GOP voters. Polls report that a significant number of them agree with Trump even though those same ballots elected many of the current state and federal officeholders. But angry words of a "viciously" stolen election are not the strongest message for GOP candidates in marginal districts. Better to focus on immigration, border security, inflation, gas prices, Afghanistan. Democrats look divided because they are divided. There is a huge opportunity for Republicans if they are united and stay focused on good issues

There is one big message that saves the day for Biden: He is not Trump. He isn't a wild and crazy guy fixated on reversing an election he lost and willing to overthrow the government to stay in office, and willing to intimidate Republican officeholders into going along with him. Trump just made it harder for Republicans. Trump's criticism of elections may have been the margin that cost two Georgia senators their offices. Now he is doing it again. It is crazy. Right?

Or not. When considering Trump's motives and strategy the best rule of thumb is to think that Trump might not be the impulsive, undisciplined, and seat-of-the-pants goofball that Democrats think he is. There may be method here.

Trump is firming up support for himself, even with the GOP officeholders who have most reason to be alarmed by his talk about boycotting an election. He is sending a warning shot. It is a doomsday ultimatum. The party is in his hands. An election boycott sinks them all. Or he could pick and choose, and punish RINO heretics:

RINOs in the State Senate and House who for, whatever reason, do nothing but obstruct instead of seeking the truth. Hopefully, each one of these cowardly RINOs, whose names will be identified and forthcoming, will be primaried, with my Complete and Total Endorsement, in the upcoming election.

Trump gets credibility from established GOP stalwarts like Chuck Grassley. Trump needs them to be afraid of him, and they are. He needs them to stay silent and go along with Trump, and they do. Silence is consent. 

People understand the situation backwards when they write that Trump is tearing the GOP  to pieces because he doesn't care about it, only himself. Trump is unifying the GOP like no Republican leader since Ronald Reagan. Go along, or else get cast into the fire the way Liz Cheney was. Trump may not have read Machiavelli, but he understands him. Better to be feared than loved. 

A unified GOP is the surest route back to the White House and control of the government. If he gets 46% of the national vote on election day, he wins the electoral vote and the White House. In close states controlled by a Republican legislature, he won't even need that many.

The COVID workplace

We notice the big things in real time. We don't notice the very big things until later.

Workplaces are changing, maybe forever.

We have all heard the idea that fish don't notice water. They notice food and predators, because those are very important to their survival and they are in their environment. We presume they do not notice the water itself, though, because it is the environment.

William Shatner is in the news now. He is a robust-looking 90 year old, and if all goes well he is going into space, for real this time. William Shatner has an outsize role in my consciousness. Star Trek was the one scripted TV show watched by people I knew in the late 1960s. Groups of college classmates would gather together in living rooms and common areas to watch that one TV show, drink beer, and shoot the bull. Otherwise TVs were off unless a president was making an Oval Office announcement.

What we may not have noticed because it was too obvious was that Star Trek was a "workplace drama." The Starship Enterprise was a job site. The crew members were co-workers and the basis for the drama was the interaction of those fellow employees. Workplace dramas are a genre. Even people who watch very little TV can identify them: The Office, 30 Rock, Boston Legal, LA Law, Grey's Anatomy. The office setting is convenient for a TV show, with limited sets. An office puts people in close proximity, and give them a reason to interact, so we can see characters develop and stories unfold. Besides, workplaces are the natural place where our lives play out. Workplaces are an alternative family. Co-workers are people we interact with closely five days a week. 

What is happening right now, while the punditry is focusing on important things like a pandemic and Afghanistan and China and inflation and everything else, this office workplace family is going through a separation. It is mostly amicable, but it is a separation nevertheless. Maybe the family members aren't even drifting apart, even though the members might only rarely see each other in real life anymore. Or ever. Office work by professional, technical, management, and back office support is moving remote. It was "special" for COVID, supposedly temporary, but it is turning into the default. A lot of people seem to prefer it. Bosses, too.

People work connected electronically, not spatially. We don't have "workplaces" any more, except maybe for special occasions. We may be going through the cultural and workplace equivalent of water for fish. Our assumptions about "workplace" may be very different in a decade or two.

