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If Mike Pence Were President, How Many More Americans Would Be Alive Today?: Over 80,000 and Counting

May 22, 2020
by Peter Feinman
God’s Plan for Mike Pence (The Atlantic, Tim O'Brien)

If Mike Pence were President, how many more Americans would be alive today? I posed that question in my blog on April 27, 2020, entitled If Mike Pence Were President, How Many More Americans Would Be Alive Today? At that time, I did not have a specific figure. I wrote this about the counterfactual:

This time we have hard-based scientific evidence that the situation could have been different. We know that social distancing and lock-downs work. It is possible to examine the dates of when cities in the United States (like New York) and cities throughout the world commenced a lock down. The numbers aren’t hidden figures. They are visible in plain sight. We know that the earlier these actions were taken, the fewer deaths there would have been and would be.  The same applies to the states. It is possible to examine the numbers from the 50 states and observe how many lives would have been saved if a state had acted a day earlier, two days earlier, a week earlier, or two weeks earlier. We know with different national leadership fewer Americans would have died and the economy wouldn’t have collapsed as much.

In my concluding paragraph, I wrote:

It is really not so difficult to imagine a different scenario being played out. The evidence is right there before us. We have the numbers. We have the multiple examples from the different cities, states, and countries.

Now we have the answer. A team of researchers at Columbia University have crunched the numbers and created a model in a report entitled “Differential Effects of Intervention Timing on COVID-19 Spread in the United States” by Sen Pei Kandula and Jeffrey Shaman. I don’t expect it to be on the night stand of our elementary-school literate President or mentioned on Fox except perhaps in a derogatory way.

According to the study, the implementation of mitigation measures a week or two earlier would have made a substantial difference. They used the May 3 death toll of 65,307 as a control point for the number of deaths and March 15 as the date for the start of mitigation measures in the United States. The results for starting earlier are:

March 8 – a decrease in the number of deaths from 65, 307 to 29,410 deaths for a reduction of 35,987 or almost 55%

March 1 – a decrease in the number of deaths from 65,307 to 11,253 deaths for a reduction of 54,054 or almost 83%.

If we extrapolate the results to the pending 100,000 actual deaths, the results based on the March 1 date mean approximately 17,000 Americans would have died instead for a reduction of 83,000. Presumably these calculations would ripple through the timeline.

True, this is a model. But when asked by Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” about the impact of starting mitigation efforts in February Anthony Fauci replied:

“I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives…  Obviously, no one is going to deny that.”

My immediate reaction on hearing that comment was that obviously one person was going to deny that. After all he rated himself a “10” and wouldn’t change anything he has done. Fauci went on to say:

“We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But we — it is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

Would we be where we are right now if the Senate had voted to remove the impeached President and Mike Pence had become President in February instead? We will never know but I think it is safe to say he couldn’t have done any worse. We certainly never would have heard of hydroxychloroquine or have considered the feasibility of disinfectants. Time Magazine has reported a spike in accidental poisonings with household disinfectants (May 25, 2020). The number of prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine has nearly doubled now that it has the Presidential seal of approval. How long will it be before the lawsuits against the government start?

But, of course, Mike Pence did not become President? Could he have risen to the occasion and become a profile in courage against the buffoon President? Could Vice President Brown Nose have cast aside his subordinate identity and become as outspoken and dedicated to the truth as Fauci is? I asked that question in a blog on October 3, 2019, minus the Fauci reference, entitled Will Mike Pence Become a Profile in Courage?   The blog gave me the opportunity to compare Pence to a lookalike Star Trek figure Captain Merik in “Bread and Circuses” who did rise to the occasion.

Mike Pence Is No Captain Merik in Star Trek “Bread and Circuses” (William Smithers)

My conclusion then was that Pence would not:

What will Mike Pence do? He prides himself on his Christian values. Will he tell the truth? He prides himself on never dining alone with a woman who is not his wife. Will he tell the truth? He prides himself on his integrity. Will he tell the truth? He thinks he is part of God’s plan. Will he tell the truth?

No. Even his staff knows the truth does not register with him.

He will not rise to the occasion.

He will not be a profile in courage.

He never would have been picked for the position of Vice President if he was.

Thinking about this topic now caused me to reread The Atlantic article God’s Plan for Mike Pence by McKay Coppins (January/February 2018). Coppins began by describing Pence’s appearance at a political rally where he passed on the good wishes of the president.

He delivers this message with a slight chuckle that has a certain, almost subversive quality to it. Watch Pence give enough speeches, and you’ll notice that this often happens when he’s in front of a friendly crowd. He’ll be witnessing to evangelicals at a mega-church, or addressing conservative supporters at a rally, and when the moment comes for him to pass along the president’s well-wishes, the words are invariably accompanied by an amused little chuckle that prompts knowing laughter from the attendees. It’s almost as if, in that brief, barely perceptible moment, Pence is sending a message to those with ears to hear—that he recognizes the absurdity of his situation; that he knows just what sort of man he’s working for; that while things may look bad now, there is a grand purpose at work here, a plan that will manifest itself in due time. [bold added]

Did you notice that “slight chuckle” at any of the coronavirus press conferences? You probably noticed the grimaces and groans of Fauci and Birx as the simple-minded immature child wandered off into his imaginary world. As for Vice President Brown Nose, nary a facial expression of any kind except beaming adulation. At some point someone will document the timeline of when and why Pence sold his soul.

Coppins also reported Pence as saying:

“We’ve come to a pivotal moment in the life of this country….It’s a good time to pray for America.” His voice rising in righteous fervor, the vice president promises an opening of the heavens. “If His people who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray,” he proclaims, “He’ll hear from heaven, and He’ll heal this land!”

It is quite possible Pence actually believes what he is preaching. If McConnell has been the conduit for the appointment of conservative judges, then Pence has been the conduit for white evangelical Christians to the White House. He’s doing God’s work.

Pence is following God’s plan.  “If you’re Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you know God had a plan,” says Ralph Reed.

Coppins own analysis probably written at the end of 2017 is tinged with tragic irony given what has occurred.

Pence is a man who believes heaven and Earth have conspired to place him a heartbeat—or an impeachment vote—away from the presidency. At some crucial juncture in the not-too-distant future, that could make him a threat to Trump.

We had the impeachment. Did you notice any change in Pence? We are having the coronavirus crisis. Did you notice any change in Pence? Do you think the President ever worries about the Vice President telling the truth?

Coppins observed:

In Pence, Trump has found an obedient deputy whose willingness to suffer indignity and humiliation at the pleasure of the president appears boundless.

Still true over two years later.

Kellyanne Conway: “Mike Pence is someone whose faith allows him to subvert his ego to the greater good.”

Pence’s belief in “servant leadership” makes him a perfect patsy for a skilled con artist who knows how to manipulate people.

Evangelical Marc Short [White House director of legislative affairs] told me that in moments of need, Pence turns to a favorite passage in Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Coppins noted this passage in conjunction with the Hollywood Access tape crisis. What exactly is that plan? Is it to go down with a sinking ship? Is it to stand idly by and watch tens of thousands of Americans die? When will that divine plan manifest itself? According to the evangelical Vice President in April:

“I truly do believe that if we all continue to do that kind of social distancing and other guidance broadly from federal and state officials, that we’re going to put this coronavirus in the past. I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic. I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.”

The day of reckoning is upon us. Memorial Day Weekend is here. Will Pence face the truth of his failed prophecy? Will he see the light at the end of tunnel? Will he rise to the occasion? Will he be the leader America needs? No. No. No. And no. Are you kidding me? He will claim his prophecy has been fulfilled just as his Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, will.

Friday Night Lights: Risking Lives for the Dow

May 21, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Friday Night Lights versus the Coronavirus (https://www.nccfnl.com/)

We have now celebrated V-Zero Day over the coronavirus per the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In a few days we will be looking back at the crisis per the Vice President of the United States. Next month we will be back to normal per the son in-law of the President of the United States. We have prevailed. There is light at the end of the tunnel per the President of the United States. We’re back!

What does it mean to be back to normal? For Trumpicans, the coronavirus crisis has been an economic crisis and not a medical crisis. People in New York got the virus. People in prisons did. People in nursing homes did. You know…those people did. Real Americans didn’t get the coronavirus.  As a person at a plaza in an Atlanta suburb said:

“When you start seeing where the cases are coming from and the demographics⸺I’m not worried.” (quoted in the Washington Post and by Michelle Goldberg, NYT 5/19/20).

The counter quotation on the same day was by Rebecca Patterson the girlfriend of Ron Wilkins in Texas who endured 37 days on a ventilator and has the medical bills to show it.

“People don’t really understand how serious this is until they know somebody who’s going through it. It’s only a matter of time before everyone in the country knows someone. I don’t know what the solution is but I don’t think hurrying to open is it.” (USA Today, 5/19/20).

If she was a Trumpican, it doesn’t seem like she is anymore.

