Is Now The Time To Be Pointing Fingers?

Yes! Not only is it okay to be pointing fingers, but it is imperative!

I’m reading a lot of “holier than thou” statements from people saying that this is no time to be pointing fingers…that we need to be focused on fighting the virus and that there will be time afterwards to debate what went wrong and what went right.

I say, BULLSHIT…in all caps!

That line of thinking is killing people. Literally.

It’s time to get real. It’s time to tell it like it is, without beating around the bush.

C’mon, Steve…you’ve got to be kidding me with this TDS crap. Give it a rest. We know you hate Trump and will take any opportunity to bash him! This is not the time for partisan politics!

Really? Let me lay it out for you.

Anyone who has read any of my stuff during the past couple of months is familiar with my analysis that I call the Bubble of Bullshit. This is the very real concept of Trump and his supporters being stuck in an information stream that does not comport with reality. These people are convinced that they cannot trust any source of information, at all, that is not within the bubble of approval. Basically, that amounts to these people getting nearly 100% of their information from Trump himself, FoxNews, and approved commentators such as Hannity, Rush, Levin, and other Trump media minions.

Everything else is disregarded out of hand as fake or lies. This is classic demagoguery and propaganda. And it’s undeniable. We see examples of it every day and it’s been instrumental in everything that has happened in the past 3+ years.

Just because it needs to be said, to be sure, there is also a bubble on the left. However, the immediate danger right now, as we speak, is the Trump Bubble of Bullshit.

Up until now, it has played a role in covering up and protecting Trump and those around him. It’s been frustrating to watch for those of us who so clearly see it.

But now it is different. Now, the Bubble of Bullshit is literally killing people.

The situation with the coronavirus is a near perfect demonstration of the Bubble of Bullshit that we can clearly see and it is continuing in real-time as Trump is desperately attempting to alter the reality of how he handled this crisis for the past two months by lying to us.

If this situation does not snap people out of the Trump Trance, I can’t imagine that anything will.

The problem for Trump in this particular situation is that he cannot control what the virus does. It is not going to go away simply by lying about it and having his AG lie about it, and having all of the GOP congressmen lie about it, and having FoxNews and the other media minions lie about. Nope. The virus continues to spread, totally contradicting his lies and exposing the Bubble of Bullshit for what it is, once and for all.

Two nights ago, I spoke on the phone with a 24/7 FoxNews watching, Trump supporting, Rush fan. Trust me when I say we’ve had some heated discussions about Trump over the past few years. Nothing I say has gotten through to him…precisely because he is in that bubble. I have basically stopped discussing politics with him at all during the past year because it was futile and was doing nothing but causing conflict in our relationship.

So, when he asked me the other night what I thought about how Trump was handling the virus crisis, I was very hesitant to get into it. But, I mildly engaged.

He thought Trump’s response has been great. He praised the team that he has assembled, including Pence. Ugh. Here we go.

I told him that if you only looked at what Trump was saying during the previous couple of days (this was on this past Tuesday night), then I was pleased that he finally appears to be taking the virus seriously and implementing some needed actions.

However, I told him, if you look at how he has handled it during the previous two months, he has been awful by downplaying it, refusing to get sufficient testing in place, and accusing the Dems and media of over-hyping things to hurt him.

We pretty much left it at that. I don’t believe he understands at all what I was referring to about Trump’s actions during the past couple of months.

In another interaction, I had a discussion with another family member, also one that is fully within the Bubble of Bullshit. As we were discussing thing on Monday during Trump’s press conference, she was exclaiming how great he was doing. She stated that it would be very hard for anyone to criticize how he has handled the crisis, but she was sure that the Dems and media would try.

I nearly lost it.

She had no idea what had been going on since January and really only started paying attention to things when Trump started to take it seriously, when schools started closing and events were being cancelled. Ugh.

So, this is the situation we find ourselves in. The people who are stuck in the Bubble of Bullshit are finally taking the virus seriously for the most part (although I still see quite a few who are downplaying things). However, they also believe that Trump is handling things very well. They don’t realize how much time he wasted by his refusal to believe the very real threat that the virus posed.