For three decades I went to the office to do my work as a Financial Advisor. Back about eight years ago, a couple of years before I retired, the company I worked for changed their opinion on working from home. Instead of it being essentially forbidden, it became enabled. The office established "remote access" technology which brought a version of the workplace desktop to a home desktop computer, a change that allowed Financial Advisors to do limited work from home. The unsaid message about remote access was that it was the exception. It was a fallback arrangement in case we were having a sick day, or in case of another 9-11 attack. That was then. Now almost everybody works remotely. Advisors have an office, and there is a branch office, but it is not clear to me why. The place is nearly empty.

There are a multitude of corollaries that flow from "going to the office." One is the nature of real records. The concept of getting things on paper has changed. In a face-to-face world, there were pink "While You Were Out" slips of paper. Now notices and assignments are shared electronically. In the COVID world a paper signature is inconvenient, so there is a work-around that has become common: Electronic signatures. The process is so simple that even elderly clients can manage it. The electronic record is now the "real" record. 

Video connection via Zoom or some equivalent system is now commonplace. People have gotten better at it over this year. People know how to mute themselves. Even the first wave of Boomers, now people in their 70s, have generally figured out virtual meetings. A board meeting of a dozen people might be more productive than one done in "real life," except that the very notion of "real" is changing. As with documents, the electronic version is the real one.

The distinction between hands-on work and virtual work exacerbates the giant fractures in American life that are coincidental with the partisan divide. Democrats are the party of college-educated office workers in cities, especially women--the kind of person most likely to be working remotely. The archetypal voter in the Republican base is a non-college educated person who works outdoors or in factories that make something tangible.  Fields are not plowed remotely, nor is oil drilled, coal mined, nor delivery trucks unloaded. Some work in the world is done by real people touching real things. The divide in political sensibilities between a female office worker in a city and a male working in an industrial setting was profound before COVID. This is one more thing widening the divide between the two groups.

Big changes take time to ripen. Possibly Americans will decide that they want to go back to the office, but the early indications are the opposite. People who can work remotely are choosing to do so.

Yesterday. . . oh, I believe in yesterday

The Big Lie isn't the biggest lie.

The biggest lie is MAGA, an imagined past. 

 People believe lies because they want to believe them.

 

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump promised a return to a better past. Trump caught a wave of public discomfort with the pace of social change coming out of the 1960s' liberation movements. Some felt it was too much, too fast, too disruptive.  Old habits and prejudices were forbidden and driven underground, awaiting Trump to give them voice and legitimacy. Biden's imagined past was simpler. It was the world before Trump, who was too much, too fast, and too disruptive a president. Voters thought once we were rid of Trump's manic divisiveness and authoritarianism, America would go back to normal. 

Trump's imagined America is gone. The internet and container ships ended America's economic isolation, and women aren't giving up their jobs, ethnic minorities aren't going away, and homosexuals are not going back into the closet. Biden's imagined America is past, too. A great many Americans like Trump's brand of ethno-nationalism. Democrats will slowly win the culture war which will cause them to lose elections. This is an era of turmoil.

Rick Millward is a singer-songwriter and music producer. Songwriters know all about the appeal of songs of heartbreak. There was something special, but now its gone, gone, gone. Millward's reverie about old cars is a songwriter's insight. It is pointless or pathetic or humorous when 70-year-old men squeeze into old Corvettes and little deuce coupes, but they do it anyway. They remember what they wanted. They remember the feeling. Memory and desire stir dull roots.

Millward worked in Nashville where he produced over 30 projects, including two Emmy-nominated soundtracks. He now lives in Medford where he is part of the local music scene. His newest project, Loveland, is available on streaming platforms. Local readers can hear him live on Friday at 5:00 p.m. at South Stage Cellars in Jacksonville, Oregon. 

Guest Post by Rick Millward

It’s a guy thing. An older guy thing. 

American automobile manufacturers marketed their products relentlessly in the post WWII era. The goal was two cars in every garage, and we started seeing houses built by the millions that could accommodate them. As the 50s and 60s progressed car designs became sexier, engines more powerful, and Americans completely succumbed to the call of the highway, with 50,000 miles of interstate built during the period.

