10-03-2020, 01:06 AM
(10-02-2020, 09:27 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Through the day I was a bit worried that Trump's bug was progressing rapidly. Rachel Maddow had the same thought, as did a medical guest. It's just going from an initial positive to the hospital is faster than usual. I sort of expect a week or two delay from positive, to symptom, to the hospital, to a ventilator. Trump took one day to do several steps.
This suggests that the President has been infected for a considerable time. He could be a later and more severe stage than initial reports suggested. This fits a Presidency infamous for sugar-coating, deflection, deceit, and secrecy. Such is true of all 44 and a half months of this Presidency and it is almost certain to remain true.
Quote:I suspect his is a fairly serious case.
Multiple days in the hospital? Such is rarely planned except in desperate situations. For someone as old and obese as President Trump, such indicates a medical calamity. He is receiving an experimental drug that one would not take except in recognition of danger and consequences from the drug as well as the medical situation.
Quote:I recently put up the end of the Gettysburg Address as my signature. I am almost considering extending it a bit, opening with "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain". You know, this time around the honored dead that gave their last full measure of devotion, many unwittingly, so that one man would continue in power.
Donald Trump reminds me of the sort of political leader who sacrifices much cannon fodder for his glory as a wartime leader. Such is death on behalf of a cause of horrible vanity.
208,000 people have died in vain, according to one estimate. The next city on the grim list is Oxnard, California, a city that people with no connections to the state may not know about. That is the 110th-largest city in the United States. #111 (Rochester, formerly "Camera City" when Kodak and Polaroid were going concerns) and #109 is Birmingham, Alabama, which most people can locate on a map. Add the populations of two very different college towns (Boulder, Colorado and South Bend, Indiana) and you get almost 208,000 people.
Quote:It almost seems wrong to hope that they died in vain.
These people died, often horribly. Dying in a life-saving effort, in enforcing the law, or in securing a military victory is heroic. Dying rather than betraying associates to the Nazis is heroic. Denying oneself food so that one starves so that one's children might survive in a Nazi concentration is heroic. There is nothing heroic about dying of a respiratory infection in civilian life. One achieves nothing except for leaving the resources of the world to someone else. Nobody will get any Purple Heart for dying of COVID-19.
Maybe I would be more reckless if I had a terminal diagnosis, taking chances to give someone a vicarious adventure. (Such would change every calculation of cost and benefit of risky behavior). Would I run into a burning building to rescue a child from death by fire at risk of my life? I have never been tested.
I didn't take chances with AIDS, and I am not taking chances with COVID-19.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.