Friday Night Lights

Sports, like every other segment of society, has been part of the coronavirus crisis. The Olympics have been postponed. Professional basketball and hockey seasons ended. Tennis tournaments and gold matches weren’t held. There was no “Play ball” for baseball. Football is trying to figure out what to do. Colleges are struggling with how to play sports if there are no students on campus or in the stands. But what about high school sports which affects every community in the country?

Friday Night Lights has been a book, a movie, and a TV series. It carved out a niche for itself as a tale of the role of high school football in a Texan community. It almost was an anthropological window into the way of life of a people and with a story to boot. Even people who were not from a Friday Night Light community themselves were drawn into its storylines of small town life with larger than life meaning.

But besides all that other stuff, it also was about football, about high school kids playing football, about high school kids playing football with practices in August which is only a few months away. Forget about all the talk about reopening schools in September for a moment and think about reopening football practice in a little over two months. Kids practice wearing helmets not masks; they practice near each other with no social distancing; and they sweat a lot especially in the hot and humid south.

And then there are the games. In a Friday Nights Light community, the whole town turns out for the games. It is not like high school in urban communities especially ones with professional sports. It’s tough enough to get coverage of college games yet along high school games there. Friday Night Lights and College Town football are different worlds from City Professional sports. Are you going to deprive these communities of the events that are essential to the social fabric of a community?

The game is more than a game. The whole community is involved. Politicians, families, local businesses, churches…you name it, it is part of the experience. So are the after game parties. So are the caravans to the away games. So is sitting in the stands. Real men don’t wear masks. Real Americans don’t get coronavirus. Who’s going to tell people in the stands to wear masks? Who’s going to tell them to sit apart? Who’s going to enforce it? Friday Night Light life poses an immense challenge if the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the son in-law of the President of the United States, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers are wrong and we have not prevailed, are not looking back, and there still is no light at the end of tunnel.

Church       

Friday Night Lights are not the only places where people gather on a weekly basis. There also is Sunday morning church. That debate isn’t waiting for August, it’s happening now. Weekly services are part of the routine of life for millions of Americans. For others who attend church for marriages, funerals, and the big holidays, the world of people who religiously attend weekly is as remote as Friday Night Lights football communities are. Simply being there in a religious building on a regular basis is part of the way millions bring order to chaos, strengthen themselves for the days to come, and find comfort. Are you going to deprive people of what is essential to their way of life?

We know that people gathered together indoors for an extensive period of time provide a ripe venue for the spread of the coronavirus. Outbreaks have occurred when simply one person has attended such family and religious events. People may not be in churches for as long as they are in a nursing home, a prison, a meat plant, or a cruise ship, but at this point, no one knows how much time it takes to spread the virus. It’s one thing for people to be willing to take the risk with their own lives; it is quite another for them to risk the lives of others. That’s the equivalent of not taking a vaccine.

Political Rallies

Our president feeds on the adulation of people who have accepted him as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name. How long can he go without being fed? How long can they go without praising his name, laughing at his insults, and reciting the approved chants? He needs his rallies.

These rallies are indoors and for long periods of time.

No one who wears a mask will be allowed inside. Only Fox will be able to cover the events, the mainstream media won’t be able to.

Only Trumpicans will be present. They are immune to the coronavirus and the crisis is over.

Is there any doubt that Trumpicans will flock by the thousands to rally on behalf of their Lord and Savior once they are finally able to? After all, what could possibly happen to them?

Trumpican Presidential Convention

The single longest and largest concentration of Trumpicans will occur this August at the Trumpican coronation. Nobody will be allowed to wear a mask and there will be armed freedom fighters stationed at the entrances to ensure that no weak and wimpy people are allowed in. There will be no social distancing either. For days, Trumpicans by the thousands will rally indoors on behalf of their leader. And then they will walk the streets of the city in search of food and alcohol where they can continue the celebration. After all, what could possibly happen to them? We have prevailed, we are looking back, and we have reached the light at the end of tunnel.

The reopening of the country will pose many problems. First is the lack of reliable information from our national government. Second is the lack of reliable information from our state governments. Third is the belief in one’s invulnerability which doesn’t end when you stop being a teenager. Fourth is the fact that we are social animals who need to be with other people and touch them physically. Fifth is the origin of this country with the “Don’t Tread on Me” ethos that complicates the challenge of getting people to obey the government or common sense. And finally, of course, there is our impulsive immature child president who lives in an imaginary world where he creates his truth simply by speaking it and helped cause this crisis to begin with. All these factors do not bode well for the reopening.

We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2! We’re Number Two: Trumpicans Rejoice

May 12, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Live from New York! It's Little Donny Disinfectant (Nick Levesque, Atlantic)

We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2! We’re Number Two: Trumpicans rejoice as America’s position in the world declines. The battle between the Middle Kingdom and the City on a Hill for world leadership continues (The City on the Hill versus the Middle Kingdom: Who Will Win World War IV?, May 6, 2018). If anything, the determination to triumph in World War IV has increased. There can be only one cosmic center at a time. It can be Ashur or Babylon, but not both, London or Paris, but not both, New York or Moscow both destroyed at the end of Failsafe, but not both. Ancient Rome and China could rule their respective realms in isolation from each other based on the transportation and communication technologies of its time. Now Mainland China not only can exert its influence in the South China Sea, it can make a mockery of the Monroe Doctrine.

Until recently, China could quietly and steadily move ahead through its Belt and Road Initiative to link the countries of the world to its economic engine. It became the manufacturing center of the world displacing the United States. In the meantime, the United States withdrew from the world, alienated allies, and abandoned its leadership role. From the Chinese perspective, everything was working out fine. It was only a matter of time before it officially assumed the leadership position at international organizations. After all, who was going to stop them?

The coronavirus upset everything. To the best laid plans of mice and men, the Corvid-19. Everything is different now. My first impression back on February 4 was that the virus would undermine China’s quest for global leadership (Kobe and Coronavirus: Meaning for World War IV). China’s mishandling of the coronavirus and the demonstration of American soft power at a global level suggested America would prevail even with a President who had no interest in America’s role in the global arena. In his imaginary world, everyone was looking at America in envy because of his leadership. He displayed no awareness that he already had become a laughing stock even before becoming Little Donny Disinfectant.

But then Mainland China got its act together while Trumpican America did not (Can China Leverage the Coronavirus to World Leadership?, March 19, 2020). As America floundered in February and March not taking Corvid-19 seriously or taking half-ass measures, Mainland China boldly seized the opportunity which it had been given. First, it got its own act together and then, it sought to save the world. It would fill the role that the world expected the United States to fill. In reality since World War II and in movies (Santa Claus to Relocate from Vanishing North Pole to Mar-a-Lago), it was the United States which rose to the occasion. This time it was MIA. Even worse, the American shortcomings were broadcast live for all the world to see. Only in the mind of the American immature child president and on Fox was America succeeding against the virus. Everyone else knew America was a loser.

On April 24, the question was asked “’How Can This Happen?’ A World Missing American Leadership,” (NYT). The article presents a number of people who were stunned at what they were seeing on TV. As succinctly stated: “It is shaking fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism ⸺ the special role the United States played for decades after World War II as the reach of the values and power made it a global leader and example to the world.” American exceptionalism has been superseded by TRUMP EXCEPTIONALISM: he is exceptional and the country is only through his leadership.

TRUMP EXCEPTIONALISM has not played well on the global stage. The eyes of the world are still upon us but now it sees an erratic child who devalues scientific expertise. The seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck lacks the mental necessities to understand science despite his supergenius uncle. It’s not just that the United States is failing the world, its president is failing the American people. Germany and South Korea, countries the United States help revive, is showing the way while the United States lags behind.

The situation hasn’t improved since this article on April 24. A recent expression on this subject was The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump: The president created a leadership vacuum. China intends to fill it by Anne Applebaum (Atlantic, May 3, 2020). The article documents how the world is now full of Alex Baldwins on SNL ridiculing the immature child president. Indirectly, it notes that the world doesn’t watch Fox and that Little Donny Disinfectant is absolutely clueless about his image.

But out there in the real world—out there in the world where Pompeo’s boss is perceived as a sinister clown, and Pompeo himself as just the sinister clown’s lackey—not very many people are listening. Once again: A vacuum has opened up, and the Chinese regime is leading the race to fill it.

These words recall those of Brian Williams on MSNBC where after reporting on the daily absurdities at the White House then intones, “In the real world…” One also recalls the old adage, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”  Applebaum concludes with:

And if Trump wins a second term? Any nation can make a mistake once, elect a bad leader once. But if Americans choose Trump again, that will send a clear message: We are no longer a serious nation. We are as ignorant as our thoughtless, narcissistic, ignorant president. Don’t be surprised if the rest of the world takes note of that, too.  

Imagine being an international traveler from America in the future and having to explain how America could have elected this clown twice! The ridicule the student, tourist, or business person will face will be fierce and unrelenting.