For many young men during this time it was a rite of passage to get one’s driver’s license and eventually one’s own vehicle. For most of us it wasn’t a shiny new Chevy or Ford, it was a used car, a little beat up but running ok. What we did to jazz these old jalopies was to add decoration to make them look fancier, and buy parts to “soup up” the engines for more power, starting with a louder muffler, (or removing it all together). In those days school letting out was a cacophony as all the boys peeled out of the parking lot and roared off to the Hasty Freeze. Good times.

Most of us couldn’t afford a new car until much later, and usually it was our first experience with credit. Even so, it wasn’t the Corvette or Mustang we pined for as a teen, more likely a sensible Honda. As time went on, depending on how our finances and careers progressed we moved on to nicer models, but with an emphasis on comfort and practicality, not flash.

Fast forward to the present. What we find with many “boomers” is now that they are at a point in their lives with some disposable income and free time, the mobile passions of youth actually never completely faded. Cars from the 50s and 60s are highly desirable as collectables and there is a multi-million dollar industry restoring them to their showroom glory. The price tags for these old babes can hit six figures, and the market is robust.

It’s a testimony to the power of marketing, that decades later the message still has resonance and can motivate behavior. It doesn’t matter that there is virtually no substance in it. To some it’s a bit sad to see an older gent cruising down the road to the Rite-Aid in his chrome encrusted status symbol, seemingly entranced in the distant past. 

Yet, I have to admit I feel the same pull, the adolescent yearning shaped by all those ads and even though I can see how silly it is, and have been able to resist the urge to fulfill my own hot rod fantasy, sometimes I still push down just a bit harder on the gas pedal of my sensible sedan and marvel at how susceptible we can be to a lie we desperately want to believe. 

                                                                  =====   =====   ===== 

Here is a link to one of the songs in Loveland: "Stowaway": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD0KkTflaDY

"I am lost on an ocean of memories. I'm a stowaway on a ship of love."

Monoclonal Antibodies.

Is the vaccine too experimental and mysterious for you? 

Go ahead and get COVID. There are monoclonal antibody therapies as a backstop.

But heads up. The treatment drugs are experimental, lack full FDA approval, work only some of the time, and are made from humanized tissue of rodents.

Some of the people I talk to in farm country tell me they are not vaccinated. Possibly the real reason is tribal and political. They are members of the team that doesn't trust Democrats. They have a rationale. They tell me the vaccinations seem to them new, unproven, and experimental. "I don't want to be a guinea pig for stuff I don't understand," they tell me.

Their comments were in mind when I received this joke email in my inbox:

KFC has secret spices, Coke has a secret formula, the labels on packaged food include things few people understand or can pronounce, but we eat them. Yet the vaccine is a mystery and people say they don't trust mysteries. It seems odd to me.

It seems less odd in the context of therapies available for the people who contract COVID. There may be a safety net if one gets sick, so why risk a mysterious vaccine. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have mixed word of mouth reputations, getting criticism from health authorities. But one therapy gets support from both Trump and health experts, monoclonal antibodies. Trump was administered them last year and he said he felt better almost immediately. There is a short period after someone knows they are infected, but before hospitalization, when this therapy appears to help. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has emphasized post-infection treatment with monoclonal antibodies. He has set up state-run infusion centers.

CNN described it this way:

As the Delta variant drives a surge of Covid-19 cases in Florida, a rapid-response unit will be deployed to administer monoclonal antibody treatments to residents infected with the virus, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday. This is the most effective treatment that we've yet encountered for people who are infected with Covid-19," DeSantis said. "This, applied early and properly, has the ability to reduce your likelihood of being hospitalized." 

The irony for those worried about unproven and mysterious vaccines is that monoclonal antibody infusions come labeled with prominent warnings that they are new and experimental, with emergency use authorization by the FDA. "Emergency use," rather than full FDA approval, was the widespread excuse used by many for rejecting vaccines. The vaccines now have full FDA approval.

The best known drug is Regeneron's antibody cocktail. It got early criticism for using stem cells from an aborted fetus. In fact it does not contain fetal cells, according to a spokesperson for the drug, New Jersey internist Soma Mandal, MD. Kidney cells from an aborted fetus were used to develop the drug and test the drug, but are not in the drug, she said.

