Liberate

Worst case, you wake up from a nightmare sweating, short of breath, disoriented only to have this comforting thought bring you back to good: it was just a dream. It took me 30 plus days of quarantine to finally realize why it’s so hard to get up every day…our current reality is the opposite. Dreams are one of my only places for comfort. When I wake up, I’m back inside the nightmare that is pandemic 2020.

We’ll have these recurring dreams where we’re falling to our deaths, but we hit the bed and it is one of the best feelings you can have. I didn’t die! Now, every day I wake up it’s like I’m further into a free fall into the inevitable death of my mental health.

Real life is a recurring nightmare. And I’m just over here trying to be Ralph Wiggum. I’m a Viking clip. 

So, logically each morning I’m Team Ralph trying to get back to whatever I was dreaming instead of continuing to live out this recurring nightmare. Back to bed? In! Real life? Can I take a pass?

Not really, but I mean yes, for stretches, a pass is necessary. I have to take breaks. Watching the news or my facebook feed or even writing about this stuff all the time, it’s all-consuming if we let it be. so we need some Netflix (I might have watched the new season of Bosch until 10am…doing great Matt) or some music or some happier conversations with good friends. And remember the positives like "I’m going to eat today".

But, each day there are points where I need to face it. need to write my way or talk my way to better frames of mind. it’s not a great time to have a logical mind. logic taking on the way our president has handled this pandemic leads to madness.

And that’s the thing with crazy people. They force you to question your own sanity. My sister told me the story about as a kid going to my dad with something that he’d done to upset her. she’d leave the conversation feeling like it was her fault.

And here’s today’s chilling example of that in Trump’s America. He tweeted some scary shit earlier. He's at fault for where we are. governors came to him with a problem. he didn't help. and now, not only are the governors being blamed, they are fearing for their lives. let me backtrack to explain.

We haven’t had enough COVID 19 tests from the beginning so we couldn’t do all the things we needed to effectively reduce the number of cases and deaths. Without tests on the front end we couldn’t project, isolate, contain, mitigate, plan, etc. We had no idea where it was and how fast it was spreading.

And still don’t. I just saw a facebook post from friends in North Carolina who clearly have coronavirus, but they can’t get tested and their doctor basically told them they had to ride it out at home. They’d only admit them if they couldn’t breathe. It’s April 17^th. We needed nationwide tests ready 2 months ago at the latest.

But, we couldn’t test on the front end which fit Trump’s narrative from the start that it was a hoax and we had it under control. If you don’t test, the numbers won’t look that bad. And now we’re seeing the dark side of this on the back end. Still can’t test enough. Still don’t know the true numbers.

And although we’re far and away the nation with the most cases and deaths, the numbers are actually way, way worse than have been reported. But, if saving lives has never been as important as the economy, as Trump’s actions have proven, then again the low testing fits what’s coming next.

We’ll restart the economy too soon and more lives will be lost. "It’s not that bad". "We only have x cases". "I need to work". people are saying those types of things now because of the way trump has downplayed it from the beginning. And part of the downplay strategy has been the testing numbers. You can’t grade a pandemic on a curve. What we are seeing in terms of national numbers is false proof that we’re doing better than we are. And even the reported numbers are world class.

Donald Trump is why our world class pandemic numbers are actually worst in class. He fucked up. He didn’t prepare us for this. Kept telling us we were fine. It’s going to go away in the warmer weather like a miracle. Churches will be packed by easter.

the only thing those lies did was prove that Trump is the hoax. And he’s still talking. Not in the science based, here’s the plan, here’s how we’re going to band together to get through this presidential way, but in a way that is…I hate America, because I’m going to continue to lie to the people, muzzle the actual experts, cause more unnecessary deaths by my inaction and keep using Twitter to insult people trying to actually help.

Today’s tweets are a new low. How many times have I said that though, right? The irresponsibility of today’s tweets will cause the deaths of innocent people. Not from the virus itself, but from violence.

So, let’s back up for a second and remember who Trump has fought with over twitter. It’s been Republican governors. He calls them names. He says they’re incompetent. And all the while, what he was doing was rallying his supporters in those states, and in so doing, providing cover for his own incompetence.

Blame someone else. Trump knew how bad this was going to be. And he lied every step of the way.  

But, his formula of fear, hate, lies and blame has turned him from a monster into some kind of larger than life living martyr among Republicans. I just read today that 93% of Republicans approve of Trump, which is a separate but related recurring nightmare and why we’re here. Every time one of his lies were believed even in the face of facts, every time one of the media’s truths were falsely labeled fake news, we took one step closer to 4/17/20, the day Donald Trump tweeted the following a few minutes apart.

LIBERATE MINNESOTA!

LIBERATE MICHIGAN!

LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2^nd amendment. It is under siege!

If that doesn’t terrify the living shit out of you, then we’re all fucked worse than I thought. The president of the United States egging on ak-47 toting protesters to liberate. All caps. And just to make sure we didn’t misconstrue what he meant, he dropped the right to bear arms amendment in the tweet. That’s the president trying to incite civil war at the state level.

There’s the constant blame shifting that the president does, but this is the mind game to end all mind games. He’s at fault, but has created a false narrative that the governors are the problem. There’s been no national stay at home order for this reason. If DJT tells you to stay home, he’s the bad guy. But, if a governor tells you to stay home, they’re to blame.

So gather up your guns and liberate? What the actual fuck is going on?

The craziest part (well fuck…that’s subjective, it’s all bat shit) of this is the fact that the governors of those states aren’t ready to re-open per the criteria the white house rolled out setting guidelines for when states could decide to lift stay at home orders. The governors couldn’t lift the orders yet even if they wanted to and now their lives and the lives of others are at risk, not from the virus itself, but from the virus in the oval office, who’s trying to incite gun violence.

People in those state are required to stay at home for good reason…to save lives, to continue to flatten the curve and to prevent surges in cases. To go back to work too soon is to intentionally kill innocent americans. Trump knows that and yet he is encouraging those breaking the stay at home order to liberate.

United we stand, divided we fall.

We’ve fallen. Because we have a segment of people who have fallen for the bullshit that comes out of Trump’s mouth. Over and over and over again. DJT is all about division. And as a result, we are a nation in chaos.

The national, science-based plan that valued human life over profit never happened. And the self-described “total authority” is to blame. But, he won’t take responsibility or change course to prevent more deaths. Instead, he’ll tweet “LIBERATE” to armed people who are breaking local stay at home laws.

We’ve had every chance to liberate ourselves of him without breaking the law, via the Mueller report or the impeachment inquiry. But, all branches of the government are under trump’s control. There are no checks and balances.

And when you let someone as evil as Trump go unchecked, here’s where you end up…free falling in a recurring nightmare, which gets worse every day. There were not “very fine people on both sides” (as Trump said) of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally. And there are not “very fine people” among the republicans still supporting Donald Trump. He’s why we’re all stuck in this nightmare and we need to wake the fuck up.

To still support him is to be liberated from your right mind. And to restore the rest of us to sanity, we need to liberate Donald Trump from office come November.