President Donald Trump has been a total failure in dealing with the most significant crisis of his Presidency: the CoronaVirus Pandemic.
It has been six months since the nation was given notice of the emerging Pandemic, and 155,000 people have died, many of them unnecessarily if only Trump had respected science, and told all of his followers to wear masks and practice social distancing.
But he has put his reelection ahead of everything, and has wanted everyone to return to “normal”, meaning go back to work and students go back to school.
By being reckless and irresponsible and self centered, he has encouraged boorish behavior which has made America the number one nation in the entire world in positive cases of the virus, hospitalizations, and deaths.
How can we say we are the greatest nation in the world after this total disaster, which, if there had been a different President, the death rate would have been much lower?
What Trump has wrought should lead to criminal charges when he leaves office for failing to protect and preserve the lives of tens of thousands of Americans!
We now see an American dying every minute of every day, and if that is not perceived as a Holocaust, then what is such?
will begin with Your conclusion, Professor: “We now see an American dying every minute of every day, and if that is not perceived as a Holocaust, then what is such?”
But first, a bit of Numeracy. Where did You get Your numbers from? There are 219,000 minutes in the five months since the first reported C-19 death in the US. If 158,000 Americans have died since then, that works out to only .72 Americans dying every minute. “ONLY?!?!?,” You demand.
To put that in context: In 2018 [the last year for which numbers available], the CDC reported 2,835,000 Deaths in America. Given that there are 525,600 minutes in a year, that means that Americans died in that non-Pandemic year at a rate that works out to 5.39 Deaths per minute.
That’s versus the .72 Deaths per Minute attributed to C-19.
And that is why i find Your concluding statement/question so astounding; because so patently absurd.
i defy You to look at the list ~ in numerical order of Deaths ~ of Holocausts/Genocides at Wiki, and dare to call 158,000 American C-19 Deaths a “Holocaust.” by any stretch of any even nominally accepted use of the term. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll]
Particularly given the fact that a very significant majority of those American Deaths were of people age 65 and over, the majority of whom had pre-existing ~ ultimately almost always fatal even without the Virus ~ medical conditions. And the vast majority of them were in nursing homes and/or extended care facilities.
Note the following from Wiki: “This list of genocides by death toll includes estimates of all deaths which were directly or indirectly caused by genocide, as it is defined by the UN Convention. It excludes other mass killings, which are variously called mass murder, crimes against humanity, politicide, classicide, or war crimes, such as: the Thirty Years War (7.5 million deaths), Japanese war crimes (3 to 14 million deaths), the Red Terror (100,000 to 1.3 million deaths), the Atrocities in the Congo Free State (1 to 15 million deaths), the Great Purge (0.6 to 1.75 million deaths) or the Great Leap Forward and the famine which followed it (15 to 55 million deaths).”
Governments and those who run them ~ or want to run them ~ have killed more Humans throughout history than many Diseases ~ even Pandemic ones ~ put together.
To call the C-19 Death toll in America a “Holocaust” defies history, common sense, and logic. And is an insult to those who perished in or survived the real Holocausts that have happened in history.
Having spent two years in Israel in the early 80s, i know all about “The Holocaust” perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews, Poles, and other Undesireables. And having spent two years in Viet Nam in the 60s, i know all about the Holocaust America perpetrated against the Lands, Peoples, Countries, and Nations of Indochina, particularly Viet Nam and, most particularly, Cambodia. Trust me.
i will react and respond to the rest of Your “It’s All Trump’s Fault” rant in a bit, Professor. After i get the foul taste of Your question out of my mind. Enjoy the weekend.
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Picking up where i left off re Your “Donald Trump Responsible For One Person Every Minute…” blogpost.
Professor, that could very easily serve as a textbook example of logical fallacies, unsubstantiated claims, and mis-informational propaganda. You wrote: “It has been six months since the nation was given notice of the emerging Pandemic, and 155,000 people have died, many of them unnecessarily if only Trump had respected science, and told all of his followers to wear masks and practice social distancing.”
