Shame on you America

Shame on you America.

I just went on a four and half mile walk because I gained the Covid 19, thought “this is great”, put on another 19 and then thought “fuck”. As I waddled around my neighborhood with my ironic covid moustache, 6 months long hair, cargo shorts and neil diamond t-shirt, I probably looked more like a person of interest and less like an exercise enthusiast.

But, that’s one of my freedoms in America. I’m white, so I’m allowed to walk around. Black and brown people aren’t so lucky.

As I huffed and puffed through my “workout”, I started thinking about the non-white people in the Migrant caravan. So, I just looked up the details. The one that got a lot of national attention two years ago started in San Pedro Sula, 3000 miles from our border.

Think about that.

Because of violence, poverty and politics, these people were willing to walk 3000 miles. 4.5 miles was about my limit today. At that pace, it would take me almost two years to walk 3000 miles. These people didn’t have nice shoes to walk in and a shower and air conditioning to come home to.

They had nothing.

But, they knew how great America was. The States would be their chance to build a better life, if not for them, then for their kids.

And so how did the “Christian” country, the world superpower, treat them when they arrived? With a ticker tape parade, right? “I cannot believe you guys walked that far. I’m so sorry for the pain you’ve been through. We’d like to warmly welcome you to your new home.”

Yeah that or we separated the families, making the kids orphans. That wasn’t bad enough. We put the kids in cages. Not done yet. There have been thousands of reports of sexual abuse filed in the last few years.

They walked 3000 miles to a country who ripped their children from them, caged the kids and abused them.

That’s a fucking crime against humanity.

That is not “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” That is pure evil.

But, in the age of Trump, that poem from the statue of liberty has been replaced with a less accommodating, “go back to the shithole country you came from.”

The thing is, the country that treats people like that is the shit hole country.

And what I cannot wrap my head around these days is how a segment of our population has watched Trump turn us into a shithole country in less than four years and yet still defends and cheers his every action.

Take Covid. Start by removing emotions. Richest country in the world. Unlimited resources. Every country on earth should be looking up to us as the model for how to handle a pandemic. We should have done so well that we’d be able to ship PPE, ventilators, masks, doctors and whatever else would help countries hit the hardest.

But, Trump won’t even protect our fellow Americans.

He defunded the World Health Organization.

He caged us way longer than we should have needed to stay safe at home. He induced mental and financial trauma on all of us. He’s treated us the same way he treated the migrants.

Human life does not matter to Donald Trump.

He gets tested every day. So do all the people around him. The rest of us aren’t so lucky. He knows how serious this is, but is only willing to protect himself.

We have 4% of the world’s population, but 25% of the cases and 22% of the deaths.

If we had an average Covid response, meaning our numbers matched our percentage of the world’s population, over 130,000 Americans would still be alive.

But, 5 years ago who among us would called the US average?

We expect to be the best at everything. Fox News would be foaming at the mouth if this happened on Obama’s watch and even 1% of the world’s cases and deaths were ours. And the reason you could argue that if we had 1% of the world’s cases and deaths we would have failed is that we’re not a "shit hole" country with limited resources. We’re a world super power. Or at least we were until Trump decided not to fight Covid.

He’s the pied piper of death.

He plays his flute of lies and the Maga caravan retweets him religiously, but they never stop to look around. They never pause to do critical thinking. That’s how you know it’s a cult. It’s expected that his followers won’t think for themselves. They’ve been conditioned by Fox News for years as to who they should hate: people of color, libs, Obama, Hillary, immigrants, etc.

So, allow me to do that critical thinking for them. On March 25th, Trump said we’d be “opened up and raring to go by Easter.’’ Fauci countered, “you don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline.”

And that’s about the last we heard from the world’s foremost infectious disease expert.

Trump silenced him. Trump had WH officials talk shit on him. And Trump became the only voice.

When you listen to someone who thinks he “might be a natural” at virus containment, instead of Tony Fauci, this is what you get. It’s 5 months later. Not only are churches not packed, the pandemic is out of control.

Before March 25^th, we’d never had more than 10k cases in a day. On July 6^th, when Trump tweeted that we must reopen schools, we were averaging FIVE TIMES THAT! During that same stretch, Italy, which was one of the early epicenters of the virus, was averaging about 250 cases a day, which would be like us averaging 1300 or so. Italy destroyed the curve and could reopen. We had more that 25x their cases and were almost twice as bad as they had it at their worst and Trump thought "let's reopen the schools." He is out of his god damned mind.

5 million cases. 174k dead. And Trump isn’t satisfied. He wants more.

