Some men have internal narratives that overrun the forces of reason and collective intelligence. Welcome to the skewed narratives and apocalyptic visions of our ignorant, self-destructive men in the White House.
SOME MEN JUST WANT TO WATCH THE WORLD BURN
TREASON-Trump Related Extreme Anxiety Strikes Our Nation
As the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.
A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.
By that time, hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were pleading for shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile. That federal cache of supplies was created more than 20 years ago to help bridge gaps in the medical and pharmaceutical supply chains during a national emergency.
Now, three months into the crisis, that stockpile is nearly drained just as the numbers of patients needing critical care is surging. Some state and local officials report receiving broken ventilators and decade-old dry-rotted masks.
“We basically wasted two months,” Kathleen Sebelius, health and human services secretary during the Obama administration, told AP.
As early as mid-January, U.S. officials could see that hospitals in China’s Hubei province were overwhelmed with infected patients, with many left dependent on ventilator machines to breathe. Italy soon followed, with hospitals scrambling for doctors, beds and equipment.
HHS did not respond to questions about why federal officials waited to order medical supplies until stocks were running critically low. But President Donald Trump has asserted that the federal government should take a back seat to states when it comes to dealing with the pandemic.
Trump and his appointees have urged state and local governments, and hospitals, to buy their own masks and breathing machines, saying requests to the dwindling national stockpile should be a last resort.
“The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser, said at a White House briefing Thursday. “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.”
Experts in emergency preparedness and response have expressed dismay at such statements, saying the federal government must take the lead in ensuring medical supplies are available and distributed where they are needed most.
“States do not have the purchasing power of the federal government. They do not have the ability to run a deficit like the federal government. They do not have the logistical power of the federal government,” said Sebelius, who served as governor of Kansas before running the nation’s health care system.
Because of the fractured federal response to COVID-19, state governors say they’re now bidding against federal agencies and each other for scarce supplies, driving up prices.
“You now literally will have a company call you up and say, ‘Well, California just outbid you,'” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, D-N.Y., said Tuesday. “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator.”
For nearly a month, Trump rebuffed calls from Cuomo and others to use his authority under the Defense Production Act to order companies to increase production of ventilators and personal protective equipment. He suggested the private sector was acting sufficiently on its own.
More than three months after China revealed the first COVID-19 cases, Trump finally relented last week, saying he will order companies to ramp up production of critical supplies. By then, confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the United States had surged to the highest in the world. Now, the number of people infected in the U.S. has climbed to more than 312,000 and deaths have topped 8,500.
Trump spent January and February playing down the threat from the new virus. He derided warnings of pandemic reaching the U.S. as a hoax perpetrated by Democrats and the media. As the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global public health emergency on Jan. 30, Trump assured the American people that the virus was “very well under control” and he predicted “a very good ending.”
The Great White Evangelical Hope has been Donald Trump, while he remains the antagonist toward the educated and spiritually and scientifically aware American. DESPAIR has taken Trump’s human form, and his dark intentions, ambition, greed and hubris continues to bring the greatest harm to our land.
“You are not going to like what comes after America. . .”—-Leonard Cohen
America will never be the same.
The covid-19 pandemic plays into the President’s and Vice-President’s self and other destructive dreams of apocalyptic annihilation and personal self-righteousness. One can only wonder how those self-righteous spiritual twins, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and their apocalyptic fantasies drive present (and past) attitudes about pandemic.Pence believed that the AIDS epidemic was God’s wrath against homosexuals and drug users in the 1980’s and 90’s. I can only wonder what these two bozos think about the present pandemic. Perhaps it is God’s wrath against anyone who wants to collect their social security and Medicare? Or, perhaps it is God’s vengeance against anyone who disagrees with this deadly broken duo. The two of them tend to choose personal or religious narratives over the truth revealed through science and intelligence, and Trump continues to trust his “gut instincts” over collective reason and knowledge.
Minister Ralph Drollinger, a Trump confidant and advisor, has made some head turning statements.
Mr Drollinger, the founder of Capitol Ministries, leads a Bible study every week for members of Donald Trump’s cabinet. As first reported by The Intercept, Drollinger recently published several blog posts and a study guide on the coronavirus pandemic. Among other points, Drollinger argues that the coronavirus may be our punishment from God. For what, exactly? The usual progressive fare: environmentalism, lesbianism, homosexuality, abortion—and yes, even China is thrown in.
