JOIN THE DISCUSSION, COVID, BORIS AND IS THE WEST MOVING TO THE RIGHT?

This week, I feel we have gone even deeper into the Twilight Zone.  I have been following the statistics for Covid-19, and even I, a non scientist or expert, can see we are still at the peak and likely to go very much higher.   If  over 2,500 people  are testing positive each day, then how many people have those 2,500 infected?  How do you trace the contacts of 2,500 every day?  It's an impossible task.

I feel the government is trying to woo us into a false sense of security in some kind of Orwellian way.  It began with the VE Day celebrations (first in my recollection) with people quickly abandoning all their weeks of quarantine to go party with their neighbours.  This week has seen the beaches packed and the streets come back to life.  It's like 'social distancing is so over'.  Why?  When I first starting checking numbers, Kent, for example, had 18 confirmed cases, now it has nearly 5,000 and I'm supposed to feel safer?

Within this blog there are those who think this global pandemic is an almighty hoax, seriously.  But they can have their say.  My first question to them is however, why?  Accusations have been thrown at Bill Gates for example, he apparently, wants to inject every citizen of the world with some kind of microchip that will turn us all into automatons. Unfortunately, that is not even a good plot for a bad sci fi movie, for what purpose for example?  And of course, Bill Gates, has never shown any signs of wanting to rule the world, no diamond collared white cats or gold toilets.

But I won't rule conspiracy theorists out altogether.  There has never been a better time, for those so minded, to harvest masses of private information about us.  I was surprised to learn for example, that all those with access to mobile phone data can literally check an area on a map to see if the population are staying inside.  I found that mind blowing, but of course, right now, there are all sorts of computer whizz kids working on 'apps' that will track and trace the infected (sorry about that, watch way too many zombie films).  We literally won't be able to go anywhere without being tracked and traced.  Scary huh?   

To be honest I gave up on privacy a long time ago, almost as soon as I joined the internet.  It's just not something I would obsess over.  I don't care that my laptop keeps me offering me personalised adverts for fat, fifty and funerals, and I don't care that the Co-op knows I occasionally treat myself to a box of fine chocolates or that I have a penchant for googling 'spooky movies'.  Stores know what our tastes are, as do banks and the machine that dishes out tickets in the car park.  They also know this is the second bottle of pink gin I have bought in 4 weeks.  All that personal information has been harvested by political parties and wanna be despots for decades.  Just for a bit of useless information, buy avocados regularly and you move up a demographic.  

Anyway, we have a good discussion going, Covid-19, Boris, Donald and is the West moving to the extreme right?  Come join us.

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How much do I hate Trump?

I know I should be talking about English politics at the moment and the hapless case of Boris Johnson and our own soaring Covid-19 cases, take it on the chin he said, you too can have a stay in ICU with a team of physicians watching you constantly, followed by a sojourn at Chequers and a short spell of paternity leave for your sixth, or is it 7th child.  Could you imagine Churchill taking time off during WWII to learn how to make bottles and change a nappy?

But as much fun as it is having a dig a Botchit Boris, he is not half as interesting as the as the lunatic in the White House.  I miss his nightly briefings, you literally never knew what was going to happen.  What dumbass idea he was going to come up with.  And tis true, I secretly hoped that at some point the men in white coats would appear, or the Cavalry at least.  Trump loves the verbal sparring and it's funny because he thinks he is winning.  His capacity to delude himself must break all previous records.  Step aside all you Napoleon Bonapartes and Julius Caesars, Donald Trump has spoken; 'I alone can fix it'.  And I suspect, if it wasn't for the Evangelists, he would push God aside too.

Now it shouldn't be entertaining to watch someone have a nervous breakdown, and I feel bad about it, but I'm going to watch anyway, I'm not going to avert my eyes.  We are all living in a time of huge change and huge turmoil, our descendants will wonder how we felt and what we saw.    How we, living in a democracy, came to elect the absolute worst of humanity as our leaders.  We haven't been pressured, we haven't been threatened or bribed, we are here as a result of free will.  How will our descendants interpret that, will they see us as greedy, selfish, inhumane?