And instead of his followers saying enough is enough, they’re getting on the "let’s open schools" bandwagon. Forcing an early reopen four months ago is what has caused our current disaster. Opening schools into the teeth of a worldwide high in cases guarantees more cases, more deaths, and more of a mental and economic toll.

The virus sets the timeline.

It’s not we need to reopen because…

My kid needs to play sports.

My kid is having a hard time at home.

My kid has to be in the classroom.

I lost several Instagram followers, because my life has become less Insta-worthy.

It’s…we reopen when it’s safe. Period.

No amount of demon sperm doctor infomercials and my pillow guy “expertise” will change that.

To reopen schools now is saying, Fuck Teachers, Fuck the Immune Compromised, Fuck our kids, Fuck Science, Fuck the Truth, Fuck Nurses, Fuck Doctors, Fuck RTs, Fuck Essential Workers, etc.

Other countries reopened because they flattened the curve. We never really dipped below 20k and held steady at 60k until Trump decided he didn’t like the CDC’s numbers so he gave the reporting to HHS, where their reporting tool was made by a Trump donor. Hey…look! The numbers got magically better.

Accounting for population difference, when Italy was at their worst it was like us having about 30k cases a day. Before HHS took over, we had a month long stretch of 60k cases a day. Twice as bad...as Italy's worst...after much of the world had long since flattened the curve. We're talking about 5 fucking months in.

And that’s when Trump said “fuck the kids, the economy needs them to be in school.” And “we have to have college football, because the money NCAA football makes is worth more than those student athletes’ lives.” Or words to that effect.

So, let’s circle back to where this started. The migrant caravan. Trump treated those kids that way, because they’re from a “shit hole country”. How is how he’s treated us via his Covid response any different?

He treats his own people like shit hole natives. He gives zero shits about human life. How many times has he mourned the dead? How many times has he offered his deepest sympathies to the families? How many times has he vowed to do whatever it takes to CONTAIN COVID?

Zero.

Because, he’s a fucking traitor. And so is every last person still offering excuses for him and standing behind him as he recklessly calls for the kids to be in school.

Those people believe their freedom to infect others is more important than other people’s freedom from covid and possible death.

Same concept that started this rant…the migrant caravan. People crying out in pain. Just wanting to be free. Just wanting to hope and dream and start a better life. Trump locked them the fuck up.

And he’s done the same to all of us. We’re prisoners to his lunacy. A leader with his resources should easily have the entire US fully and safely reopened by now. But, our freedom is limited, because of his failure. And, this shit is killing us mentally. You don’t add to the mental trauma that we and our kids have already experienced by saying, “let’s give Covid a nice boost right before flu season.”

Every last fucking reason to reopen the schools starts with conceding Trump’s points that “it is what it is” and “we need to live with it.”

Fuck that. We need to contain the god damn virus or else what we’ve seen to date will pale in comparison of what’s to come.

There is NO LEGITIMATE “we need to reopen schools because” because we don’t “need to live with it” and we’re not a nation so callous, that of the dead we say, “it is what it is.”

There is only “you don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline.”

And there is only one reason our timeline has dragged upward and onward ad nauseam: Donald Trump. And to still support this con man and amplify the lies that he tells is to literally kill your fellow Americans.

We used to send our kids off to fight world wars. Now we’re so entitled, parents won’t even keep their kids home to save lives. Thousands of migrant children would give anything for that chance. Parents in Trump's America can't sacrifice a few months of in person school to save lives. Contrast that with Central American immigrant parents being willing to risk their own life, just to give their kids a chance to live the American dream.

They walked 3000 fucking miles. And got the equivalent of what anti-maskers and proponents of schools reopening/college football starting are saying with their actions, “We don’t give a shit about anyone else. Our needs are most important. If people die or are permanently traumatized because of what we want, fuck ‘em.”

Fuck that version of America. Get me back to the one where we welcomed huddled masses yearning to breathe free. To the vast majority of us who see Trump for who he really is and who can objectively look at his impossibly terrible Covid failure, we feel like immigrants in our own country. We feel out of place. And fearful, worried about Covid and worried that fleeing the Divided States of Trump might be in our best interests if things continue to deteriorate.

Shame on you my fellow Americans, who have absolutely gutted these United States. We stand against tyranny for fuck's sake. We don't embrace it. We're in literal ruins right now. And to pick back up the pieces, it will take all of us. And for any not on board/hell bent on continuing to help Trump kill us, I've got a great spot for you...we'll free the kids from their cages and replace them with you. Because, they're a helluva a lot more representative of what America is about than you are.

Those kids spent months walking towards a better life. You spent a few weeks in quarantine fighting the virus and that was too hard, so you changed sides and started fighting with Trump on Covid's side. Whatever bull shit he's selling you retweet without giving a second thought to all the Americans you're helping him kill.