Showing posts tagged as: White House
The Choral Powder Keg: A Health Hazard Tailor-made for the COVID-19 Crisis
When a pandemic or some similar “Black Swan” event sweeps the world, hitting many countries with great intensity, particularly in Western societies with a high degree of religiosity, comfort and solace is often sought within the spiritual “safe house” of the church. As soon as the novel coronavirus landed and spread, it was apparent the church services especially where high rates of attendance was commonplace, would pose a public health risk.
(Source: www.newslocker.com)
Yet in the US eleven state governors chose to maintain freedom of worship over community safety by exempting religious institutions from the general prohibition on public gatherings, notwithstanding that some of the states registered the biggest clusters of COVID-19. Even in other states there was a pushback by church men and women against government bans on assembly in places of worship. As a consequent 71 members of a single church in Sacramento were infected by the virus [‘Pastor who refused to close church due to coronavirus killed by outbreak’, (Rebecca Nicholson), Express, 15-Apr-2020, www.express.co.uk].
This was mirrored in overseas scenarios, in South Korea in February, one infected churchgoer infected at least 37 other members of her church on a single contact [“‘Superspreader’ in South Korea infects nearly 40 people with coronavirus’, (Nicolette Lanese), Live Science, 23-Feb-2020, www.livescience.com].
South Korean choir with face masks (Source: AP)
The choral petri-dish The holding of packed sermons in churches and other places of worship, like any close contact between confined, concentrations of people, breaches the prescribed social distancing guidelines and exacerbates the incidence of coronavirus infection. But just as dangerous and with even more potential to transmit the viral disease through communities is the choral activities of churches. The activities of choirs initially continued unabated in the early stages of the pandemic but an incident in Washington state in early March brought home how risky choir practice is. 61 people attended a choir practice at a Presbyterian church in Skagit County, within a short time 45 of the group had been infected by COVID-19 and two had died. Other choir outbreaks, some fatal, have occurred In Calgary (Canada), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and in South Korea [‘Scientists to choirs: Group singing can spread the coronavirus, despite what CDC may say’, Richard Read), Los Angeles Times, 01-Jun-2020, www.latimes.com].
Infectious diseases experts have pinpointed the obvious dangers of contagion associated with choir singing…unrestrained vocal activity at close quarters in often poorly-ventilated, confined space. The vocalists exhale and inhale deeply to sing which makes them highly susceptible to the passage of airborne particles. Through the process of aerosolisation, the virus floats freely in the air (and has been observed to survive for up to three hours) [‘Churches can be the Deadliest Places in the COVID-19 Pandemic’, (Kevin Kavanagh), Infection Control Today, 03-Apr-2020, www.infectioncontroltoday.com; Read].
Inexplicable change of stance by CDC With eyes fixed on the November elections and the need to shore up vital support from the Evangelical Christian Right, President Trump from his White House ‘pulpit’ intensified his call in May for governors to reopen religious institutions as an essential service, eliciting pushback from some governors. At the same time, surprisingly the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided to drop their warnings against choral singing despite the inherent danger it poses. CDC justifies this change of position by downplaying the likelihood of airborne transmission beyond six feet⊞ [‘Behind Trump’s demands to reopen churches: Slipping poll numbers and alarm inside his campaign’, (Gabby Orr), Politico, 22-May-2020, www.politico.com; Read).
Heightening the risk of unleashing ‘super-spreaders’ CDC’s controversial move has drawn broad criticism from medical experts including specialists in bio-aerosol research who have refuted CDC’s claim, calling it “hazardous, very dangerous and irresponsible”, and that it exposes America to new waves of super-spreading from the activity of choir members (Read).
⇑ With religious singing relegated to the home, some American churches have tried to get round the prohibition on in-house congregational services by organising drive-in sermons
Fallout from the churches Although many parishes and parishioners in the US have adjusted well to the new world of online sermons, some traditional congregationalists worry that the new ‘norm’ will spell the disappearance of the in-person church experience altogether [‘How the Pandemic Will Change Us’, (Rod Dreher), The American Conservative, 13-Mar-2020, www.theamericanconservative.com].
(Photo: www.stjohnswhitchurch.org.uk)
Endnote: The economics of the choral closedown The halt to choral activities due to COVID-19 has led to a whole bunch of “knock-on” problems worldwide. Like anybody else with their income source impacted adversely by the crisis, choristers, classical musicians and organists attached to the churches affected have been deprived of livelihood. But it goes even beyond that. As the Royal School of Church Music in the UK indicated, the pandemic ”has literally ripped apart the many close-knit groups of singers and instrumentalists who (need to) spend significant amounts of time together”. Church musicians who rely on the service are especially hard hit. It is doubly hard for self-employed church organists who have lost their access to practice – unlike other musicians who keep their instruments at home, they rely on “using instruments in public buildings for the vital practice which enables them to maintain their hard-earned skill” (Royal College of Organists). [‘Pandemic has ‘ripped apart’ church choirs’, (Hattie Williams), Church Times, 01-Apr-2020, www.churchtimes.co.uk].