Fortunately the collapse of America’s leadership role may not be fatal. This is because China overreached. At home and abroad, China has ratcheted up the intensity and fervor of its own version of Middle Kingdom exceptionalism. Imagine America if the only news media was the government propaganda network. Imagine if there is no alternative Fox. That is the tragic situation in Mainland China. All there news comes from their Sean Hannity! (The China Hannitys versus the American Hannitys: The 2020 Olympics, April 20, 2020)

Abroad, Wolf Warrior diplomacy has backfired. China expected to be welcomed with open arms as the savior of the world for its largess and own success to defeating coronavirus at home. It’s hasn’t worked out that way. The Wolf Warriors have antagonized with their insults and superiority attitude the very people who are supposed to be thankful to China. They have done such a horrendous job that even Taiwan has been able to take advantage of the mistrust of China to positively reach out to the world itself.

So now Little Donny Disinfectant wants to make China the Mexicans of the 2020 election. Whereas in 2016, Mexico was going to pay for the wall, China now is going to pay reparations. Despite having no evidence but wishful thinking, would-be 2024 Trumpican Presidential candidate Mike Pompeo intends to indict China for unleashing the coronavirus of the world. He is aiming for billions. That’s the scam.

The Chinese counter to this maneuver is easy. Besides simply refusing to pay, China has a devastating case to make. It no longer needs the canard about American soldiers introducing the virus in China ⸺ it has Fox. China already can use clips from Fox and other shows that highlight the ineptitude, incompetence, and ignorance of the immature child President. Little Donny Disinfectant is a laughing stock in China too. The “Mourning in America” video was made when the number of deaths was 60,000. Look how obsolete it is already. Joe Biden is now starting to launch his own videos highlighting the shortcomings of the incumbent. In the international arena, it will be a lot easier for China to make the case that Trump is an idiot than it will be for Pompeo to prove that the virus originated as a Chinese plot. But the world doesn’t vote in American elections. Pompeo’s goal is not to convince the world but to show Trumpicans that he is fighting for them…and therefore they should vote in 2020 for the candidate who is fighting for them as they did in 2016.

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: in 3 days!!!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus: in 13 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now
July 4 2020 Supreme Court rules Republican President is above the law; American experiment ends short of 250th anniversary
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
November 3 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS
January 20 2021: Nancy Pelosi becomes President
January 20 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers

A Frog, Boiling Water, and a President: Accepting the New Normal

May 8, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Zero deaths per day rising to 3,000 per day

Everyone knows the story of the frog and boiling water. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog immediately will jump out. The frog will live to hop another day no worse for the wear. Instead, suppose the frog is placed in a pot of water at room or pond temperature and then water is then heated. What happens to the frog then? The frog dies. It keeps adjusting to the new normal until it is too late and it dies. The story is a good one whether it is true or not for frogs. That’s because it is true for people.

Imagine this scenario for being placed in a pot of boiling water. The year is 2000. Suddenly you visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future or a Terminator or Marty McFly or Clarence the Angel. You are told about the year 2020. You instantly become fully immersed in the year 2020. [This works better in science fiction than in the real world.] What do you see in the world of 2020 compared to the world you know in 2000?

A president who can’t tell the truth except by accident.
A president with no morals, no ethics, and no conscience.
A president with no sense of sympathy or empathy.
A president who is full-scale narcissist.
A president who is a bigot.
A president who is incapable of reading a book.
A president who has trouble speaking in complete sentences.
A president who has elementary-school level writing skills.
A president who has alienated America’s allies.
A president who prefers dictators and authoritarian leaders to democratic ones.
A president who fires anyone who is professional and loyal to the Constitution over him.
A president who will only accept happy talk from subordinates.
A president who thrives on insulting and demeaning people.
A president who operates on the level of a seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck.
A president who had the brains of an immature child.
A president at the time when a new disease killed tens of thousands of Americans because he lives in an imaginary world and has no management skills.
A president at the time when a new disease caused the largest unemployment numbers since the depression in little over one month.
A president who forfeited America’s leadership role in the world that it had held since World War II.
A president who is the laughingstock of the world.
A president who thought disinfectant could cure people of a virus.
A president who 40% of the American population accept as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, who can do no wrong.

So there you are in 2000 suddenly confronted in one overwhelming moment with the totality of President Donald Trump in the year 2020. In an instant, all at once, you are hit with the staggering onslaught of having to absorb all the conditions itemized above.

What would your reaction be if you are not a Trumpican?

You would scream. You would scream as loud as you could possibly scream. You would scream for as long as you possibly could scream. And then you would scream again. After physically exhausting yourself and while laying helpless in bed or on the floor, you would ask the Ghost of Christmas Future or the Terminator, Marty McFly, or Clarence the Angel how could such a dystopian world could exist? Could anything be done to prevent such a dystopia from occurring? Was such a dystopia inevitable or merely a possibility?

Of course, such an event in 2000 did not and could not occur. There was no way anyone could realistically predict the election to the American presidency of the immature child simultaneous with the coronavirus. Maybe someone could and did predict one and not the other, but both seems farfetched. No such script would have been accepted by Hollywood. No such book proposal would have been accepted by a publisher. Even Donald Trump would not have believed anything so outlandish.

But in the real world, we were not dropped into a pot of boiling water. In the real world we did not awaken after being a coma for 20 years. In the real world, we experienced the future one day at a time, like heating a pot of water. And we adjusted to the new normal little by little until at last we died…or will be able to avoid the horrendous future shown by the Ghost of Christmas Future, the Terminator, Marty McFly, or Clarence the Angel? Will we be able to make things right and live the world of George Bailey and Donna Reed? Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Meanwhile in the real world as we ponder our future, the pot keeps boiling. Look at what the unhinged President has been able to accomplish recently.

Fauci has been muzzled.
Flynn has been exonerated.
Obamacare has been targeted even during a health epidemic.
Food stamps have been curtailed even as hunger mounts.
Inspector Generals have been neutered and replaced with West Wing World replicas.

We know that Mike Pence has sold his soul.
We see that Kayleigh McEnany has too.
We watch as Deborah Birx struggles to keep hers.
We watch as Mike Pompeo campaigns for the 2024 Trumpican Party presidential nomination…assuming that the current incumbent won’t run then even from prison.

We learn about the value of human life to the President with no conscience. No more talk about zero deaths soon. No more talk about 50,000 deaths, or 60,000 deaths, or 75,000 deaths. We wonder when in June we will hit 100,000. Hannity will still crow that it is far less than 2 million so why believe the so-called experts and scientists. It is past the time to liberate Americans so We the People are able to live free and let die. By the way, 3,000 deaths/day for a year is over 1 million people. If there is still no vaccine and/or the prospective death rate increases as we are freed from oppressive governors, will Hannity and co. still be exulting then?

So now the President has made a decision. That’s what he is supposed to do. The buck stops with him. He takes responsibility. He is the wartime President and We the People are his warriors. In a war, people die. Bonespur Boy accepts that. He knows that in a war, he will have to order people to their death. He accepts the projection that 3,000 people/day will die between now and the election. He can live with that number. After all real men can’t get infected and real Americans can’t be either. If old people who are going to die soon anyway die and…you know…those people  die, too, that is a price he is willing to pay to re-open the economy so he can be re-elected and maintain his immunity. The gut instincts that enabled him to exploit the pain of Americans in 2016 now tell him that Americans, especially Trumpicans will accept 3,000 deaths/day as the new normal. The frog will be stay in the gradually heating pot.

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 25 2020: celebrate the victory over the coronavirus: in 17 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
NOVEMBER 3, 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS
January 20, 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers.

The America We Need versus the Leadership We Have

May 6, 2020
by Peter Feinman
What hole? I don't see a hole? Do you see a hole? (Waterford, NY, May 3, 2020, CNN)

“The America We Need” is the title of a two-page editorial in the Sunday Review of the New York Times (April 19, 2020, print). The huge font size of the title and the location on pages 2-3 of the section deliver a message of importance that is diminished in the digital format. Although the editorial doesn’t include the word “leadership” in the title, much of it is about leadership during crises in American history. As one might expect, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt figure prominently in the discussion. Obviously their examples as well as Lincoln’s Memorial have been in the news a lot lately.

One prominent name was missing: George Washington. It is easy to overlook his importance and fail to recognize that if he had not been the leader he was there would have been no Union for Lincoln to save and none for Roosevelt to rescue and protect. Truly Washington was “the indispensable man.” Regardless of the French military contribution to American success in winning the American Revolution, the likelihood is that no other person could have kept the former colonies now states together for France to aid. Similarly without him as the expected first president, who knows if the delegates ever would have forged a compromise that constituted us as a country. It is not just the selection of the capital city site that now bears his name that kept the states together. They forged the country with a sense with the awareness that he was there to lead them. Finally, once he did lead the country, he established routines that minimized the possibility that the American President would be above the law or have the right to do whatever he wanted.

Turning to Lincoln and Roosevelt, there are some critical points to consider especially now that they have been abandoned.