According to the manufacturer, the Regen-Cov antibody cocktail of casirivmab and imdevimab was created using a proprietary genetically engineered "mouse platform" optimized to become fully human antibodies. The drugs come from original study of a genetically humanized mouse but now other mammals. The new cells mimic human cells, but aren't human. They write: 

The manufacture of our monoclonal antibodies starts with a mammalian cell line called the Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells. These CHO cells are modified with a synthetic DNA sequence to direct them to make antibodies that are indistinguishable from human antibodies.

They supply a graphical description of their process:

They describe their process in text form with a series of superlatives, a self-attestation of cutting edge bioscience:

Our operations follow strict adherence to current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and use cutting-edge analytical equipment, automated laboratory information management systems and electronic document management systems, all of which are supported by an extensive calibration, validation and preventive maintenance program. Our independent clean-room suites with ultra-modern clean utilities support both single-use and stainless steel cell culture bioreactors and large-scale chromatography systems designed to produce and purify our product candidates.

Folk wisdom has addressed this situation. From the frying pan and into the fire.

If a person doesn't want the vaccine because the vaccine seems new, experimental, and mysterious, there is an alternative now promoted within vaccine-skeptical media. The alternative uses immortalized human fetal tissue, which led to a process to "humanize" mouse tissue, which evolved to using cells from Chinese hamster ovaries, then is filtered and stabilized and ready for infusion. It is newer, more experimental, and more mysterious than the vaccine it replaces.

[Note: to subscribe by email go to: https://petersage.substack.com This blog is free and always will be.]

Let me apologize for the crude language.

People are chanting it at ball games. People are putting up banners that say it:

     "Fuck Joe Biden. Fuck Joe Biden. Fuck Joe Biden." 

We have all heard and read the word, but it is still a little shocking and offensive to see it used so casually in public. 

The shock and offense are features. The words aren't meant literally, of course. The words are body-language as physical as the raised middle finger, a means to show open contempt. It proves a point that people can get away with insulting Biden. 

Harsh political language is as old as the presidency. Democrats joyfully mocked Trump and still do. He is the "orange man" with a bad combover. People displayed a giant balloon caricature of infantile Trump and an ugly one of naked, fat, doughy Trump, with small genitals. It was as harsh and disrespectful as people could make it.

The "Fuck Joe Biden" chant is nothing new.

The mocking did not hurt Trump. If anything, it helped him. Trump is a pugilist and provocateur. That is his brand. Trump dished it out and Trump got some back. He belittles opponents. He called Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, Joe Biden sleepy, Jeb Bush low energy, Ted Cruz a liar, and now he is calling Mitch McConnell a weak RINO. Trump does it openly, joyfully. That behavior sent an unsaid message that nothing could stop Trump from exercising his will, including the norms and expectations surrounding "presidential" behavior. Trump's insults communicate Trump First, which makes him credible when he says America First. He signals status and hierarchy. A tiny example: He did not apologize for rudely shoving ahead of Montenegro's head of state because, after all, Trump represents the USA and Montenegro is small. The Montenegro leader did not shove back. After all, Trump is number one.

Biden's brand is different. Biden intended to return to pre-Trump normalcy. Biden has old-school dignity, which is consistent with his effort to lower the temperature of rhetoric and to be "above the fray," i.e. "presidential." Biden wants Americans to work together. Let's all get vaccinated. Let's all wear masks. Let's all do a bi-partisan infrastructure package. 

When people fail to cooperate, Biden loses. He needs other political players to get along, but it is to their advantage not to get along. Biden is the substitute teacher who cannot get control of an unruly class, someone proven to be too weak for the job. 

That is the context for the "Fuck Joe Biden" chants now taking place at football games and NASCAR races. The meme is proliferating. I have begun seeing bumper strips reading "Fuck Biden." A house near my farm just put up this large sign next to a Trump 2024 sign. 

This is bad for Biden. A person who is bullied but attempts to look "above it all" looks like he is backing away from a fight. It happened to Dukakis when mocked for the tank ride and for Kerry when he was "swift boated." Voters want a Commander in Chief, i.e. someone who hits back when hit.

