Lies Hate Fear and Blame

I finally got to bed on the night side of 3am and felt like it was a pretty big accomplishment. It wasn’t. I was wide awake a couple of hours later. I tossed, turned and played trivia crack. The sun rose. I didn’t. I don’t know how much I slept, but I know this feeling from depression sessions past.

It’s a feeling of helplessness. And I don’t know if most people understand it, but it took a great deal of effort just now to not get back into bed. It’s 8pm. I’m not tired, but I’m exhausted. There’s comfort under that comforter. But, what I needed to do was keep moving.

Reaching out to friends has been a great help, but tonight writing felt like my way out. the thought that got me started was my grandma. She abused me when she babysat. And I assume the feeling of powerlessness that I often get in life stems from that.

It wasn’t fair. The one tasked with keeping me safe, harmed me.

And that’s the state of our union.

The president rapes the truth daily and the result is this chaos. He should be the one caring for us. Hurting with us when our loved ones die. Pulling us together in a time of crisis. Using the government’s vast resources to give Americans the health care and financial support they need in this mindbendingly uncertain time.

Instead, he continues to blame others. But, just as bad as that is not just him putting the economy over human life, but actively trying to exploit this crises to make himself and others money.

Today I read this article, that details a company, Panthera Worldwide LLC, who inexplicably got a $55 Million contract to make N95 masks.

They’d never made them before.

3M has made them for years and charges 63 cents a mask. Panthera’s contract will pay them $5.50 per mask. At those prices, 3M could make 87 million masks. Panthera will deliver 1 million.

No.

Not acceptable. The going rate would be about $6.3M for the number of masks Panthera is making. I checked other sources and the 63 cents quoted in this article that the government typically pays established companies like 3M could be a little off per unprecedented demand. One source quoted $1.27 which might be the retail price or the demand surge price.

But, even if you double the 63 cents and call what the contract should have been $12.6 Million…how do you explain it? a minimum of $32.4M over the going rate being recklessly paid to a company that has never made a mask.

I don’t know who owns the company. I don’t know who’s invested in it. But, I know it reeks of foul play. And the “relief” bill is riddled with stuff like this. This article talks about the $1.7M benefit 43,000 millionaires are getting.

As America struggles with our health both physical and economical, the rich are getting richer. Yet, Lindsey Graham delayed the initial bill because he didn’t want to incentivize people not working. Bitch, not working is the point right now.

A moral or fair government would be paying people’s rent and bills and providing food options for the food insecure to ensure that no one comes out of this in worse shape. on the other hand, a Republican government lines the pockets of the rich, while fighting that $1200 once is too much to give more people.

32 million dollars too much for a company that has never made masks. $1.7M x 43,000 that’s $73 billion going to millionaires who don’t need it. But, yeah pick on the single mothers in bread lines mother fucker.

The republican party exists on lies, hate, fear and blame. As trump admitted recently, republicans would never win another election if more people voted, so voter suppression and the tactics above are their only hope of survival.

Before the midterms, remember how serious of an issue that caravan was that was full of mothers, children and others fleeing countries without hope and looking for asylum and a fresh start in the US? They had isis members hidden in the caravan. Oh no. oh my god Donald, please keep us safe. The election happened. we never heard about it again.

There were no isis. There were no people to fear. But, there were brown people trying to get into white America. So fear was created to keep them out.

And now our own poor are in a similar spot. in America. Where are they supposed to turn? They’re already in the land of the “free”. But, we’re all locked in cages like the innocent kids at our borders.

It’s not nearly that bad for most of us, living at home and not separated from our families, but it’s similar in that our most vulnerable are being fed to the wolves right now by a government who is making sure their own kind actually profit off of the human misery.

But, that’s par for the course, right? For profit prisons can’t make money unless they’re full. Who fills them? Not rich white guys. For profit detention centers at our borders, where kids are ripped from their parents. Both of those cases alone should make anyone who has anything to do with what Jesus actually said (not the prosperity version of Christianity that is often preached) get at least 6 feet away from the Republican party.

