Civil Commotion

The United States, long a beacon of scientific progress and medical innovation with its world-class research institutions and hospitals, is now the hub of a global pandemic that has infected at least 745,000 people and already claimed more than 35,000 lives worldwide. Now that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States — more than 140,000 — has surpassed that of any other nation, Americans are consigned for the coming weeks to watching the illness fell family members and friends, and to fearing for their own fate as they watch death tolls rise.

While the spread of the novel coronavirus has been aggressive around the world, much of the profound impact it will have here in the United States was preventable. As the American public braces itself for the worst of this crisis, it’s worth remembering that the reach of the virus here is not attributable to an act of God or a foreign invasion, but a colossal failure of leadership.

Boston Globe

When Republican senators refused to do their plain duty and remove Trump, they were betting that his incompetence would not be consequential over the next several months.

Whoops.

Last week, I remarked on history’s verdict on Donald Trump.

The world is going to be telling the stories of Trump’s screw-ups — and laughing — for 1000-years. And marveling that America elected such a corrupt and incompetent pile of sewage.

Now, a bona fide historian tells CNN the same thing.

At the epicenter of the nation’s and the world’s pandemic, Cuomo has been reminding us that the worst of the crisis is just beginning. The same is true for history’s assessment of President Trump. The coronavirus is immune to his manipulation and spin. It is the defining challenge of his presidency and of his life. Compared with other presidential crises, like the 9/11 attacks or Hurricane Katrina, it has occurred slowly, with ample warning, giving the president many opportunities to act and, we see now, fail.

The accounting will continue. And like the pandemic, it will be devastating.

Some of the MAGA-cult may have begun to fall away, but probably not many. Most of them are in the grip of the same psychological need that turns people into Moonies, Scientologists, Southern Baptists; they aren’t animated by reason, but by perverse psychological impulses.

Jerry Falwell, Jr., a regular chip off the old block, stupidly reopened Liberty University to students last week. Now — What do you know? — he’s got coronavirus all over campus, and abruptly-departing students are taking it home.

“We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.

So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. An additional eight were told to self-isolate.

[ … ]

Of the 1,900 students who initially returned last week to campus, Mr. Falwell said more than 800 had left. But he said he had “no idea” how many students had returned to off-campus housing.

Never — Never. Ever. — allow Holy Men to go messing with grown-up stuff; their minds can’t be trusted.

There is at least one good thing about the coronavirus pandemic: For anybody who is paying attention and has a properly functioning mind, the anti-social lunacy of too many believers is now in plain sight.

Some Megachurches Are Still Packing In Crowds

Congregants of megachurches in Louisiana, Ohio and Florida attended services in defiance of social distancing orders on Sunday morning, even as politicians and doctors took to weekly news shows to warn of coronavirus’s spread in the U.S.

[ … ]

Pastor Spell told local news outlet NBC15 earlier this month that he didn’t believe his congregation was in danger of infection. “It’s not a concern,” he said. “The virus, we believe, is politically motivated. We hold our religious rights dear and we are going to assemble no matter what someone says.” The church did not respond to request for comment.

[ … ]

The pastor [Howard-Browne] condemned scientific reports about the virus and said that the pandemic was of less concern than the flu, a view that medical experts have disputed. The church did not respond to a request for comment.

You might think that a seminary graduate would have enough sense, or aversion to looking like a fool, to know he isn’t competent to hold a meaningful opinion about the transmissibility and severity of a new virus. You’d be wrong. I wouldn’t care much if the idiots who listen to these fools harmed only themselves; after all, Darwinian natural selection applies to homo sapiens, too. Unfortunately, they also harm the trusting bystanders in their life.

UPDATE: Hillsborough County, Florida, has issued an arrest warrant for Pastor Howard-Browne.

There is something seriously wrong with Donald Trump.