But every action has a counter-reaction, and possibly there is a silver lining amid the gloom for Biden. He looks bad but possibly Trump and his supporters look worse. Whether they be Proud Boys, Capitol rioters, or people putting up signs like this in residential neighborhoods, Trump and his movement look out of control. Trump keeps saying extreme things that seem less and less plausible about the election, he bad-mouths Republicans who have friends and supporters in their states,  and his supporters keep cheering him on whatever he says.

The choice voters will face in 2022 and 2024 is one between weak versus nasty. If Democrats can make the case that the nastiness is all part of a movement aimed at fellow Americans--like this middle finger--then Democrats may survive. They should not count on it, though. Trump's political success shows that Americans crave a strong leader and are not fussy about how he exercises that strength. 

It's a worry.

Finally! A reason to be vaccinated

"Yes, COVID-19 can cause erectile disfunction."

       Headline in a report by the Cleveland Clinic

 

Getting America vaccinated is slow going. Many Americans say "no thanks" and some people dig in and say "no way."

Cleveland Clinic's illustration

Even death by suffocation isn't a sufficient motivator for some. 

Policy-makers search for ways to increase America's vaccination rate. Data on the unvaccinated in ICUs and patients on ventilators isn't enough to change minds. Lottery tickets don't do it. TV ads don't persuade. Employers issue vaccination mandates, which cause resentment and resignations. Government vaccination mandates cause backlash and accusations of government over-reach. Some people, especially young and healthy men, feel immune.

Some vaccination-supporters try scolding and shaming. Michael Trigoboff, who sometimes comments here, suggested trying peer-to-peer messaging:

Angry denunciations by urban liberals of rural people for prioritizing individual freedom over getting the vaccine are clearly not helping. Why not widely publicize statements by unvaccinated rural people who ended up in the ICU with COVID and who now wish they had gotten the vaccine? At this point, many rural people despise urban liberals (who, by the way, massively return the favor), and will not listen to them, or possibly even do the opposite just to annoy them. But there is a good chance rural folks would listen to their own.

"Malcolm," who also sometimes comments on this blog, suggested:

Spread the word that COVID survivors are like six times as likely as those of us who’ve had our shots to become impotent. As we speak, they are trying to figure out if this soft dick syndrome lasts 6-12 months, or the rest of their fearful lives. I’m of the belief that most “real men” care more about getting floppy dicks than they do about their alleged concern about communism, socialism, liberty or freedom. “Hiya, Floppy? Still looking for a new girlfriend?” 

BTW, I’ve confirmed this issue at several (legitimate) medical sites.

Maybe Malcolm is onto something. This blog has noted that some anti-vaccine messaging is about macho courage in the face of COVID. Vaccine refusers are too tough to care about COVID. Old guys men lying in hospital beds on ventilators are an image of "the other guy," someone weak. Denial is easy, maybe inevitable. But a young man knows his penis has a will of its own. No one wants to be that guy in the Cleveland Clinic photo.

Is COVID-caused impotence a real thing? There is data suggesting it is, and from credible sources. The Cleveland Clinic reports that "blood supply to the penis can become blocked or narrowed as a result of a new or worsened vascular condition caused by the virus."

WebMD reported it this way:

Researchers armed with an electron microscope found coronavirus particles in penile tissue samples taken from two former COVID-19 patients who became impotent following their infection, which had occurred six and eight months earlier. . ..

"We found that the virus affects the blood vessels that
supply the penis, causing erectile dysfunction," said senior researcher Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, director of the reproductive urology program at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. "The blood vessels themselves malfunction and are not able to provide enough blood to enter the penis for an erection."

Forbes headline

Information on COVID-related erectile disfunction is drifting out from academic and hospital journals into the general media. 

It is an idea that could move the messaging needle, but there is a problem with it: The occurrence is apparently uncommon. If men who got COVID immediately began complaining that they had ED, we would know it. COVID-linked impotence has the problem that plagues the entire COVID messaging universe: Most people survive COVID. Tens of millions of people caught COVID, then lived to tell acquaintances that they got over it with no apparent lingering effects, including their erections. That fuels the notion that COVID-mitigation efforts are overdone. What's the worry?

In the opposite direction is the fact that the USA has 320 million people, and even a low incidence of hospitalization and death--less than 1%--when dealing with the full age-range of people who contract COVID, still means 700,000 deaths and counting. The incidence of dying in an armed robbery or kidnapping are far less than one percent, and yet people fear it, spend money to defend against it, and lock their doors. We protect against remote misfortunes. For the elderly, the overweight, the ill, and the immune compromised, the risk is not remote. It is the equivalent of living in a very bad neighborhood.