How many of those who died ~ “many of them unnecessarily” ~ were not Trump followers, and were following the dictates of the State Governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota [all “Blue” States, i believe], the States [along with Louisiana] with the highest earliest Case and Death numbers?
As just one obvious, obscene example: How many New Yorkers died because Governor Cuomo ordered nursing and extended care facilities to take in known, elderly C-19-positive patients?
And how many of Trump’s followers have continued to refuse to don masks even ever since their Leader did, regardless of what he now says about the issue? Is it still his fault they aren’t masking? Let alone distancing? You continued:
“But he has put his reelection ahead of everything, and has wanted everyone to return to ‘normal’, meaning go back to work and students go back to school.”
There are a lot more people than just Trump who want to get back to whatever might be left of “normal” at work, if their old job still exists or, if not, if they can find a new one. 30-odd million, as i recall.
And there are a lot of Students and Parents [and some Teachers and a few Administrators] of Students who would also like very much to get back to school. That is what all those armed protests before and since the Floyd Murder that didn’t and don’t involve looting, pillaging, and burning were and are all about. You then asked:
“How can we say we are the greatest nation in the world after this total disaster, which, if there had been a different President, the death rate would have been much lower?”
First of all: Who says we are “the greatest nation in the world”? Do a lot of Americans hold that view? Which Americans? Or, were we once upon a time ~ in our National Myth AND in the eyes of much of the Planet ~ that “greatest nation,” but, alas, and now are no more? And if we are no longer that “greatest nation,” then when did that happen? When Trump got elected? Or did it happen before that?
Second of all: Can You ~ as a professional historian and scholar and professor of history ~ actually expect anybody to take seriously Your statement that “a different President” would have resulted in a “much lower” death rate? On what conceivable basis do You make that statement and expect it to be accepted? How do You know how President Hillary [or President Kaine, after she got impeached and convicted early on, as the case may be] would have handled C-19? Or any other situation, crisis, and/or disaster that Trump has dealt with, either by fate or by design?
That sounds less like an assessment of historical probabilities, and more like an exercise in Fantasy alt-History. You concluded:
“What Trump has wrought should lead to criminal charges when he leaves office for failing to protect and preserve the lives of tens of thousands of Americans!”
Why wait until he leaves office? Isn’t the failure to protect and preserve the lives and property of American Citizens an impeachable offense? Obviously not, given that nobody dared even float the idea of impeaching Cheney, Bush the Lesser, and the entire senior leadership of the Executive and Legislative branches for Dereliction of Duty before, during, and after 9/11.
But given that Clinton’s people were still running the FBI, CIA, and FAA on September 11, 2001 ~ eight months after he had left office ~ one could probably make a good argument for bringing criminal charges against Billy Bobb for his and his administration’s role in failing to detect and then prevent 9/11, or to stop it once it got started that day.
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Thanks for these two recent posts, Doc. i’ve been in a bit of a Writer’s Funk lately, and needed some warm-up Exercises before beginning to explain “What This Country Needs” if it is to survive to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026.
And one of the first things it needs is Less “anti-Fas,” and more “anti-Feds.”
And that’s not “anti-Feds” as in being against camouflaged Federal agents in unmarked vehicles on the streets of American cities arresting peaceful, non-violent protesters.
Rather, that’s “anti-Feds” as in “anti-Federalists” [a la Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, Robert Yates, James Monroe, etc] back in the day when their battle was with the so-called “Federalists” [George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,John Adams, John Jay, John Marshall, etc] over the nascent Constitution and its manifestation as a “united” States of America.
And it is also “anti-Feds” as in anti-Federal Reserve System [a la Ron Paul and others i’m sure You’ve never heard of].
Anyway, Thanks again and enjoy Your Sunday. ~ jeff
Chump needs to be charged with genocide.
Forcing people back to work in a pandemic is both stupid and immoral.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/02/forcing-people-back-to-work-in-a-pandemic-is-both-stupid-and-immoral/
Trump is attacking Dr. Birx now.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/03/politics/trump-birx-coronavirus-task-force/index.html