They don’t realize how many lives that delay will ultimately cost.

So, why do I say that it is imperative to point fingers right now, while we are in the midst of this crisis?

Because the sooner we can get more people to see it, the sooner we can stop following an unfit leader, and start following those who actually do know how we should handle things.

The longer we follow Trump and allow him to continue leading this, I am confident the more unnecessary deaths will occur.

And even if we can’t remove him immediately, this needs to be well understood when people head to the polls in November.

Here’s what happened:

In December, the virus hit in China. China, to it’s discredit, was not forthcoming to the world about it and actually took active steps to hide it.

Even so, in late December, a blogger in Florida was able to figure it out and become very alarmed.

Unfortunately, Trump disbanded the very team that was created within the White House national security office to monitor the world for pandemic type outbreaks like this. Surely, if the blogger in Florida was able to figure it out, a team of experts at the highest levels would have also been privy to it. Alas, it was not there due to Trump’s actions.

So, we lost a few weeks of precious time due to China’s deception and due to Trump’s removal of the very team to detect these things.

In January, when the world was learning about the virus and becoming rightfully alarmed, the remaining experts in the administration from the CDC and another agencies and departments surely informed Trump about the extreme seriousness of the situation.

In fact, during the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration, the Obama team held a very specific simulation exercise with the incoming Trump people that demonstrated and warned of the imminent threat and seriousness of a pandemic outbreak and how to be prepared for it. Unfortunately, most of those people have since rotated out of the administration through Trump’s unprecedented revolving door. We’re left with mostly Trump sycophants surrounding him.

In any case, the experts were able to convince Trump that it was serious enough to restrict travel into the U.S. from China, which he did at the end of January. That was a good thing. Since Trump is very well known for wanting to keep “others” out of the U.S. anyway, it probably was not a very hard sell.

However, that was the only thing Trump did that would indicate him taking the situation seriously at all for the next approximately six weeks.

While other countries around the world were diligently implementing intense testing operations, Trump did nothing.

Trump consistently and very publicly downplayed the threat over those 6 weeks. He also consistently and publicly lied to us about what was happening. This is irrefutable.

https://t.co/uAsrB2DF9k pic.twitter.com/O2tmh9CwQ4— Barry Rubin (@barubin) March 18, 2020

He refused to obtain testing kits that the World Health Organization offered, opting to develop our own American made tests. The delays that this caused are inexcusable. The initial tests that we created and shipped out around the country did not work and had to be revised. Further delays ensued.

All the while, Trump was telling us that there was no real threat. That we had contained it. That there was nothing to worry about. That we had very few cases and the numbers were going down. That all of those that were infected were getting better. That there would be millions of tests being done within days. That anyone who wanted a test could get one.

In other words, he blatantly lied to us over and over and over.

He contradicted what the experts were telling us and he blamed any questioning of what he was saying on the despicable, partisan Dems and the enemy of the people media. He even blamed Obama.

In the meantime, the media, beginning in January when it became clear that this was a big issue, was reporting to us on a daily basis about the very real devastating threat that the virus is.

They were informing us of the very things that we are now experiencing.

Those of us who were paying attention to them were well-informed about all of this.

We knew about the lack of a vaccine, how long it would take to create a vaccine, what the rate of spread was, who was most affected and vulnerable, how many people could have and spread the virus without knowing it, what the best procedures are in preventing the spread, what the ramifications would be to the economy due to the inevitable disruption and closures, the problems with lack of enough hospital beds and medical equipment to treat the afflicted, why and how this was different than the seasonal flu, and the concept of flattening the curve.

We were learning all about these things from the media between the middle of January and the beginning of March.

While the media was rightly informing us about these things, Trump and FoxNews, and Rush, and all of the other Trump minions were downplaying things, accusing the Dems and media of making it all up and unduly causing panic only to hurt Trump. That we really had nothing to worry about. That it was no worse than the common cold or the seasonal flu.

All of these people were mocking any of us who were taking the threat seriously. Facebook was rampant with Trump supporters posting about how insane and corrupt the left and the media were with it. The threat of the virus was all a bunch of hooey.