Currently, young men don't think they live in one. If data begin to show their erections are at risk of being stolen, they will know the neighborhood changed.

[Note: to subscribe by email go to: petersage.substack.com. The blog is free and always will be.]

Vaccine resistance in Trump country

     "You are just going to have to ask God and pray for wisdom. You can't trust the politicians. You can't trust the doctors, you certainly can't trust the CDC or any World Health Organization." 

    Josephine County Commissioner Darin Fowler, as quoted by Grants Pass' The Daily Courier

From The Oregonian 

Josephine County is Trump country. The county supported Trump 31,800 to 18,500. This week only 57.4% of Josephine County adults are vaccinated for COVID, well behind the statewide average. The Daily Courier, one of the sources for the quotations in this post, did an on-line survey of its readers regarding vaccine mandates. It was cited by the commissioners as justification for opposing vaccination mandates for employees involved in health care. The poll showed 75% of respondents opposed these mandates.

The Josephine County commissioners have lobbied aggressively in opposition to the national and state requirements regarding vaccination and masking. They wrote a letter to Oregon Governor Kate Brown saying, "Your vaccine mandate is extremely unpopular for a reason." They said the mandate would cause "dramatic harm" because many employees will quit their jobs rather than be vaccinated. Commissioner DeYoung said, "We plan on keeping our employees." Because the county jail has a health care clinic and because the county juvenile detention center provides education, almost one third of county employees would be subject to the vaccination mandate.

"People in America still have freedom to choose, Commissioner Fowler said. "I am shocked that people are willing to give that up for the good of society. That sounds very communistic, very socialistic."

Fowler said that "All the status [sic] about whether a person vaccinated died or one that was unvaccinated died, these are all just statistics. Remember the old saying that liars use statistics and statistics are for liars, or something like that." .

Local hospitals' ICU units have been overwhelmed with COVID cases, coming almost exclusively from the non-vaccinated segment of the residents of the two-county region that includes my home in Medford. The Jackson County commissioners have joined Josephine County in letters of protest to Governor Brown. Jackson County commissioner Colleen Roberts expressed doubts that deaths attributed to COVID are really from COVID. Victims were old, overweight, or ill from something else, and their deaths should be attributed to the co-morbidities, not to COVID, she said.

My farm is in "farm county," i.e. a rural part of the Jackson-Josephine County region. My conversations with people here--done outdoors and at a distance of a few feet--make unsurprising these comments by the commissioners. Their words reflect the point of view of a significant segment of the population. I know from experience that County Commissioners hear the public mood directly. Commissioners consider policy and then implement that policy, so they are exposed as the decision-maker. The buck really does stop there. 

The people who are most adamant and outspoken about a policy are people in opposition to something. Those discontented people tend to have strong, clear opinions. The people who are generally content lack that intensity. It would misread rural people to think they are  selfish and inconsiderate. They are as likely to "love thy neighbor" as people in town. Readers should not take Commissioner Fowler's indignation at being required to do something for the "good of society" as indication that the people who think like him litter, steal library books, cheat on their taxes, or otherwise act any worse to neighbors than does anyone else. The issue got defined by political leadership and conservative media as a matter of freedom, not as patriotism at a time of war. Trump early-on decided to downplay COVID, hope it faded away, and carry on. It was a guess and he guessed incorrectly. Trump's messaging set the tone. 

The American public's response to COVID is a vivid example of the power of leadership in defining an issue. Democrats are understood to be tyrants, pushing a burdensome solution to a minor problem. This fits the observation and experience of many Americans. The 700,000 deaths in a country of 320 million people means just one death in 460 people, with those deaths concentrated among people who were elderly and sick. Their deaths are not a surprise.

Some of my readers will consider the comments by commissioners to be astonishingly ignorant and irresponsible. I agree. I am embarrassed for them, and disappointed in them, but I understand their political environment. They aren't apologizing. They are in a large body of people less worried about COVID than about government overreach. They are not out of sync with the loudest and most persistent voices in their communities, and very possibly a majority of the voters.