1. The belief in a strong American role in human history and the global arena
2. The belief in allies and not zero-sum relationships except against actual enemies
3. The importance of home, education, and infrastructure
4. The recognition that not all Americans were sons and daughters of the American Revolution but that people who were Americans by choice stood as one with those who were sons and daughters.

They read. They were interested in history. They were capable of growth. They lived in the real world.

The opening line of the editorial is:

From some of its darkest hours, the United States has emerged stronger and more resilient.

The closing lines are:

The United States has a chance to emerge from this latest crisis as a stronger nation, more just, more free and more resilient. We must seize the opportunity.

“Chance” is not a strong expression of hope and confidence. It is not a ringing endorsement of the idea that we will emerge “more just, more free and more resilient.” It is a recognition that we might not. The last sentence in the editorial with its imperative action highlights the urgency. The editorial mentions the current President but almost in passing:

After criticizing the actions of the “White House” regarding the procurement of the necessary medical supplies and equipment, the editorial backs into denigrating the wartime President. Because of “Trump’s feckless leadership and the tattered condition of the government he heads” bad things are happening, bad things to use the sophisticated analytical terms preferred by the President. Almost hidden in the editorial is the call that “the country is burdened with weak leadership. There is an upcoming “chance” to replace that leadership as was done in the elections of Lincoln and Roosevelt. For an editorial entitled “The America We Need,” these uses of “chance’ poorly reflect on the “fierce urgency of now” that faces We the People.

Can a bro from Queens provide adult leadership to America?

Leadership We Need Not Just in New York State

You are living a moment in history. This is going to be one of those moments they’re going to write and they are going to talk about for generations. This is a moment that is going to change this nation. This is a moment that forges character, forges people, changes people. … Ten years from now, you’ll be talking about today to your children or your grandchildren and you will shed a tear because you remember the lives lost. You’ll remember the faces and you’ll remember the names and you’ll remember how hard we worked and that we still lost loved ones. … But, you will also be proud. You’ll be proud of what you did. You will be proud that you showed up. You showed up when other people played it safe, you had the courage to show up. You had the skill and professionalism to make a difference and save lives. That’s what you will have done.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, to the National Guard, March 27, 2020

Leadership We Have
Now consider the words of the National Tweet in-chief.

In a Twitter message on May 4, 2020, on George W. Bush’s three-minute call for national unity video the day before: “(W)here was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside. He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history.”

In a later Twitter re-tweet from a Trumpican: “Evidence has surfaced that Barack Obama was the one running the Russian hoax.”

At a press conference after being informed that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had just issued a report expressing the conclusion that the coronavirus was not man-made, the wartime President twice asked for the name of the person who had issued the report that contradicted what he had just said. Gosh, what do think was going to happen to her while no one was looking?

What can be learn from these recent incidents?

1. The wartime President is the first President in the last century who can’t and doesn’t want to consult past presidents in a time of crisis. He constantly berates and belittles them with no awareness that future American Presidents will be even more brutal about him.

2. It’s always about him. No surprise there.

3. His simple-mindedness was on display. He always reverts to being the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb- aleck because that who he really is. Notice he didn’t simply castigate Bush for not being loyal during the attempted extortion of the Ukraine – it was “the greatest” hoax in the entirety of American history. Here he combines his simple-mindedness with his ignorance.

How many hoaxes in American history can he even name that don’t involve him? The odds are in the Trumpican universe the claim is correct since the only other hoax he can name is the Russian one. Even if he used the term in reference to other events can he name them?

Notice also the use of the superlative. His simplemindedness operates on a binary basis. There is no nuance or in-between. It is all or nothing.

The worst trade deal ever… [How many does he even know about?]
The worst presidential campaign ever… [How many does he even know about?]
The worst Secretary of State ever… [How many does he even know about?]
The absolute worst Speaker of the House in United States history/maybe the worst speaker in the history of our country… [How many does he even know about?]
The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on our country (impeachment)… [How many does he even know about?]
I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen…I believe I am treated worse than Lincoln.

The pattern should be obvious. The historically-ignorant immature child only knows about 1 or 2 examples at the most anyway in each category. In his universe, the accusations may be true! Don’t judge him by adult standards as if he is knowledgeable about American history.

Real Men Don’t Cry
Our immature child President brings other characteristics to his leadership.

“When I see a man cry I view it as a weakness. The last time I cried was when I was a baby.” (People magazine 2015)

No sympathy. No empathy. No mask. Real men don’t get coronavirus.

Fox is Bonespur Boy’s Westworld: a fantasy realm where the President can be the man he wants to be rather than the man he is (David Plouffe as told to Maureen Dowd, NYT March 6, 2020, print)

“He seems psychologically incapable of dealing with a virus that is complex and uncertain. The virus will be in every community and needs truth, honesty and intelligence ⸺ all absent from the unstable Trump, who at his core is a frightened boy and pretender.” (Maureen Dowd, NYT March 6, 2020, print)

Exactly right. That’s what happens when an immature child is forced to operate in the adult world and is out of his league.

“At a time of crisis, America is led by a whiny childlike man whose ego is too fragile to let him concede ever having made any kind of error.” (Paul Krugman, NYT, May 5, 2020, print)

Almost right. He is not “childlike,” he actually has the brain of a child. Check his brain scans. Talk to a child psychiatrist.

The stress on functioning in the adult world is too much for the immature child. It has become too difficult for him to make up imaginary rules that work even in his own mind. So what can Donnee Disinfectant do? Declare game over, muzzle the Time magazine Person of the Year, and start a new game of economic recovery. Because in his world, even a death toll of 3,000 Americans/day is acceptable as long as he thinks it will mean he is re-elected and maintains his immunity from jail.

Soon it will be May 25, Victory over Coronavirus Day.

I truly do believe that if we all continue to do that kind of social distancing and other guidance broadly from federal and state officials, that we’re going to put this coronavirus in the past. I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic. I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us. (The most pathetic Vice President in American history on Geraldo Rivera’s radio talk show, May 1, 2020)

Are you ready? Start making your celebration plans to party now.

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 25 2020: celebrate the victory over the coronavirus: in 19 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
January 20, 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers.

The countdown continues.

Trumptanic Hits the Coronavirus Iceberg: Who Will Sink? Who Will Swim?

May 4, 2020
by Peter Feinman

There isn’t any iceberg.
There was an iceberg but it’s in a totally different ocean.
The iceberg is in this ocean but it will melt very soon.
There is an iceberg but we didn’t hit the iceberg.
We hit the iceberg, but the damage will be repaired very shortly.
The iceberg is a Chinese iceberg.
We are taking on water but every passenger who wants a lifeboat can get a lifeboat, and they are beautiful lifeboats.

Look, passengers need to ask nicely for the lifeboats if they want them.
We don’t have any lifeboats, we’re not lifeboat distributors.
Passengers should have planned for icebergs and brought their own lifeboats.
I really don’t think we need that many lifeboats.
We have lifeboats and they’re supposed to be our lifeboats, not the passengers’ lifeboats.
The lifeboats were left on shore by the last captain of this ship.
Nobody could have foreseen the iceberg.
Dave Granlund

The Trumptanic has hit the coronavirus iceberg. Who will sink? Who will swim?

Lately I have been watching segments of The Morning Joe Show. During the recent shows, the hosts have referred to the “erratic” behavior of the President of the United States who appears to be having a “meltdown.” That term triggered the Titanic link in my mind. The hosts claimed this erratic behavior was showing up in the polls. They show Biden ahead nationally and in battleground states and even tied in Texas. And this is before the number of coronavirus deaths increases faster and well-beyond the 60,000 limit once communicated.

While this banter can be informative and entertaining, it suffers from a serious flaw. This flaw is not unique to this one show, but its presence undermines the message the hosts are delivering about the inept and incompetent crisis management of the ignorant self-centered wartime President. The flaw is the persistent attempt to analyze and understand the decisions and actions of our immature child President as if he were an adult. The result is an analysis that borders on useless. He is feeling the stress as all the techniques he uses to maintain his imaginary world are not working with the coronavirus. To get his mojo back, he needs to develop a new set of rules for his imaginary world that can carry him to November (see below).

Let’s recap the situation.

Fred Trump: places 13-year old son in military school in the vain hope that he would man-up. He knows there is something wrong.

Melania Trump: “Sometimes I said I have two boys at home — I have my young son and I have my husband,” 10/17/16 to Anderson Cooper. She knows the truth and just doesn’t care.

Anonymous: “It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. . . . And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t,” 9/5/2018 in NYT. This person knows the truth and does care.

The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency by Daniel Drezner, March 2020

Book description: Every president faces criticism and caricature. Donald Trump, however, is unique in that he is routinely characterized in ways more suitable for a toddler. What’s more, it is not just Democrats, pundits, or protestors who compare the president to a child; Trump’s staffers, subordinates, and allies on Capitol Hill also describe Trump like a small, badly behaved preschooler. [ARE YOU LISTENING THE MORNING JOE SHOW HOSTS?]