Trump was leading the way in all of that. Contradicting all of the experts along the way. So, the President of the United States, instead of listening to and acting upon the advise of the experts, decided to join in with the Bubble of Bullshit and demagogue the issue.

And then Italy.

The reports from Italy and many of the other outbreaks around the world, brought the stark reality of the situation to bare. It could no longer be denied.

As the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. continued to rise, in spite of the lack of adequate testing, it became clear that all of Trump’s bullshit was not going to work this time. Not with a virus that is invulnerable to the lies and the cover-ups.

So the big flip happened…only about a week ago. Trump gave his disastrous Oval Office address on Wednesday night and then followed it up with daily press conferences with the “task force”. Like a light switch, Trump became serious about it, shortly thereafter declaring a National Emergency. And all of his minions followed.

But the mixed messages continued.

It was just a week ago that Trump held his press conference with the task force and the leaders of businesses that were going to help with a testing system. At this briefing, they attempted to put out information to the public about procedures everyone should be doing…wash your hands, avoid contact with others, social distancing, covering your coughs with your elbow, etc.

However, at this very meeting, they crowded everyone in, completely ignoring the social distancing recommendations, they shook each others’ hands, they touched their faces and coughed into their hands, they all touched the podium and the microphone. In fact, it could have been a perfect demonstration of ALL of the things NOT to do. SNL would have trouble finding a way to do worse if they set out to mock it. And nobody on the task force team even corrected any of it.

This was the team that would lead us out of the crisis.

At the same press conference, Trump continued to lie about and exaggerate all of the steps being taken and the availability of testing and the new systems they are setting up.

Where is the awesome website from Google?

Where are the drive-thru testing facilities that were going to be put up in the Wal-Mart, Target, and Walgreens parking lots?

Also at the same meeting, Trump stated that he was not worried about the possibility of having been infected, even though their was photographic evidence that he had been in direct contact with a couple of people that had tested positive for the virus. He told the world that he didn’t need to be tested because he felt fine and had no symptoms. He demonstrated to the world that, even though he had been in direct contact with the virus, it was just fine for him to be glad-handing all of these people and to be in such tight, close proximity to them.

And the doctors on the task force said nothing.

We already knew at that time that a big problem with containing this virus was that there are so many that can be walking around with it without knowing, having no symptoms, but still contagious. And here we had Trump, having had direct contact with it, acting as if it was no problem and the experts on his task force and his doctor said nothing to correct that.

So fast forward to today.

Now everyone is taking it seriously (or at least pretending to at least, as there are still a number of them that don’t yet get it). All of the FoxNews watchers and Trump supporters who had been told this was no big deal for 2 months, were now being informed of all of the real issues that those of us not in the Bubble have been learning all along.

Welcome aboard, Trumpers.

Everything the media had been reporting on and informing us about has come to be true, while Trump and his minions were accusing them of fake news and panicking people simply to hurt Trump. Oops. The Bubble of Bullshit has been undeniably exposed.

The Bubble of Bullshit caused us to lose at least 6 weeks of extremely critical time that should have been used to test, test, test, and contain this thing. Instead, we allowed it to spread, essentially un-monitored.

We have absolutely no idea how many people are walking around with it at this point because of that negligence. And people will die that very well probably would not have if this was handled competently.

It is absolutely clear that Trump is completely unfit to handle this. And we haven’t even talked about the international issues. Trump, having lost all credibility with our allies, is in no position to lead the international efforts in combating this thing. He continues to thwart that effort by attempting to blame China and others, rather than attempting to work with them and lead them. His dishonesty leading up to this point and his continued lies in all things, and in particular with this issue, means that the world cannot trust him in any of it.

With him at the helm, the incompetence and dishonesty will assuredly continue. And this will certainly cause more unnecessary loss of life.

It’s way past time for more people to understand and accept this. The sooner that happens, the sooner we can have competent, honest leadership to help get us through this.

It’s absolutely appropriate and imperative to point fingers right now.

This Bubble of Bullshit needs to burst.

Lives are at stake.