United States of Disaster

For the first time ever, all fifty states are under a declaration of major disaster. Even if the spread of the deadly virus has not afflicted all states equally, all states have been seeded with the germ and are negotiating mitigating practices with the predictable effects such limitations have on regular economic commerce. We have reached milestones unparalleled in other nations: a half million infected, 20 thousand dead. We have outpaced the toll of Italy and Spain, and despite the successes in California, Washington, and the plateau appearing in New York's numbers, it is reasonable to assume that the struggle is far from over, especially as testing remains sporadic and local approaches to social distancing nationwide are indifferently followed. 

It's probably just a reflex of the pedant to point out that whenever Trump says "no one saw this coming", that of course everyone did. FEMA did.  Military intelligence did. The previous administration was aware this could happen:

But really, what does that have to do with the Trump Administration, except an awful lot?  Trump could have seen what was coming, but was too far up his own behind, and had advisors too keen to please him to bother with telling him terrible things. And even when he was told terrible things would take place, he didn't understand them. And you can really tell, because he goes off and talks about the wily invisible genius germ, that won't be tamed by mere antibiotics, which is so wrong as to the science of anything as to exist in it's own universe of wrong.

Actually, whenever Trump opens his mouth he seems to do more harm than good. He blames others, he casts about for conspiracy theories, he berates the media, he blames the victims, he shows no compassion or sympathy, and spreads misinformation. And people echo his more dangerous offerings, like his desire to reopen the economy at the signs that social distancing is for now succeeding, as if unaware that this could be disastrous for both human lives and the economy in the longer run if such measures are ended too soon, or his paean to unproven pharmaceutical protocols (which he obviously doesn't have the "common sense" to talk about, at all, because actual common sense would require knowing he is not, in fact, a doctor, but a reality show con artist who bankrupted casinos).

The remarkable thing in all of this, is that Trump will even ask you to show some measure of concern for himself! The most put-upon human to ever be in office! To have endured all this. And even get impeached, and have a media who never says anything good about him, besides!

Like a person who kills his parents and wants mercy for being an orphan (or would have let the virus wash over this country like a refiner's fire, assuming some part of it was dispensable dross).  The whole country is a disaster area. Let's never forget under whose watch that happened.  Let's not forget who made everything worse. He has. With the determination and zest and wrongness that almost (?) seem deliberate, as if no mere mortal could be that wrong, by sheer chance.  And he owns this, and no arrow-in-flight prediction of "acceptable" deaths should really suffice. The damage is well underway. We're just enduring it. And whenever we pull out, however well things might eventually go--nothing ever erases the faults that are Trump's.

Those successes will be the result of the people we actually saw doing the work, regardless of what comes out of Trump's lying mouth.