In April 2017, Daniel W. Drezner began curating every example he could find of a Trump ally describing the president like a toddler. So far, he’s collected more than one thousand tweets—a rate of more than one a day. In The Toddler-in-Chief, Drezner draws on these examples to take readers through the different dimensions of Trump’s infantile behavior, from temper tantrums to poor impulse control to the possibility that the President has had too much screen time. How much damage can really be done by a giant man-baby? Quite a lot, Drezner argues, due to the winnowing away of presidential checks and balances over the past fifty years. In these pages, Drezner follows his theme—the specific ways in which sharing some of the traits of a toddler makes a person ill-suited to the presidency—to show the lasting, deleterious impact the Trump administration will have on American foreign policy and democracy.

The “adults in the room” may not be able to rein in Trump’s toddler-like behavior, but, with the 2020 election fast approaching, the American people can think about whether they want the most powerful office turned into a poorly run political day care facility. Drezner exhorts us to elect a commander-in-chief, not a toddler-in-chief. And along the way, he shows how we must rethink the terrifying powers we have given the presidency.

“Based on Trump’s behavior as catalogued in this book, the idea of Trump coping with a true crisis ⸺ a terrorist attack, a global pandemic, a great power clash with China ⸺ is truly frightening.” Obviously the book was written before the coronavirus virus exposed the toddler for all the world to see and laugh at.

The question here is the ability of the immature child to process information in the adult world without resorting to an imaginary world where he can make up the rules. Let’s look at the example which triggered the recent outburst of insulting criticisms on The Morning Joe Show.

Polls

Back on July 30, 2019, I wrote in the blog The Unpresidential Library: The Adolescent Room after polls showed him losing to Joe Biden:

Naturally those polls were fake news.

Now imagine being a pollster in the campaign, an actual professional pollster who lives in the real world. Just as the proposed Trumpican director of intelligence will tell the commander in chief only what he wants to hear until it is too late, so the campaign pollsters are required to provide only good polls as Fox is supposed to do. Suppose these fake news results continue week after week, month after month, how long can the immature child live in his pretend world?

So far the real world has been very kind to the adolescent in chief. Almost all his problems are of his own doing. What happens if he starts having external problems in the real world that he cannot successfully pretend do not exist?  What happens if all the polls are fake news even on Fox and from his own pollsters? What happens if he needs to act as an adult in the real world? Whatever does happen, the Unpresidential Library will exhibit the story of the adolescent who became Commander in Chief in the real world and only had childish ideas of what to do.      

Now ten months later we have seen the answers. When a professional pollster showed him polls from the real world, the immature child naturally erupted. What else would you expect?

How could his polls be bad when his ratings were so good? Here one may observe the limited necessities of the simple-minded child. At his level of thinking there was a direct correlation between the TV ratings and his popularity. The very stable genius, the smartest person in a room as long as it is a morgue or a nursery school with no adults in it, is genuinely unable to understand why during a crisis people might tune in to see what the wartime President has to say. He can’t understand how the ratings of governors could increase and his did not. The polls must be Fake News. Produce good polls or you will go the way of the people who testified against me in the Impeachment Hoax or who provided the public with incorrect information on testing or how I handled the coronavirus. If I can muzzle Time Magazine’s Person of the Year from telling the truth in public, guess what I can do to a pollster?

Suppose then you are the person who has to explain to the Impeached President that the death toll probably is thousands of people higher than is publicly reported. Suppose you show him the charts created by The New York Times comparing the death rates from March 8 to April 11 in 2019 to 2020. In just seven states, it shows an additional 9,000 people died…and that is just until April 11, over three weeks ago. Try to explain to the immature child that people are dying of coronavirus at home or elsewhere with it being reported as a coronavirus death. What will be the reaction of the child struggling to live in his fantasy world be? We know what the reaction has been when he is confronted with the truth at a press conference: FAKE NEWS from the NASTY CUTIE PIE!

The only time he is not a child is when he is an adolescent (see Omarosa and the President:  A Case of Arrested Development – Suppose Life Is Not a Journey? August 17, 2018). There is no constructive purpose to be gained by talking about him as if he were an adult. The media is doing America a great disservice by failing to deal with the reality of who he is. It is not fair to judge him by adult standards since he isn’t one.

However, the real world keeps forcing the immature child’s hand. No more down to “zero.” No more miracle cure. No more “gamechanger” drugs because his uncle was a supergenius. No more “Every one of those doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this. Maybe I have a natural ability” said Donnee Disinfectant. No more Easter Sunday opening.

But wait, if Putin says “The situation is under total control” then it must be under total control just as I said it was months ago even if the new low target is 75,000-100,000 and 3,000/deaths a day is a real possibility.

So let’s look at his past record before turning to his new forecasts.

April 2011: Birtherism

To NBC host Meredith Vieira: “I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding.”
“You have people now down there searching, I mean in Hawaii?” she asked.
“Absolutely. And they cannot believe what they’re finding.”

To ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos: “It’s none of your business right now. We are going to see what happens.”

To Anderson Cooper: “I don’t want to do that right now. It’s not appropriate right now.”

STILL WAITING – has anybody made list of all the “soons” and “we’ll sees”?

October 2016: Trump to Sue All his Women Accusers

At Gettysburg: “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over….”simple phone call…gets them wall-to-wall coverage with virtually no fact-checking ever. It was probably the (Democratic National Committee) and Hillary’s campaign who put forward these liars with their fabricated stories. But we’ll probably find out later through litigation, which we’re so looking forward to.

STILL WAITING – from Gettysburg to the Lincoln Memorial, he is still slinging the bull-trump. Can you imagine him putting himself in a position where he would be obligated to testify? Good thing Fox is going to interview each and every one of them.

Upcoming Events

June: Back to Normal

July: We’re rockin’

Fall: Deep State Indicted

Fall: Deep State proves China responsible

January 20: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers.

The countdown continues.

New York Times Investigates the Brain of Donald Trump: President Has a Hissy Fit

April 15, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Presidential Press Conference

The New York Times has investigated the brain of Donald Trump. That was not its intention when it published above the fold on the front page “Despite Timely Alerts, Trump was Slow to Act” (April 12, 2020, print). Its intention was to document the failures and shortcomings of the impeached wartime President in his handling of the coronavirus crisis. In that effort it appears to have succeeded.

Somehow the subject of the article became aware of it. Obviously he did not read it. Obviously also no staff member briefed him on the contents of the article. He may have seen the headline on a print copy. (I don’t know if the White House still receives print copies.) He may have seen and heard it discussed on a news show other than on Fox. However it happened he did become aware that he had been taken to task for his failures and shortcomings. Naturally he responded as he would be expected to respond.

He is even more reliable than Old Faithful in his eruptions.

But the article did more than simply document his failure and shortcomings in managing the coronavirus crisis. It also provided a window into how his mind operates and on what level.

Example #1 [from the front page]

The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, and protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials.

CONFEDERATES FIRE ON FORT SUMTER. ABRAHAM LINCOLN SLOW TO ABSORB THE SCALE OF RISK

What can we learn from this passage?

1 Adults in the White House understood the scale of the risk. Their brains had the mental necessities to understand the situation, to recognize the full gravity of the pending crisis; he did not, his brain does not function at that level.

He provided a demonstration of the smallness of his mind at the news conference the following day. During the Q&A, he got into an exchange with a reporter about what he had done. He kept answering that in January there were no deaths and no infections. Other people in the White House were capable of projecting into the next weeks and months when there would be infections and deaths on an epidemic scale. He was not able to do so. His analytical skills were limited to DOW JONES DOWN. ELECTION LOST. Beyond that he was out of his league. His inability to grasp the magnitude of the risk matches the silliness of his forbidding a cruise ship to dock to keep the number of cases down on his watch. After all, he declared the virus would not strike here so the ship had to be kept a sea. We have contained the threat.

2. It’s all about him. Obviously.

3. Every day is like another episode on TV and he has to control the narrative. Obviously.

The takeaway from this passage is not about his failure to act. The takeaway is not about his choosing Option A instead of Option B. The takeaway is his lacking the cognitive skill to grasp the situation. He didn’t understand what adults in the White House could understand.

Example #2 [page 14]

These final days of February, perhaps more than any other moment during his tenure in the White House, illustrated Mr. Trump’s inability or unwillingness to absorb warnings coming at him. He instead reverted to his traditional political playbook…squandering vital time as the coronavirus spread silently across the country.

GERMANY BOMBS LONDON. WINSTON CHURCHILL UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO ABSORB THE SITUATION

What can we learn from this passage?

1. He still had not grasped the situation. He lacks the ability to do so.

2. He reverted to form, in this case being the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck that is his true self.

At the infamous press conference Monday, he got into an exchange with a reporter about China.