We Brits had our opportunity to choose unity, compassion and equal opportunity, but we (not me) voted for a government that we already knew to be heartless, manipulative and probably corrupt.  For my readers in the USA, you still have hope!  That is, within a few short months, you can vote in the grown ups.  Donald Trump's toddler brain is not cute in any way, it is downright dangerous.  You have, waiting to take over and fix everything that has been broken, compassionate statesmen and stateswomen, who understand how government works and how legislature affects ordinary citizens.  Will Trump for example, be held to account for the chaos that ensued following his instinct to ban all flights from Europe?  The thousands trapped in crowded airports for hours on end?  Trump doesn't think.  Johnson has the same problem.

It is bizarre on every level, but especially from the perspective of an onlooker from across the pond.  Your leader has abandoned his leadership and is pretending the coronavirus isn't happening.  True, our leader has also abandoned his leadership, but at least he doesn't think it is a hoax foisted on us by the Labour Party and China.  He also, hasn't as yet, suggested we inject bleach.  I suspect Trump's delegating his powers to the States is because he can see disaster coming and he would prefer the Governors to be held accountable and not he.  Globally, 50million died as a result of the 1918 pandemic, 675,000 in the USA, so right now he is a man with a lot of wriggle room.  Handing responsibility for the pandemic over to the Governors individually, is probably the weakest and most cowardly tactic he could come up with, but he has no idea how to lead and he doesn't have the humility to ask for advice from others.  If Hilary Clinton were President right now, she would have Bill, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and probably George Bush as well, to turn to.  Trump has no-one, because he thinks he is a stable genius and he alone can fix it.  That's scary, see his business history.

But Trump has 100% faith in his ability to bullshit.  More particularly his ability to bullshit the uneducated, who he professes to love.  But he doesn't love them enough to ensure they have the same testing and protections that he and his White House staff have.  Not that they even got that right, as I write this, two members of staff close to Trump and Pence have tested positive for coronavirus.  If the hapless Trump administration cannot keep the virus away from the President and the Vice President, how does that bode for the rest of the USA?  Trump's main tactic, it would appear, is to pretend the virus has gone away.  All his wishes haven't come true, but he is acting as though they have.  There is a sad little boy in there somewhere, but there are a lot of bigger problems to cope with right now.   

I don't judge the American people by their ghastly President and the deplorables that follow him.  I love them for their confidence, their honesty, their sense of fair play (most of the time), I never miss Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, the two Jimmies, Kimmel and Fallon, and not American born, Trevor Noah.  I love their writers, their actors and comedians, and of late, their glamour.  And of course, I love everything Hollywood.  All the cool people, it would appear, hate Trump and his destruction of culture.   It's weird how those on the right always want to destroy art rather than celebrate it.  Perhaps because art, literature and music carries the history of their wrong doings.   Trump will do all in his power to cover up the number of deaths, the number infected and the number unemployed.  Whilst he has all the power he can alter public records.  That won't help anyone, but he will argue, China did first.

He can't however distort the truth in the way he would like.  He has tried 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' a couple of times, and it's never taken.  Journalists are fact checking him on every lying word that comes out of his mouth and it irks him.  Some say he is constantly off his head on Adderall and Sudafed, maybe even cocaine.  He certainly sniffs a lot and his eyes look as though he has hayfever, so it's a possibility.  To me, he brings to mind, every time I have ever been cornered by some drunken, braggadocious old man at a party.  When I was younger, obviously. That is, they/he repeat over and over again for fear you did not fully take in details of their large apartment with room for a pony. Err, yeah, heard that several times - still don't like  you.  I swear if I were in that press gaggle I would get everyone to question him about ventilators, just to take the pee and off script.

My kindest wishes to all my readers, wherever you may be.  Take care.