(Source: eBay)
PostScript: There is another side problem resulting from the non-use of organs in churches. Like the raft of airplanes grounded due to the coronavirus, complex and expensive organs require continual attention. They need “regular playing to ensure that the fragile technical components are kept in good working order“ and free from damage (Williams).
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⊞ the Washington Post states that CDC acted on a White House directive to omit the choir warning from it’s website guidance information. CDC may have also relied on earlier statements from WHO contending that “there is no evidence of transmission of the virus as an airborne pathogen”. WHO’s conclusions have themselves been debunked as “decades-old dogma that held that droplets only travel an arm’s length in the air” (Read)
Declaring War on an Internal Enemy Hiding in Plain Sight: The ❛Deep State❜
In the fiercely combative arena of Washington DC politics, one term that gets bandied about a lot—before and continuing through the time of pandemic—is the notion of the existence of a “Deep State”. Whenever the expression gets publicly uttered, it’s purpose is to serve as the answer to some or other momentous development or outcome. Left there hanging in the air, vague, nebulous, mysterious and unelaborated but always unambiguously pejorative – the innuendo of conspiracy.
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Alternately called “a state within a state”, the “shadow government” or “the permanent state”, the Deep State connotes images of shadowy individuals talking in soto voco, practicing the political dark arts.
So, what actually is a deep state? In get to the essence of this concept let’s survey a cross-selection of responses to the question:
⌱ a type of governance made up of networks of power operating independently of the state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals [Wikipedia]
⌱ a conspiracy theory which suggests that collusion and cronyism exists within the US political system and constitute a hidden government within the legitimately elected government [Wikipedia]
⌱ a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy [Oxford English Dictionary].
⌱ the idea that a cabal of unelected security officials across a number of government bodies maintain influence over elected politicians [Will Worley, The Independent (UK)]
⌱ (“the seed for many tantalising conspiracy theories”…the existence of a premeditated effort by certain federal government employees or other persons to secretly manipulate or control the government without regard for the policies of Congress or the President [Robert Longley]
⌱ an underworld of unaccountable authority [Peter Dale Scott]
⌱ belief in an informal or parallel government that exists to countermand legitimate, usually more democratic, institutions (whose usage includes) a catch-all term applied to any number of extraordinary, usually violent, episodes, eg, JFK assassination, 9/11, etc. [Ryan Gingeras]
⌱ a massive informal government comprising untold thousands of bureaucrats, technocrats and plutocrats committed to driving president-elect Trump from power [Breitbart]
⌱ (how it functions) when elected governments threaten the deep state’s domestic or international interests, actors aligned to this coalition (the military, the clandestine service, the mafia and far-right activists) employ any means to reverse the state’s political course…these coalitions within the government work to ‘veto’ or ‘fine tune’ policies related to national security [Ola Tunander]
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The topicality of the Deep State as a conspiracy theory and as a form of politics in practice, as I indicated at the start, resides within, indeed permeates, the present US political realm, but the political phenomena itself did not start in the US. Let’s first look at the modern origins of the deep state – in early 20th century Turkey.
Turkey: volatile zero-sum-game The notion of an unofficial para-authority, a deep state within the nation’s polity, has probably existed since the time of antiquity, but as a normative concept it can be traced back to the rise of the Young Turks movement in Turkey (revolution of 1908). In the struggle for power in the vacuum created by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks, and Kemal Ataturk who would become the ‘architect’ of the modern Turkish Republic, used criminal elements to eliminate political opponents. Ataturk’s group, through a violent, intra-government resistance to the ruling clique in Turkey, destabilised and undermined it (from within), eventually establishing control over state and society for itself. Turks called this secret network, derin devlet (literally the “deep state”). Since then, the phenomena has been replicated elsewhere, eg, Soviet Union/Russia, Egypt, Pakistan❈, with the tradition maintained in Turkey up to the (present) Erdogân era, eg, the failed military coup in 2016 seeking to overthrow the Erdogân autocracy [‘Turkey’s “Deep-State” and the Ergenekon Conundrum’, (H Akin Ünver), Middle East Institute, 01-Apr-2009, www.mei.edu].