Among other horrors, Drollinger wrote: “A biblically astute evaluation of the situation strongly suggests that America and other countries of the world are reaping what China has sown due to their leaders’ recklessness and lack of candor and transparency.”
Drollinger differentiates between types of God’s wrath—according to his analysis, this global pandemic isn’t quite the worst. “Relative to the coronavirus pandemic crisis, this is not God’s abandonment wrath nor His cataclysmic wrath,” he writes in the study guide. “Rather it is sowing and reaping wrath.”
Drollinger’s views are far from progressive. For example, he has made his opinion known that young mothers shouldn’t serve in the Legislature as living away from their kids while working would be “sinful.” As The Intercept reported, he has also justified child separations at the border.
Still you might be thinking, “OK, but does what one person writes in a blog post really matter? Is this even influential?” As The Intercept reports, these study sessions happen on Wednesday mornings. Who attends? According to the outlet, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
At this point you might also be wondering, “Is having a Bible study in the White House really a thing?” Apparently yes. As The Washington Post reported, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Prior to the Trump administration, there were weekly prayer and study sessions that some White House staff attended. As The Guardian reports, however, it was for “lower-ranking staff members,” not the Cabinet. Perhaps surprisingly, studying the Bible in a federal building isn’t a violation of any rules, though as the Post reports, supervisors are not supposed to pressure employees into joining.
So, we now have their skewed biblical perception of reality influencing the people who influence the President. If you are not astonished and aghast, please check your pulse, and look into the mirror to see if there is a reflection.
This self-destructive Christian Armageddon theology — a literal belief that certain actions Trump has promoted since the beginning of his presidency, must happen before Jesus will return to reign on Earth — is called “dispensational pre-millennialism” and it is not the quirky opinion of some isolated church. Although the majority of Christians do not share these views, versions of dispensational pre-millennialism dominate American evangelicalism, and Mike Pence is riding shotgun on this collective stagecoach ride to hell..
It originated as a small movement in the 1840s, but by the 1970s, millions of evangelical and fundamentalist churchgoers had embraced some form of it. Dispensationalism was popularized in a best-selling book called “The Late, Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey; and later, in the 1990s, it reached an even larger audience through the “Left Behind” novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The theology spread via Bible camps and colleges, through theological seminaries and revival meetings, in films and videos, by Sunday school materials, and in daily devotional guides — all teaching that the end of the world was near, and that Jerusalem was the physical place where this apocalyptic drama would unfold.
If you know evangelicals, chances are very good that you know this theology, whether you believe it or not. You cannot avoid it. And if you hear the President of the United States say something biblically related, you take notice. Especially when that President won 81% of the white evangelical vote.
Other evangelical pastors and teachers praise his actions as “biblical” and likened them to “fulfilled prophecies.” While that may sound benign (or perhaps nutty) to the theologically uninitiated, they are referring to the “prophecy” of the conversion of the Jews, the second coming of Jesus, the final judgment, and the end of the world — the events referred to as the biblical apocalypse.
I doubt that President Trump could explain dispensational pre-millennialism. I doubt he knows the term. But his evangelical supporters know it. Some of his advisers are probably whispering these prophecies in his ears. Trump might not really care how they interpret the Bible, but he cares that white evangelicals continue to stand with him. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is one way to affirm his commitment to these evangelicals — reminding them that he, Donald J. Trump, is pressing biblical history forward to its conclusion and that he is God’s man in the unfolding of these last days.
I may not believe it. You may not believe it. Donald Trump might not even truly believe it. But millions do. That matters. Not only for American politics, of course. For peace for the rest of us as well.
Some religions, and men, just want to watch the world burn.
The dynamic duo of ignorance and heresay, led by Donald Trump and MIke Pence, drives the inept national response towards the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps this blog will bring some light to the convoluted interior world that these two dark masters occupy, as well as the morally compromised world of countless spiritually disfigured so-called White Evangelical Christian Americans.
I would not mind if the twisted political and religious world of Trump and Pence gets burned in “Hell’s fire” this November. Yes, some men, and women, who feel like me just want to watch the personal and political world of Trump burn, but it will be a selective burn, only stripping our land of this dangerous spiritual underbrush..
Please vote your conscience this fall.
If you are a Trump supporting White Evangelical Christian American, it may be time to be truly “born again”, because your present incarnation is an affront to truth, love, and justice.