The discussion went back and forth. He was having problems since he was trying to defend his world of make believe in which he is most comfortable against real world questioning. Finally he could fake it as an adult no longer. He had exhausted himself and reverted to his old standby: FAKE NEWS.

There are limits as to how long he can do the penguin walk and fake being an adult. He can maintain that façade for brief intervals like a child going to grandma’s funeral or delivering a State of the Union address. A two-hour press conference exceeds his mental capacity to keep it up. At some point he inevitably will go off script and revert to being the person he truly is.

Example #3 [page 15]

Mr. Trump took a conciliatory approach [towards China] through the middle of March, praising the job Mr. Xi was doing.

That changed abruptly when aides informed Mr. Trump that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman had publicly spun a new conspiracy about the origins of Covid-19: that it was brought to China by U.S. Army personnel who visited the country last October.

Mr. Trump was furious. [He responded on Twitter, “Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah! I’LL SHOW YOU!] The China Virus.  

CORONAVIRUS WREAKS GLOBAL HAVOC. IMMATURE CHILD PRESIDENTS BOASTS OF HIS SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

What can we learn from this passage?

CHINA HAS HANNITYS TOO! CHINA HAS HANNITYS TOO! CHINA HAS HANNITYS TOO!
SO DOES RUSSIA!

No one has a monopoly on bull-trump. China is just as capable of slinging it as Fox, the Presidential spokespeople, or the impeached wartime President himself. He has been lucky so far that the Democrats have not given him a taste of his own medicine. Perhaps they should observe how the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian Hannitys act.

How then after weeks of failure did he finally grasp the situation?

Example #4 [page 15]

But in the end, aides said, it was Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the veteran AIDS researcher…who helped to persuade Mr. Trump. Soft-spoken and fond of the kind of charts and graphs Mr. Trump prefers, Dr. Birx did not have the rough edges that could irritate the president. He often told people he thought she was elegant. 

What can we learn from this passage?

1. Mad Dog tried the same technique. Do you think he was soft-spoken without rough edges? Do you think he successfully hid the fact that he was dumbing down his presentation to the level a person with limited cognitive skills and of great ignorance could understand? Do you think he threatened the masculinity of Bonespur Boy?

2. The key to leading him to knowledge appears to be the proverbial old-fashioned school marm. For all we know, Dr. Birx reminds him of teachers he had in elementary school, teachers before his father put in him military school in the vain hope that he would man up.

3. If he were in elementary school today, he would be classified as “special.” He proves the need for special-ed teachers who can give students the 1:1 time they need to be able to learn despite certain challenges.

As Jill Filipovic wrote (A day after claiming ‘total’ power, Trump caves in, CNN, April 15, 2020):

This is an important moment to reemphasize that Donald Trump is not a learned man. Yes, he has a business degree, but he shows no interest in learning, no curiosity about the world around him, and little apparent ability to ingest much in the way of new information that is not presented in simple pictures or on TV. Comprehending complex material seems far beyond his grasp.

His intelligence briefings have to be pared down to child-like levels, and he still barely reads them, and resists receiving them regularly. Some believe he’s indifferent to the printed word. Does anyone really think this man has even read, let alone understood, the US Constitution?

In conclusion, The New York Times article written to expose the failures and shortcomings of the impeached wartime President also reveals that those failures and shortcomings are not his fault. When you are a child living in the land of make believe, you make up the rules. If you want to be king, then you are king. The problem occurs when you try to live in the adult world and even Kellyanne Alternate Reality Conway can’t save you. Our president genuinely lacks the mental necessities or cognitive skills required to function as an adult, a deficiency that cannot be hidden during a crisis unless you only watch Fox. Unfortunately mental limitations are not a high crime or misdemeanor or removable under the 25th Amendment. At present there is no legal remedy for removing a President during a crisis because he can’t grasp the situation.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Saving America

April 13, 2020
by Peter Feinman
COVID-19 Has Been Around for a Long Time (Photo by Egyptologist Kara Cooney)

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! The impeached wartime President needs to be the savior of America. Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! All hands on deck. This is not a drill.

The number 1 issue in America today is the need for the housebound impeached wartime President to stand before the American people and proclaim that only he can save America and he has done so.

Let’s consider some of the numbers that contributed to the Trump crisis that is about to apex on May 1.

First there are the hidden figures. These are the known unknowns.

How many Americans have the coronavirus? If a coronavirus infects a tree in the woods and it is not tested, has anything happened? This philosophical adage on the issue of human observation – who will tell our story? If no one does, do we have a story? – has been revised in the current situation. If we don’t have national testing or testing of a valid representation of the American population, then how do we know how many people have been infected?

How many people have died die to the coronavirus? By this time we are all used to seeing very specific numbers tracking the number of deaths by state due to the coronavirus. Are all coroners able to test for the virus to determine the cause of death? Are there standards on what is reported? What about the vast-right conspiracy of helicoptering dead people to maximize the death rate in certain areas?

Second there are the known knowns. These are the numbers that are known and which have contributed to the current situation.

20

These are the infected people on the Grand Princess Cruise Ship that was denied docking to minimize the number of infected cases in America during this administration. When future historians and school children study the COVID-19 crisis, this action will become one of the defining moments of it. It will be known as the “King Canute Embarrassment.”  It refers to the effort of the impeached wartime President to secure the borders of the realm by forbidding the waves of the virus to come ashore. His actions follow on his success in preventing drugs from entering the country illegally and his success in preventing people from entering the country illegally.

In the future, school children will laugh at the silliness of this tactic. It will become proof positive that the impeached wartime President was out of his league. In mock trials of his ineptitude, his deploying of the King Canute maneuver will be deemed sufficient in its own to justify the activation of the 25th Amendment on the grounds of mental incapacity.

15 to 0

No, this is not a baseball score. Instead it is the number of people the impeached wartime president claimed were infected with COVID-19. It is a prediction that the number will very soon drop to zero with a 100% recovery rate and no fatalities. In fact, very soon the virus will suddenly disappear like a miracle.

Historians will ask, “Who were these 15 people? Do we know what happened to them? What was the source of the information? What does “soon” mean when translated into adult English?” Here again students will laugh in sheer amazement at the brazen stupidity of the comment. It easily could be fact-checked and would expose him as someone out of his league and living in the land of make believe where he loves to play. As James D. Zirin, author of Plaintiff in Chief: Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits just said in an interview on HNN, “I think he enjoys lying. I think it’s part of his DNA. I don’t think he has any grasp of the facts at all, so he says whatever he thinks will help him and whatever comes into his head.”

430,000

Only the impeached wartime President can save America. He said so himself in the 2016 campaign. Then in January, 2020, he proved it by severing airlinks with China. He acted boldly and decisively when he became aware of the seriousness of the crisis. He demonstrated that he had the right stuff to go into the area and provide the leadership America needed in this time of trouble.

JAPAN BOMBS PEARL HARBOR. FDR BOASTS OF HIS RADIO RATINGS.

If you ask the impeached wartime President about the 430, 000 people who arrived after his severing of the link, he will tell you that you are a third-rate nasty cutie pie from a Fake News organization.

If you ask the impeached wartime President about Europe being the source of the virus that struck America, he will tell you that you are a third-rate nasty cutie pie from a Fake News organization.

10

If you ask the impeached wartime President how he would grade his performance, then perhaps you are a third-rate reporter. In the land of make believe where this President lives, what other grade is possible? Here is an example of where there is a disagreement that will be crucial to understanding what is about to happen on May 1.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March.

I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated.

Exactly wrong. One person is going to deny that. How could lives have been saved if the person making the decision to save those lives earned a grade of 10? Mitigation began exactly when it should have begun under the leadership of our impeached wartime President. Fauci’s days are numbered.

AL-QUEDA ATTACKS WORLD TRADE TOWERS. MAYOR GIULIANI BOASTS OF HIS TV RATINGS

5/1

In ancient times, before making the biggest decision of his life, kings thinking of going into battle would inquire of the divine what they should do. Normally, prophets know to tell the king exactly what he wants to hear. But sometimes prophets were not quite as accommodating to the king. Consider the less well-known biblical example involving the prophet Micaiah.

 1 Kings 22:4 And he said to Jehoshaphat [the king of Judah], “Will you go with me to battle at Ramothgilead?”… 5 And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “Inquire first for the word of the LORD.” 6 Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them, “Shall I go to battle against Ramothgilead, or shall I forbear?” And they said, “Go up; for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” 7 But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not here another prophet of the LORD of whom we may inquire?” 8 And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah the son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil [Fake News].” And Jehoshaphat said, “Let not the king say so.” 9 Then the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, “Bring quickly Micaiah the son of Imlah.”

Beginning with Moses before Pharaoh, Nathan before David [“Thou art the man!’], Elijah before Ahab and the prophets of Baal, and Micaiah here, the Israelite prophets speak truth to power and defy what the king wants.