↴ Erdogân state (Source: www.time.com)
Deep state sans conspiracy Drawing together the different threads of responses, a deep state exists when a network of different groups covertly coalesce, forming a power base independent of and parallel to the legitimate government, with the purpose of pursuing its own objectives. In practice it tends to exercise soft power (rather than the more violent type seen in Turkey) by undermining and discrediting the legitimate government, with the aim of subverting its operation and bringing it down. The collusive elements of the network or cabal is typically drawn from the state’s security services, the bureaucracy, the military, the media, the private sector, even from organised crime.
The deep state in America It was general-turned-GOP governor Dwight D Eisenhower who first alerted America to the dangers of a deep state emerging…at his farewell address in 1961 he said: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. A couple of years later the assassination of Eisenhower’s successor John F Kennedy provided conspiracy theory obsessives with endless material for imaginative speculation. Inevitably some of that speculation has joined the dots between the never-satisfactorily explained Kennedy murder and the Deep State. A perusal of the web turns up numerous posts with titles like ‘JFK was Murdered by the Deep State’ and ‘JFK Was Assassinated by LBJ, Establishment, Deep State’…fairly self-explanatory but these generally fact-thin ‘revelations’ detail a deep state hit squad of assassins and conspirators which includes Lyndon B Johnson and a coterie of southern Democrat politicians, the American mafia, Texas oil tycoons, Fidel Castro, the CIA, the KGB and a host of other nominated suspects⊠. And of course popular movies like Oliver Stone’s 1991 JFK was a further shot-in-the-arm for political conspiracy buffs and the perpetuation of the Deep State/JFK thesis (portraying “a cabal of shadowy officials as the puppet masters behind Kennedy’s assassination”)◘. As Professor Paul Musgrove remarked, “the deep state is catnip for conspiracy theorists” [‘How a Conspiracy Theory Went From Political Fringe to Mainstream’, (Tom Porter), Newsweek, 08-Feb-2017, www.newsweek.com].
Deep State rhetoric: How to vilify your opponents and turn back criticism, it’s all a conspiracy by the enemy! The term finally acquires staying power and everyday currency in the US political lexicon with Donald Trump’s transition to the presidency in 2016/2017. Trump, a self-acknowledged outlier of Washington politics, came to office promising to “drain the swamp in DC”, his avowed aim, to ditch the old, distrusted model of federal government. With Trump doing things very much his own (peculiarly idiosyncratic) way in the White House, this caused waves, there was a “natural pushback” from a bureaucracy accustomed to a very different approach under Obama. This is a normal part of the process of regime change in parliamentary democracies universally – a residual if usually temporary feature of the culture of resistance to government change. [‘President Trump’s Allies Keep Talking About the “Deep State”. What’s That?’, (Alana Abramson), Time, 08-March-2017, www.time.com].
The practice of leaking information
From within the president’s fold, warnings of “covert resistance” from within to the president, emerged. Talk of a “Deep State” was heard from the far-right✪, Trump strategist Steve Bannon among the voices. The complaint was that elements within the bureaucracy, the State Department, Pentagon, wherever, were leaking damaging information to a media hostile to Trump (eg, New York Times, Washington Post), to which Trump’s “knee-jerk” reaction was to label it as “fake news”⍤. Two points need to be made about the leaking of information from democratic governments: as Abramson has noted, this is “not a new dynamic” or unique to the US, career civil servants—who are extra-political—have always leaked information to the press. The (legitimate) government from time to time itself will leak favourably information to the media (Abramson).
Watching the president The second point is that the various federal government agencies, being non-partisan, see a component of their role to act as a check on wayward and irresponsible behaviour by an incumbent chief executive that would be harmful to the nation. Previous directors of the CIA have stated that the military would refuse to follow orders given by Trump which are unlawful [‘US Military to Disobey Trump’s ‘Illegal’ Nuclear Strike Order’, Sputnik News, 15-Nov-2017, www.sputniknews.com]. In such a scenario, the “permanent national security apparatus” has a right to act, as “a check on the civilian government” (Musgrave).
Another Deep State linkage with the coronavirus for conspiracy fans? The “Covert-19” pandemic? ↴
Using the Deep State catch-phrase to your own advantage Opposition to Trump, to his style of presidency and approach to government, in the form of hostility from almost the entirety of the mainstream US media, the leaking of information from within the ‘citadel’ such as the charge that Russian interference in the 2016 elections assisted a Trump victory, have provided the ammunition for the Trump’s enablers and supporters to construct a narrative of a deep state, a ‘conspiracy’ of anyone seeking to subvert the presidency, including foreign powers (like China) and many bureaucrats they see as loyal to the former president (Obama).