Immoral. Unethical. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. According to Jesus. Republicans on the other hand think it would be a sin if people didn’t work during a pandemic. If they’re brown or poor. If they’re rich they can’t wait to find another tax cut or loophole or bailout for their white donors.

What are we seeing in Michigan right now? Is it the rich protesting? No, it's the working poor that our income inequality has created who are speaking out. Problem is, they're speaking for Trump. It's backwards. The capital is being stormed by ak-47 toting Americans who are buying into Trump’s bullshit. The same hate speech that led to the Isis crisis that didn’t exist inside the caravan is festering in the brains of Michiganders who have fallen prey to Trump’s words.

In late March, Trump tweeted of Michigan’s governor, “Gretchen "Half" Whitmer is way in over her ahead, she doesn't have a clue. Likes blaming everyone for her own ineptitude!” standard trump. Project your own shortcomings on someone else and by so doing create a false enemy. Who’s in over their head? Who doesn’t have a clue? Who blames everyone else? Trump. But, I know you are, but what am I comes out instead.

A sitting president calling a governor a derogatory name on twitter. That gets support. Give the people someone else to hate. Take the pressure of himself.

Republican governors are getting more supplies than their democratic counterparts. And as Detroit was surging, instead of helping, Trump called the governor names. and now you have armed civilians storming the Michigan capital. They created traffic gridlocks today.

And again, why? Because trump said we’d be open by easter. Because we didn't test nationally early on or have supplies ready and waiting with a national supply chain that didn't put undo strain on states. Whose fault is that? Trump’s. Who did he blame? Not just Whitmer, but half-whitmer.

Whitmer is trying to reduce deaths in the state. Trump is making sure there will be more by rallying his base with lies, hate, fear and blame shifting.

It’s four months after we knew about coronavirus and there’s still not an organized, cohesive, national plan. The experts aren’t speaking enough or are being filtered. Trump is lying to us on repeat causing chaos to reign.

We needed testing on a national level in early February. And honestly that would have been better for Trump. Overprepare. Isolate, contain, stop the spread. You overdo it on the front end and then you can yell hoax and democrats overreacted/it was nothing to worry about.

Now. Now we’re fucked. He didn’t test. He didn’t stop the spread. He didn’t listen to the experts. And he’s still not letting them talk unless they say what fits trump’s narrative.

What he did do was exploit the crisis to make his millionaire friends money. And make sure our most vulnerable people are in even worse shape. Either the physically vulnerable people who have died from corona or the financially vulnerable who have or will see financial hardships even worse than the daily struggle they already knew.

And that is what abusers do. They make you feel helpless. They make you want to give up. Trump could have grabbed coronavirus by the pussy and been an actual hero. He chose to grab the less fortunate by the pussy instead.

I keep talking about our current reality as “existing inside an ongoing trauma” and that thought fleshed itself out as I wrote this. Trump is raping our minds daily. That’s why he’s still talking and not yielding to the actual experts.

Rapists want control. They want power. Not just during the act, but after the fact. And the reality is he’s in all reasonable people’s heads all day every day. And it was working on me today. the helplessness our current reality makes me feel is like the helplessness I felt as a kid.

And today, I wanted to give up. Not literally, but I wanted to go back to bed. Again. I turned off all my lights and just sat in my room in the dark, staring blankly at nothing. But, that’s us. that’s how things feel. We’re all shell-shocked.

And we get up each day and try to forget what’s happened, only to have what we need in a leader be replaced by our mind rapist in chief's hate speeches. It’s so hard to want to keep fighting. But, we have to. for our kids. for ourselves. For all the great Americans that actually do want to make this country great for everyone, not just the privileged few. Keep going. Keep talking. Keep moving. We can’t afford to sit still or give up. That’s exactly what he wants.

The governor and a lot of other lives in Michigan are in danger, because of Trump's lies. They're moving because of his hate speech. So, those of us who see the evil of Trump have to keep moving as well. Not with AK-47s and an unwillingness to see the bigger picture, but with words and peaceful protests and a record turnout in November.