COVID-19 STRIKES AMERICA. DONALD TRUMP BRAGS OF HIS TV AND FACEBOOK RATINGS

The fix is in for the Opening our Country Council. The members know what the king wants and will be loyal to him. They are not traitors. However, even after he is fired for disloyalty, Prophet Fauci and the medical community will speak the truth in the real world. If it matches what the king wants to do on May 1, then there is no issue. But suppose it doesn’t match. What happens when the impeached wartime President’s need to be the savior of America in a big way trumps the facts on the ground?

Trumpican governors like that man in Florida are chomping at the bit to play Russian roulette with the lives of the residents of their states. They just are waiting for their Lord and Savior, the Chosen one, Blessed Be his Name, to grant them their 007 license to kill, the same license he used throughout January, February, and into March.

By contrast, Democratic governors and Republican governors (MA, MD, NH, OH) who have better ratings than the impeached wartime President will defy the call to reopen American until there is an opportunity to conduct proper testing, contact tracing, and can be done in a responsible way. After all, the reopening is a state matter since the Federal Government only provides backup and waiting-in-the-wings VP candidate Nikki Haley has just touted the role of the individual states. In fact, since I wrote the first draft of this blog some of the states have already started organizing. When the governors stand simultaneously on the steps of their capitols to read a prepared statement declaring their independence from guidelines of impeached wartime president, what will he do in response? This moment will be the biggest decision he has ever had to make. How will he answer the following question:

How do you ask a person to be the last person to die in the Trump crisis? How do you ask a person to be the last person to die for a mistake?

The Twilight Zone and the Coronavirus

April 8, 2020
by Peter Feinman
A White House Briefing (https://www.syfy.com)

The Twilight Zone and the coronavirus are not often linked together. However, sometimes it is amazing to realize how well Rod Sterling (and Gene Roddenberry) anticipated our present. In this blog, I will present three episodes of the Twilight Zone that easily could have been created now with some adjustments. One should keep in mind that back in the 60s, there was a greater fear of nuclear war destroying us than a virus. The comments and descriptions on the websites about the episode tell the tale we are now living. They come from imdb.com and Wikipedia mixed with some comments of my own.

The Old Man in the Cave

Twilight Zone Season 5 Episode 7 Original air date  November 8, 1963

They Went to Jared’s (https://2.bp.blogspot.com)

Opening narration

What you’re looking at is a legacy that man left to himself. A decade previous he pushed his buttons and a nightmarish moment later woke up to find that he had set the clock back a thousand years. His engines, his medicines, his science were buried in a mass tomb, covered over by the biggest gravedigger of them all—a bomb. And this is the earth 10 years later, a fragment of what was once a home, a remnant of what was once a race. The year is 1974 and this is The Twilight Zone.

The prediction of a nuclear war in 1964 went unfilled. In a time after the Cuban Missile Crisis but just before the assassination of an American president, the idea did not seem farfetched.

In a sparsely populated town in 1974, ten years after a nuclear war has devastated the US, the townspeople have discovered a supply of canned food. However, they are waiting for Mr. Goldsmith [Fauci], the town’s leader, to return with a message from the mysterious and unseen “old man in the cave” [science] who will tell them whether the food is contaminated with radiation. Some of the townsfolk want to take their chances and end social distancing and eat the food together, but they refrain from doing so after seeing the disastrous death totals when they failed to take the old man’s advice about which farming areas were contaminated. When Mr. Goldsmith returns, he informs them that the old man has declared the food is contaminated and that it should be destroyed.

Shortly thereafter, a group of soldiers led by Major French [aka Fox] enter the town and clash with Goldsmith as they try to establish their authority. The soldiers may or may not be representatives of the US government as its propaganda outlet…A clash of wills ensues and, frustrated by Goldsmith’s quiet and steadfast refusal to bend, French tries to dispel the townspeople’s strange beliefs about the seemingly infallible old man in the cave and take control of the area. French tempts the townspeople with some of snake-oil elixir his gut tells him he likes. Goldsmith claimed it was unproven. Many throw caution to the wind and partakes of. the food and drink.  After being bullied and threatened with his life, Goldsmith finally opens the cave door and it is ultimately revealed that in reality, the townsfolk have been using information from a computer [algorithms] the whole time. French rallies the townspeople into a frothing frenzy into destroying the machine, after which French leads the people into celebrating their new found freedom from this “tyranny” of social distancing. However, as Mr. Goldsmith had insisted, the “old man” was correct; without an authority figure to tell them which foods are safe, the entire human population of the town (including French and the soldiers) die—except for the lone survivor, Mr. Goldsmith, who somberly walks out of the now dead town.

Closing narration

Mr. Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man’s imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading “suicide”. Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be. This has been The Twilight Zone.

My prediction is that despite all the efforts of Fox and its friends, most governors will maintain the social distancing restrictions until June 1 based on the currently available information from reputable sources. They will be guided by the advice of Fauci and not the wartime President.

Hocus-Pocus and Frisby: Where Are the Martians When You Need Them?

Twilight Zone Season 3 Episode 30 [30!!!! episodes in a season!!! Is that possible?] Original air date April 13, 1962

He Never Tells the Truth (https://www.imdb.com)

Opening narration

The reluctant gentleman with the sizable mouth is Mr. Frisby. He has all the drive of a broken camshaft and the aggressive vinegar of a corpse. As you’ve no doubt gathered, his big stock in trade is the tall tale. Now, what he doesn’t know is that the visitors out front are a very special breed, destined to change his life beyond anything even his fertile imagination could manufacture. The place is Pitchville Flats, the time is the present. But Mr. Frisby’s on the first leg of a rather fanciful journey into the place we call the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Somerset Frisby has a general store/gas station in a small town, and the townsfolk know him well for the tall tales he spins of his experiences, from his heroism in war despite his bone spurs to his drug cures because of his super-genius uncle to his unsolicited advice via tweets to presidents and captains of industry, all of which he fabricates. His friends gather in the store to hear him spin his stories, which they find very entertaining, and he never tells the truth except by chance. But he means no harm and is not a horrid, nasty, cutie pie.

One evening, when he is alone at closing time, creatures from another planet lure him into their clutches while disguised as humans, then abduct him to their spaceship. They want to add Frisby to their collection of specimens from other planets. The aliens accept his tales at face value. They have heard Frisby claim eight doctoral degrees, being the greatest baseball player in New York City and a great athlete, and a very stable genius, the smartest person in the room. Naturally, they want him as the outstanding example of the human race. Ignoring his plea that he is late for supper, the aliens insist that Frisby accompany them to their planet.

Frisby pleads that he is simply a shameless liar, but the aliens have no concept of lying. He manages to escape. When he tries to tell his friends what happened, they enjoy a laugh at what they of course take to be another of Frisby’s tall tales.

Closing narration

Mr. Somerset Frisby, who might have profited by reading an Aesop fable about a boy who cried wolf. Tonight’s tall tale from the timberlands of the Twilight Zone.

If only the Martians would come so our Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, would ascend to the heavens and save us from having to listen to any more tall tales instead of being regaled with them on a daily basis.

It’s a Good Life 

Twilight Zone Season 3 Episode 8 Originally broadcast Nov. 3, 1961

The White House staff at Work (https://www.imdb.com)

On an isolated family farm, a young boy with vast mental powers, but lacking emotional development, holds his terrified family in thrall to his every juvenile wish.

This is a portrayal of a nightmare. It’s one of those things where you hope you’ll wake up. It’s about an entire community that has been taken over by a child brat who is totally self-centered and sociopathic. He probably doesn’t realize the error of his ways. Any effort to educate him would result in being “sent to the cornfield.” This is a state of limbo. When your adversary has no conscience, he cannot be approached in a rational way. This story is about fear. Not only are the people under constant threat, the world the boy is creating is one that is becoming bleak and vacuous.

As you read the opening narration please keep in mind that the story is about an actual six-year old in mind and body and that he has actual supernatural powers. These two considerations mean the story is not an exact parallel to the real world but the fundamentals ring true as even in the real world an immature child can have great powers at his command.

Opening narration

Tonight’s story on The Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States, and there’s a little town there called Peaksville. On a given morning not too long ago, the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing: the cause. A monster had arrived in the village. Now I’d like to introduce you to some of the people in Peaksville, Ohio. And you’ll note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio have to smile. They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because, once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror. Oh yes, I did forget something, didn’t I? I forgot to introduce you to the monster. This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He’s six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you’d better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone.

Plot summary

At the beginning of the show, the child is playing with his animals. He loves playing with his animals. They are right out of central casting. And since he likes science fiction he can makes his animals into any form he wants. They can even speak out of both sides of their mouths if he wants them to just as he does. But eventually the child tires of his toys who sometimes have minds of their own and they are disposed of, banished to the cornfields where this field of dreams is a nightmare.

The people live in fear of him, of the uncertainty, of never knowing what the child will say next. They constantly tell him how everything he does is “good,” the best ever, the greatest ever whereas everything before him was the worst ever.

One night each week, the child gives the townsfolk one hour of television, which he creates and projects onto the family TV set. The adults gather around in his living room, squirming uncomfortably as child shows them a vision of Fox and Friends with screaming dinosaur talking heads engaged in a gory battle. Unable to voice their real feelings, they tell the child that it was far better than what used to be on TV. Everything now is the greatest ever.

His aunt Amy whose brain had been “fixed,” says “I kind of liked it a little better when we had cities outside and could get real television.”
The child’s mother replies, “The child’s television is much better than anything we used to get.”
The child’s father adds: “Why it’s fine. Why Fox television is the best thing we have ever seen.”

After the program is over, the adults celebrate Dan Hollis’ birthday. He gets a bottle of brandy. Getting drunk from the brandy, he starts complaining about the miserable state of the town. The child at first ignores him after telling him to be quiet. Dan eventually snaps with repressed rage surfacing and confronts the child.

You monster you, you dirty little monster…. maybe some man in this room; some Republican with guts, somebody who is so sick to death of living in this kind of a place and willing to take a chance will sneak up behind you and lay something heavy across your skull and end this once and for all.
Somebody sneak up behind him. Somebody end this now….
Will somebody take a lamp or a bottle or something and end this.

The printed word cannot capture the intensity of the anguish of this emotionally wrought person who can no longer endure the reign of the child, who only speaks in Happy Talk.  Aunt Amy tentatively reaches for a fireplace poker but no one has the courage to act. The child banishes him to the cornfield. The adults are horrified at what he had done but no one does anything,

The child then causes the stock market to drop and the coronavirus to spread needlessly killing far more than it would have if he could only read a report or manage people who were professional. The father then smiles and tells the child in a terrified voice, “…But it’s good you’re making the coronavirus spread unchecked for weeks. A real good thing. And tomorrow… tomorrow’s gonna be a… real good day!”

Is there anything more dangerous… than a spoiled, selfish, stuck-up little brat who always gets his way?

Closing narration

No comment here, no comment at all. We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special citizens, little Anthony Fremont, age 6, who lives in a village called Peaksville, in a place that used to be Ohio. And, if by some strange chance, you should run across him, you had best think only good thoughts, talk happy talk, and profess loyalty as if you were Mike Pence himself and not that woman from Michigan.  Anything less than that is handled at your own risk and you will not get the medical equipment and supplies you need because the Federal Government is just a backup. If you have to deal with Anthony, you can be sure of one thing: you have entered The Twilight Zone.

How did Rod know?

Current Events and Local History

April 5, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Historians Investigating the Coronavirus Pandemic

What is the purview of history museums? Some history organizations are event or person specific. Battlefields and homes are an example. Some organizations have the name of a municipality as part of the organization name. My position has been municipal societies have the responsibility to tell the story of where their area from the Ice Age to Global Warming. That covers all the people who have lived in the area now defined by the municipality, a roughly 12,000 year period or more. Generally historical societies ignore the first 11,600 or more years of that time period. That is the domain of science museums or natural history museums not history organizations. Technically based on the definition of history as beginning with writing, that omission is reasonable – the prehistoric times including people are for other organizations.

However, history organizations aren’t so good on the last 100 years either. There may be a lot about the colonial era, the American Revolution, the Civil War, industrialization, and even up to World War I. But after that things begin to peter out. If someone a century from now examined the records of your organization would they know that any one from your community had participated in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan? Sure the names of the people from your community who died in those wars might be listed on a monument or memorial somewhere in your community, but what information would you have about these people in your museum? What about the people who lived including on the home front? What records to you have?

How can something that happened during your lifetime be historical? It’s current events. Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated? “Kennedy was shot” is the answer in “Harry Met Sally” from the non-faked orgasm scene. Suppose you are in your 70s, a not unusual age for someone in a history society. That means you were born in the 1940s. That means you may have heard from grandparents and parents what happened in the Depression and World War II; you remember the 60s and Vietnam. Why should there be any information about them in your history society? That’s current events.

In general, history societies aren’t good at current events. By that I mean, even if you interview someone it might be about why that person or family emigrated to your community. Maybe you documented the responses and actions after 9/11 or Superstorm Sandy. Quite possibly not. That’s for the newspaper to do if you have one in your community. Collecting letters, diaries, and newspaper articles can be difficult when information is communicated by the internet and there is no local paper.

On April 2, 2020, in The New York Times (print), there was an article entitled “Using Their Inside Voice: Quarantine diaries, compiled using words and drawings, are a first draft of a mass confinement’s history.” The article states that future historians writing histories about life during the coronavirus pandemic will be interested in first-person accounts. Jane Kamensky, professor of American History at Harvard said, “They’re among the best evidence we have of people’s inner worlds. History isn’t usually told by the bigwigs of the era, even if they are some of its main characters. Instead it is often reconstructed from snapshots of ordinary lives.”

Here is an example from a history organization that is not a municipal one but person specific but is aware of documenting current events in local history. The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation sent an email with the following:

We are living through a dramatic change in our lives; each day the numbers grow. Our children and grandchildren will one day ask us: “What was it like?” “What did you do each day?” “How did you feel?” These are the things we wonder about those who lived through the Pandemic of 1918-1919. Imagine finding a journal your grandparent left about that experience! Why not journal your experience and leave it for the generations to come?

The Gage center has the perfect way to do it: a new purse or pocket-size notepad that makes a great portable journal. It comes with a pen equipped with a stylus top that tucks into the elastic band that closes it. It measures 4″ x 3″ x 1/2″. Get one for yourself or the whole family and each night spend 10 minutes all journaling your day. Not only will it be a keepsake, it might also be a remedy for cabin fever!

Putting aside the retail aspect of this notice, it does highlight how such journals might not become family heirlooms but also historic artifacts in a museum along with diaries, letters, and journals from the 17-20th centuries.

In Europe, there curators and researchers who have as their responsibility documenting events and crises as they occur “Museums Strive to Bear Witness to the Pandemic,” NYT 4/7/20, print). That work is undertaken with knowing exactly the data they collect will be used. However they do so because just as people today draw on similar data from the past to understand those time periods, so the historians of the future will want to have information about our present and tourists will want to the artifacts of our present. How often can you take photographs of empty streets in daylight? How often can you see all the “closed” signs in a row of stores? The news networks constantly interview medical personnel about what is happening in their hospitals, testing facilities, supply chains right now. History societies and museums have members (and their email addresses). What’s going on with them? Help create the history record for the future.

Besides these personal expressions, what is going on in your community?

What has your mayor, your town supervisor, your county executive done?

What has you school superintendent done?

What did teachers do?

How about restaurant owners? Barbershops? Dry cleaners?

What can you do as an historical to reach out into your community to preserve the record of what is happening now?

With that in mind, below is a notice I received from the Association of Public Historians of New York State (APHNYS). Its words apply to history organizations as well.

As local government-appointed historians, it is our duty to document not just the past but the present. The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event in all our lives; it is imperative that we record the impact on our communities and how our citizens respond. The Association of Public Historians of New York State suggests that you immediately begin documenting your community’s response and offer the following guidelines and suggestions:

Remember! Health and safety are your number one priority. Documenting your community’s response does not include risking your own health or that of your family and friends. Please follow all rules for social distancing and any quarantines that have been established.

Keep a diary. Beginning today, record your memories of local events and reactions to COVID-19 at least since the beginning of March. Continue to update that journal as we move forward: What are you doing, what are you hearing and seeing, and how is the response to COVID-19 affecting your normal habits? Encourage the public to do the same. This can be done by in a variety of ways. Individuals can keep handwritten or computerized diaries, write blogs, record video or audio diaries or use whatever creative venue appeals to them.

APHNYS has developed a form that historians can use to collect stories from throughout New York State. Once the crisis and the collecting period have ended, APHNYS will share the responses with historians throughout the state Please share the Google form widely within your community and via social media and encourage participation: https://forms.gle/ZUxePXJLcQC2fKCK8.

Be a witness to history! Share your COVID-19 experiences

We are living in a historic moment in time! The COVID-19 crisis is reshaping our daily lives and our communities. In the future, others will look back and learn from our experiences. This is why it is so important to begin recording the history of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on New York State’s people and communities. What is happening to us right now must not be forgotten! We need to document our experiences so that they can inform the response to future crises.

The Association of Public Historians of New York State and New York’s 1,600+ government-appointed historians want to record your witness-to-history experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please use this form to tell us what you are experiencing. How are you feeling? What are you hearing and seeing around you? What are you doing, and what effect is this having on you, your family, your neighbors, and your community? How is your life different now than it was before the pandemic? Please answer only those questions that are pertinent to you and that you wish to answer. Be creative in your responses. You may reply with written text answers or you may respond with poetry, artwork, video diaries or something else. We also want to see photographs of what is happening around you, in your home, and in your community. You will be able to upload images and artwork at the end of the survey.

With your permission, we will preserve these responses in our archive and in the archives of your local government historians and/or historical societies where they will be shared with researchers and the public now and in the future. Thank you for participating!