Trump has turned internal criticism of himself into an excuse to fire officials, creating scapegoats for the shortcomings of the administration he heads. Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson, sacked after alerting Congress of Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine’s leader into investigating the president’s domestic political opponents, remarked pointedly that he was dismissed, not for failing to do his job but for doing it properly [‘Trump’s safari into the wilderness of the deep state’, (Jacob Heilbrunn), Spectator (America), 08-Apr-2020, http://spectator.us]. Numerous other subalterns from the White House staff, Pentagon, Homeland Security, FBI, Treasury, Attorney General, etc have suffered the same fate after earning Trump’s ire. As Professor Timur Kuran, an economist who has studied the deep state concept in both Turkey and the US, said: in many authoritarian regimes, dictators often blame their failures on a “deep state enemy” within the legitimate state [‘Deep State: Inside Donald Trump’s Paranoid Conspiracy Theory’, (Michael Hanford), Rolling Stone, 09-Mar-2017, www.rollingstone.com].
Connecting coronavirus to the Deep State conspiracy
In the turmoil of the COVID-19 crisis in America, it didn’t take long for a number of Trump’s cronies and followers to play the pandemic conspiracy card. TV commentator Rush Limbaugh has labelled the coronavirus a deep state hoax⍝ (calling health experts fighting the virus outbreak functionaries of the deep state). The right-wing “shock jock” has said the crisis was being used by as a political weapon to destabilise and undo the Trump presidency [‘Rush Limbaugh: coronavirus a “common cold” being “weaponised’ against Trump’, (Martin Pengelly), The Guardian, 26-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]⦿. Other “true-believers” of the DS conspiracy myth see the coronavirus crisis as a plot to destabilise global markets and cripple the US economy, or alternately a Deep State plan to suppress dissent and impose “mandated medicine” on to the unsuspecting masses [‘Right-wing conspiracy theorists see coronavirus as a plot against Trump’, (Mikael Thalen), The Daily Dot, 26-Feb-2020, www.dailydot.com; ‘Scientist with 4 Degrees from MIT Warns ‘Deep State’ Using Coronavirus Fear-Mongering To Suppress Dissent’, (Carmine Sabina), The Western Journal, 17-Mar-2020, www.westernjournal.com].
❈ there have been numerous other Deep State scenarios internationally, a classic one in recent history was the 1973 Chilean coup where foreign elements, the American CIA and IT&T, combined with a right wing military clique in Chile to overthrow the democratically-elected Allende government
⊠ many of the conspiracy hypothesisers who accept that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, depict the gunman as having been an agent of the Deep State
◘ with hindsight we can see earlier instances of the (unnamed) deep state in American politics, beavering away to undermine a US president – in the Thirties and early Forties the Dulles brothers, Foster and Allen, exploited their key diplomatic roles in arms of the Roosevelt administration to covertly pursue their own agendas which were at variance with FDR’s policies, David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015)
✪ one of the wildest is the QAnon Deep State conspiracy which alleges that a “cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles” have joined up with Hollywood liberals and Democrat politicians to try to overthrow the Trump regime
⍤ sometimes hitting back with his own brand of fake news, such as his unsubstantiated tweet claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election
⍝ a view with popular backing among sections of the Alt-Right, patriot-militia groups in the US
⦿ Limbaugh last month, looking to cloak the ‘conspiracy’ in an even more sinister light, suggested to his viewers that there were eighteen earlier strains of the disease which he has likened to the common cold, therefore COVID-19 was nothing to be concerned about, he reasoned. Limbaugh’s woeful ignorance—the 19 in the disease’s name refers to the year it was first identified, 2019—earned him much scorn and derision from liberal America (although amazingly it didn’t deter a Trump lackey from repeating the gross misinformation in a “Fox & Friends” rant against WHO) , ‘Coronavirus skeptic Rush Limbaugh thinks COVID-19 means there were 18 other COVIDS’, (Brian Niemietz), Daily News, 12-Mar-2020, www.nydailynews.com
Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding?
Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.
Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank & PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!
🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummy for the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)
Boris, not dancing The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).
(Photo: AP)
China’s southern neighbours Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].
(Photo: AP)
Continental contrast The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].
Life on Planet Trump In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].
(Photo: CBS News)
Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.
Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].
(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
The “Trump of the Tropics” Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.
When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].
🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?
Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].
🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast
Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].
Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights? While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media
✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].
🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! 
(Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)
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❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020
◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)
✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious
❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results
❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy
⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com)
✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world
✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)