Post 168 - August 26, 2020

Day 168…

I’m home after 3,804 miles in the car. (6122km.)

If you divided the continental United States into four quadrants, I basically did a big loop through the upper right-hand quadrant. In the last eight days, I drove through, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri and the tiny northern tip of West Virginia.

One of the reasons that I wanted to take this trip was to see for myself how people outside of the liberal urban bubble that I have been living in are navigating through these times.

In terms of the virus, it is clearly affecting life for everyone, everywhere that I went. Businesses all over were either closed or operating under strong restrictions. People everywhere I went were steering clear of each other.

For the most part, whether an individual state was mandating masks or merely recommending that they be worn, people were wearing masks.

Iowa was the worst of the states that I was in, in that regard. Last week the White House task force specifically recommended that Iowa mandate face mask and close its bars, but so far Governor Kim Reynolds hasn’t complied with that. She is a strong supporter of the President and spoke glowingly of him at last night’s convention.

This past week, Iowa’s seven day rolling average of cases was its highest ever. In some places the positivity rate has hit 30%. Local businesses in Iowa were honestly the only places that I saw on my entire trip that didn’t have signs on their doors asking that customers wear masks. National chain franchises in Iowa, on the other hand, did. And people were wearing them.

Like the struggle to get people to wear seat belts, the struggle to get people to wear masks has seemingly, at least in this section of the country, largely been settled. Maybe not in sparsely populated areas, but certainly everywhere where people are regularly in contact with each other. Whatever they are saying, they are wearing masks.

I am sure that driving through this northeastern rectangle is a completely different experience than, say, driving through any of the other quadrants would be. In only one busy local truck stop in Iowa did I feel that wearing my mask was like walking into a Biker bar and ordering a milk. But even there, nobody really gave me a second look.

Nightlife is pretty much over everywhere. Very little, if anything, is open after 5pm anywhere I went. Chicago, which was maybe the biggest city I was in, had some bars that stayed open later, but there were very few people in them. Chicago, of course, is still reeling from their recent spate of violent unrest so people who might ordinarily go out were maybe staying home.

Unsurprisingly, there is very little tourism. Anywhere. Many Museums are still closed. Museums that have opened have timed entries, but not many people seem to be taking advantage of that.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland which would ordinarily be packed at this time of year, had just tens of people inside rather than hundreds.

When I went through the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, there were only two other couples watching the short orientation film with me. We all sat, masked, in a giant triangle about 30 feet apart from each other in an auditorium that had a capacity for several hundred people. I then went through the exhibits basically by myself.

Like New York, businesses surrounding these attractions that rely on tourist traffic are either closed or basically empty.

The Conference Board is a non-profit business organization with over 1,000 major businesses among its members. Yesterday, they released the numbers for August. Their Consumer Confidence Index is at its lowest level in six years. It dropped from 91.7 last month to 84.8 this month. Why? The $600 pandemic assistance payments stopped. The Senate is refusing to keep them going and have gone on a break leaving us all to deal with this on our own.

American Airlines has just announced that it will need to lay off 19,000 employees come October if no more assistance is coming from the Federal government. British Airways in Britain is facing much the same thing. They are about to lay off over 10,000 of its employees and have cut the salaries of many of the remaining workers to devastating effect.

It still seems inevitable to me that the Senate is going to have to pass a new stimulus package with some real help in it.

Listening to the radio in the car this past week, it is apparent to me that the issues that are of most concern to the general population are our kids going back to school and the sports seasons getting back up and running. 

Racial discussions were largely absent from the airwaves.  Then on Sunday came the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin (about an hour north of Chicago).

He was shot in the back seven times at point blank range by a Police officer, in front of his three kids, while he was getting into his car. He was unarmed. While he has survived thus far, his family reported yesterday that he is likely to be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.

Protests have erupted in Kenosha as well as in other areas. Last night armed vigilantes clashed with protestors and two people were killed. They are still trying to figure out what happened. It wasn’t the police who did the shootings yesterday. It was private citizens acting on their own.

An alarming perception has taken root, and is growing, that peaceful protesting and violent rioting and looting are one and the same thing. The Republicans are relentlessly pushing this - both their politicians and pundits.

Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee has just signed a bill making it a felony crime for protestors to camp out on state property. A felony conviction means that those people would lose their right to vote.

The entire time I was out on the road, NPR was the sole liberal voice I heard on the radio. Half of the time, it was out of range. In contrast there were countless local and national conservative radio shows hammering home half-truths, twisted facts or outright lies.

People in rural areas live far away from basic services so they spend a lot of time in their cars. That’s what everybody out there is listening to. Every day. Is it any wonder that throughout our country Trump/Pence signs dot the streets and highways? If you listen to the hysterical fear mongering coming from some of the speakers at the Republican National Convention, you will get a very good idea of what is being broadcast on local radio stations 24/7.

Last night’s Convention broke so many Federal ethics laws that nobody quite knows what to do about it yet.

Federal employees are prohibited from participating in campaign activities. Last night, it was clear, that many of them were.

In 1938, there were allegations that the Democrats were using Works Progress Administration (WPA) jobs to gain unfair political advantage. A dissident Democrat, Senator Carl Hatch from New Mexico sponsored an Act to end it.  President Franklin Roosevelt signed The Hatch Act of 1939 into law. Since then it has been amended and modified several times, most recently by President Obama in 2012.

Under the Act, the following people are prohibited from taking an active part in political campaigning:

• (i) an employee paid from an appropriation for the Executive Office of the President; or

• (ii) an employee appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, whose position is located within the United States, who determines policies to be pursued by the United States in the nationwide administration of Federal laws.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressing the Republican National Convention from the roof of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on a taxpayer paid diplomatic mission to Israel openly and brazenly breaks that law.

Using the Federally owned White House which is staffed and run by Federal employees as a location to address the American people for the purpose of campaigning during a campaign event openly and brazenly breaks that law.

If all of this is allowed to pass unchallenged, then it will become the norm. If the President and his cronies break the law because they feel that they are above the law and nothing happens, then they are right. An unenforced law is no better than no law at all.

Our country deserves better than this. WE deserve better than this.

Larry Kudlow, the White House Economic Advisor spoke of the virus in the past tense last night. He spoke of it in the past tense when 1,147 people died from it yesterday and many more will die from it today.

The First Lady addressed an audience of people who were not wearing masks. They were all sitting close to each other. She seems to be in her own little bubble. Her “Be Best” campaign against cyber-bullying is laughable given who she is married to. Her declaration that we all deserve total honesty from our President is obliviously stating the obvious.

The reason that you have a politician’s spouse speak to a convention is for them to give the American people an insight into who that politician is - out of the spotlight. Jill Biden spoke movingly of her husband last week. If we didn’t like Barak Obama before, the fact that Michelle Obama so clearly does, would have convinced us.

The current First Lady spoke largely about herself last night as if she were laying the groundwork for an exit strategy. Notably, though, she is the only person so far during the RNC who has offered their condolences to the families who have lost loved ones and who been impacted by COVID-19.

We live in a remarkable country.

It was built on the blood of the Native Americans who were here first and with the blood and agony of the enslaved African Americans who were freighted here to work against their wills. Countless immigrants have subsequently arrived here from every corner of the planet - many of whom were persecuted in the places that they fled.

We are a people born of trauma.

If the only thing that we judge the success or failure of our country on is our Gross National Product, then we are going to fail.

When we broke from England, our Declaration of Independence stated that the reason we were forming our own country was because we all felt that we had the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our country’s people are being routinely killed by law enforcement officers.

Our country’s people are losing their lives to the coronavirus in unimaginable numbers.

Our country’s businesses are collapsing, and our people are facing severe economic hardship.

We need to help each other heal. Any person’s happiness that is built upon on the unhappiness of another, is not just.

We each have the right to a piece of that happiness. We all deserve a slice of that glorious pie. It’s time we make the portions fairer.

I’m glad I took that trip but I’m even more glad to be home. Nothing much has changed - I was only gone for a week after all - but I was truly reminded that what we have here is well worth fighting for.

This country has unlimited potential, but if it is going to continue forward, we will need to fight for it.

Let’s get to it.