Author: Blue Bronc

— Yoda

What is telling is that the 2024 presidential battle will probably be Harris and Haley.  The important thing is whether the republican party exists then.  This means trying to figure out what the parties will be in the next few years.

Starting with the greedy old perverts.  We can be assured that one piece will be the SFB cohort.  Will they be the twenty percent?  Most likely.  If they are any larger that will make the rest of the party smaller, smaller in the view those will form another party under the greedy old pervert label.  Another small section of the gop will be the ten or fifteen percent who are “I vote gop no matter what”.   This group used to be the GOP party, but has shrunk due to dying off. The next section of the former party will be the evangelical, anti-democracy/anti-abortion types.  They are not real goppers, but use them to destroy America the republic.  And the final group are the idiots who have no clue what is going on and think the greedy old perverts sound good because it is anti-everything except white males.

All this means is that what was the republican party is no more.  It has been blown up.

Now the Democratic Party has some interesting changes coming.  Former republicans will be sneaking over, but they need some encouraging words to overcome their shame of being gopers.  A new middle of the spectrum group will form, similar to the Blue Dogs.  A lot of Dems will be invested in making their lives better.

 Behind a lot of changes will be the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.  It will change a lot of how the world works. Much of the pain of no employment for millions of people will cause changes.  Think of 1930, the Great Depression and what happened from that.  We are in the Trump Depression and can only look at what we need to do to make a new world.  Every thing the current administration is doing is to make the depression worse.  It is to make the thirty thousand ultra rich more rich. 

It is time to look for the future “new normal”.  We are not there yet.  What we do need are leaders who can take us through the hell that is where we are now.

— Alice Paul (1885-1977)

While trying to absorb all that is happening in the immediate, and how it came to be starting in November 2016, I cannot help but cheer on technology.  The invasive cameras are providing a lot of accountability which has not been provided before.  Even during these last couple of days dirty cops are being exposed.  From the top officers to the rookies, cops doing bad things now have no way to say “who do you trust, me or the criminal with the head beaten in for resisting arrest?”  Video from many cameras is forcing action in spite of the vocal denials of some.

That cops have done damage to many people of color and LGBTQ people and poor people has been the normal.  When you are afraid of police you avoid police.  You do not help them, you will do anything you can to not have to deal with them.  The cold-blooded murder of a young black man filmed by many cameras came after other young black men were killed by dirty cops, the deaths viewed by millions of people who never had seen death before. 

I read a little thing a day or so ago.  It went something like “if it is so hard to get an arrest in an obvious murder with many videos think how hard it is on a dark night on a back road”.

The combined effects of unemployment and a president and Senate majority leader refusing to help people of color and LGBTQ people and poor people AND middle-class people made for a tornado.  People who had never faced hunger now do.  They look and can see the actions of dirty cops, white supremacists in the Congress and White House and dismissal by republicans.  America was built on protest.  And now we are seeing it happen. 

For some of us this is another in a long history.  I saw Detroit burning, I was in the middle of the riot there.  Others saw Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago and other cities burning too. But this is different.  From the Women’s March in January 2017, to June 2020 this protests have become more diverse.  People from all places are saying I am tired of being pushed around. I am not afraid to say things have to change.

Please remember this month, June, is Pride month for LGBTQ people. The people of color who are LGBTQ are always hurt more.

This pandemic has equalized a lot of pain.

not on fighting the old, but on building the new.  Socrates

Since the start of the shutdown of the world, the talk of certain types was to get it all restarted.  They have no price on human life, it is the “economy” which is dying and requires a restart.  Sure, lives will be lost, but that is normal life, people die every day.

Discussion of what a life is worth was not part of the deal of this pandemic.  The cost of saving civilization was more important.  At least at the start.  Now there are some who no longer care about civilization, only their alternative world civilization (which seems to only have white people roaming around in it).

Other than a few “America only” articles for building things, there is no talk about how the world is interconnected.  Not just Canada, Mexico, U.S. in NAFTA2, but how the U.S. exports to other countries which do work on a product which is shipped somewhere else and eventually returns to the U.S. as a completed product or as a component which ends up in a U.S. completed product. It is about manufacturing clothing or cell phone covers in other countries.

I get to see international trade in a way few others do.  It is eye opening at how components move around the world before ending up in a final product.  The basic fact is the countries of the world are all part of international trade.  Even China imports components and products for domestic use.

To get the “economy” going takes more than a bunch of yahoos running around shouting and waving killer guns.  The U.S. was on the down hill slope due to horrible trade decisions and belligerent, and extremely ignorant, actions of the White House before the noval coronavirus arrived. To get the “economy” going again takes smart people and that may need to wait until January 19, 2021.

Made in America is one thing, I buy American made when I can.  But, due to economic pricing and decades of presidential and congressional actions, only certain products are totally American made.  But, to “bring back” industry takes more than a stupid tariff and yelling.  It also means creating industry where none exists, that is not fast nor is it easy.

It makes little sense to force a complex industry to only create in America with American parts. That was done a long time ago, before modern electronics were created. Now it takes the world to build a cell phone. Some of the components are only available in certain parts of the world, not in the U.S.

We live in a different world than we did January 1, 1930. We live in a different world than we did January 1, 1950.  We live in a different world than we did January 1, 2020.

— comes new strength and new thoughts. Eleanor Roosevelt

The First Day

While we are forced to live in a weak and crippled America for the next nine months, until Biden is sworn in as president, we can hold hope of a rapid restart.  Knowing that the political appointees will be submitting their resignations, and that a competent new administration will accept those, gives hopes to a cleansing post haste.   As there is a lack of appointments now, a deliberate act by the person in the White House and the far right group hoping to establish a dictatorship. We should expect Biden will be able to prepare a thousand new names, ready to fill the empty positions the minute he is sworn in. 

As this week begins there is a slight peek past election day that the Dems will have the Senate majority.  There is also hope that one Moscow Mitch will be out too.  That will make investigating him and his wife easier.  Having the Senate in Dems hands will make it easier to install the Biden picks.

I also look at restarting American science with a plan installed to take on the coronavirus COVID-19.  Yes, that nasty killer will still be with us.  It will be combined with the flu strains to attack and kill Americans in numbers which are still unknown.  The United States used to be the lead for finding solutions to previous health crises, but not now.  There is no federal plan from this failed administration.  Leave to the for-profit companies to find something is not a plan.

Although this may be wishful thinking, I hope that Biden and his team are already starting the transition plan to replace this disgraced administration.

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.  Julius Caesar (Act II, Scene II, Line 31)  Shakespeare

Death is the driving hell behind this novel Coronavirus, COVID-19.  Somewhere between ten percent and two percent of those who are infected die.  It has wiped out families and those without. It has killed celebrities and those who sweep floors.  It has no care about making some people without symptoms and those whose body can no longer breathe.

What a pandemic or epidemic does is bring death to the door.  Not a pleasant leaving this mortal coil (Shakespeare) as often is the blessing of dying in one’s sleep.  Not a violent end from a automobile crash.  It is a disease that makes one ill or horribly ill and a death with a tube in your lungs.  Or your neighbor’s lungs.  Or your children’s teacher.

Some live, some die.  You cannot know who will live, who will not.  That is what happens with a disease like a virus.

This afternoon I was watching MSNBC Nicolle Wallace when one of the panelists said he has lost ten friends to COVID-19. I started having flashbacks (yes, real horrible flashbacks) to the mid-1990’s when I was fighting for my life against a virus, Hepatitis C.  Death was a constant for us.

I was on Prodigy, AOL and CompuServe various boards related to HepC.  Starting in 1995 we realized the death rate was nothing like the governments were telling us.  By 1997 we were losing at least one person, a Hepper (I made up the name Leper and Hepatitis) every day.  I started a website as a memorial website of those who died. It had many hundreds of memorials.  I ended it when a friend committed suicide.

We lost thousands of Heppers.  Some showed up for a few visits on the boards, a few were regulars.  What made all of us the same was being infected with HCV and not knowing if we were going to die.  Death with HCV is terrible, just as death with COVID-19 is.

The experience hardened me.  When you have hundreds of people you know by name and have shared lives and hopes, and they die it does something to you.  My psychologists have helped.  They understand what mass death means.  This pandemic is doing the same.  You see life differently, you feel life differently.  And for those who survive you are changed.  You are changed in ways others may never understand.

My sympathy goes to all those affected by this virus.  I fought mine to a draw.  It took me almost fifteen years to recover most of my strength.  I hope these people do not face that life.