… in doing so, the administration is effectively bowing to — and asking Americans to accept — a devastating proposition: that a steady, daily accumulation of lonely deaths is the grim cost of reopening the nation.

Washington Post May 9, 2020

If we were being asked as a people, to make sure sacrifices to ensure our survival as a nation, or to protect our children or parents, people would be asking where to sign up. I would.

They say that on the day after Pearl Harbor, entire classes of young men in college dropped out of school and joined the services. Americans are not fearful when the cause demands. Just within the last two decades, thousands of Americans far braver than me faced fire in the Middle East because they wore the American flag on the uniform.

Americans are unwilling, however, to act recklessly, all to ensure the political survival of a man who’s given no indication that he’d ever sacrificed for anything in his life, never mind for his nation. The italicized paragraph? Trump is asking people to get back to face death, to get the economy going, to get reelected.

He has heard his voters say they pray for him. Now it would seem, Trump wants to know if they’ll die for him.

Some of Trump’s advisers described the president as glum and shell-shocked by his declining popularity. In private conversations, he has struggled to process how his fortunes suddenly changed from believing he was on a glide path to reelection to realizing that he is losing to the likely Democratic nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, in virtually every poll, including his own campaign’s internal surveys, advisers said. He also has been fretting about the possibility that a bad outbreak of the virus this fall could damage his standing in the November election, said the advisers, who along with other aides and allies requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Almost 80,000 Americans have died, and one out of five is unemployed, but Trump is “glum” and shell-shocked because his popularity is down, not that this nation is going through what it’s enduring.

I wonder if he ever sees that the two are related? That if people had the impression that he cared about something bigger than himself, it might not be held against him as much, and he might not need the economy to lift him politically.

A real president could lift the American people, and not just economically, but spiritually. A real president could have spearheaded an economic package that put the poor and lower-middle class first, ahead of American big business, and thus had people ready to stay home until testing and safety measures could be put in place.

But that’s not Trump, and that’s why he’s terrified.

The president is also eager to resume political travel in June, including holding his signature rallies by the end of the summer in areas where there are few cases, advisers said.

He must make it about him. The rally is calling him like the needle calls an addict. He is “glum,” “shell-shocked,” jonesing – and scared. He thought he had this all wrapped up.

He thought being president was easy. even in business he could file for bankruptcy and move on. For the first time in his life, he has some responsibility for something bigger than himself, and a court order can’t grant him an out. He realizes that he can yell as much as he wants, and it won’t fix anything. So he’s sad … to see himself in this position.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom