The New Trump Towers
Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law, happy is he.—Proverbs 29:18
PROFOUNDLY DISTRESSING AND HEARTBREAKING-WORLDWIDE COVID 19 PANDEMIC AND AMERICA’S FAILED PRESIDENCY. WHO ELSE BUT DONALD TRUMP WOULD TURN A DISASTER INTO A DIVISIVE POLITICAL GAME?
The COVID-19 story keeps evolving. Tragically, the damaged, selfish, self-serving male consciousness such as that cultivated and exhibited by our President stays the same.
Missteps in rolling out virus testing infrastructure went unaddressed by government leaders, leaving the country blind to the virus’s spread.
As Trump declared coronavirus under control, local leaders faced confusion and chaos as cases piled up.
(from Washington Post) As a mysterious respiratory illness tore through China and other countries in mid-January, Kyle Coleman, an emergency management coordinator in Texas, took inventory of his team’s personal protective gear at a warehouse in Bexar County.
The hazmat suits and gloves were in good condition. Some of the respirator masks had expired. Three pallets of hand sanitizer seemed like enough because they seldom used more than one pallet a year.
Over several weeks in January, Coleman followed the outbreak of the novel coronavirus: the first death reported in China on Jan. 11, the spread to Thailand and Japan, and then the first U.S. case in Washington confirmed on Jan. 21.
The next day, President Trump, in an interview on CNBC, assured the public: “We have it totally under control.” (end, from Washington Post).
I am still not sure what the greatest threat to our country might be: Donald Trump, or COVID-19. Donald trusts his “gut” over scientific and medical evidence (remember his ignorance about global warming, etc?), so there is no reasoning with him. If we continue to be exposed to both threats, we are fucked for sure! The corona virus, and Donald Trump, have much in common. They both threaten to tank our economy, and destroy hundreds of thousands of lives. Trump and the COVID-19 epidemic go together like a horse and carriage, don’t they? Their compromised relationship has the potential to destroy civilization, democracy, and our individual lives, and they are both inextricably linked to each other now.
Where is integrity and truth with our POTUS? I believe that he never had it. His minions have had it hypnotized out of them, unfortunately. Trump sends medical professionals to the front lines with few masks, and not enough ventilators to even support a minimal effort to keep stricken patients alive, let alone the medically trained heroes that we have thrown onto the front lines. Trump, the bone-spur stricken man who avoided the Vietnam War, has a truth-spur which prevents him from admitting that his own wayward leadership has led to the deaths and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Americans. And he continues to attack all people who try to speak truth to his corrupted power. And speak truth to corrupted power WE WILL CONTINUE TO DO.
America remains constrained to continue to support incompetence and treachery in their leaders. Trump’s callous disregard of the threat of covid-19, and his failure to marshal all of our national and international resources early on in the fight against this threat shows incompetence, and borders on treason. Donald continues to seek affirmation from those that suffer, while he takes credit for all that is good, most of which was not sourced through him, and avoids taking responsibility for all of his idiotic statements and actions. Donald Trump has no vision other than the ATM screen of his own disfigured mind, so self-promotion, divisiveness, and dishonesty will continue to characterize his relationship with this deadly disease, and with the American public. Hypnotism, cultism, and ignorance have grabbed far too many people by the short hairs, and their allegiance to this human devil takes what little vision from them that they may have had. So many hopes and dreams are now being crushed by this disease, both from COVID-19 and Donald Trump, and our collective heart is vulnerable to breaking apart.
Those who guide this people mislead them, and those who are guided are led astray.—– Isaiah 9:16 (NIV)
I can assure Donald Trump – my church will not meet on Easter. To do so, to risk the spread of coronavirus, would be a denial of my faith and a perversion of our communal worship.—- Melissa Florer-Bixler
We are almost powerless in the face of this impending catastrophe. Our leadership has failed us. We must not now fail each other, and we must continue to support each other at the highest level that our hearts will allow for, and that we can be present with in total integrity and honor. We must continue to love one another, and to also be prepared to let go of all that once was important to us. Life is important, yet love and connection to our human family is of ABSOLUTE IMPORTANCE. Don’t ignore our neighbors, our friends, or our families, PLEASE!
I have a pony in this race, as I have tobacco and marijuana compromised lungs (from my under age 30 excesses), resulting in susceptibility to bronchitis and pneumonia, and, now, covid-19, in my mid 60’s. Trump’s response to this crisis has been criminally negligent, at the most important of times. So has the response of many of my “fellow Americans”.
I remember the AIDS days of the mid to late 80’s. To have AIDS was a death sentence then. I had to limit my sexual partners to the ONE that I could trust, because all of our lives were at stake. I was never more terrified, than when in 1987 I went into the Multnomah County Health Department and got my first AIDS test. I had two previous female companions who had made love to bisexual males, which was HIGH RISK sex, and I had used intravenous drugs several times, also a HIGH RISK endeavor. I was given a random number, I was tested, and then told to use this number to unlock my result, which was not to be made available to me for over one week. I had DEATH TERRORS for the first time in my life, at the young age of 32.
I quit a job that I had, and I then totally reevaluated my life, making profound changes. COVID-19 is a terrifying reintroduction to the death terrors of AIDS of the 80’s, and I feel like I have been here before, though, this time, I am much more concerned about ALL OF OUR HEALTHS, thus I have ZERO physical contact with ANYBODY, until we all can be assured of our mutual safety.
And the fear of death has become much more inclusive.. My only desire now is keeping all of us safe, and connected, through love, while maintaining six feet of distance between us. Since testing is still not available for everyone, it is best to pretend that we are all COVID-19 free, until proven otherwise, and to continue to keep ourselves out of harm’s way, whenever possible. If symptoms do develop, seek proper medical attention, as necessary.
STAY SAFE! Practice safe connection! Wash hands liberally, stay at home whenever possible.
Just because a pandemic is on doesn’t mean people will stop having sex. Sex is, after all, a basic, if not the most basic, human activity. But, how to do it safely?
The Oregon Health Authority tweeted out some guidance Wednesday for people wondering how to have sex in the time of COVID-19, with a useful graphic to illustrate the advice.
So, how do authorities suggest you change your sexual behavior?
Well, the number one bit tip is: “You are your safest sex partner,” which, let’s be honest, is always true.
You can’t get yourself pregnant, you can’t give yourself an STD and you can’t stop communicating with yourself and completely disappear for two months only to like your own Instagram post from seven years ago and then send yourself a text at 2 a.m. that says, “U up?”
You also can’t infect yourself with COVID-19.
Another piece of advice from the authorities: Practice “selective kissing.”
This will hopefully not come as a shock but kissing, like coughing, breathing, singing and talking can pass COVID-19.
That means, according to officials, it’s time to stop kissing anyone who “is not part of your small circle of close contacts.”
Hopefully at this point you are also not seeing those people in person, so this shouldn’t be too much of an added hardship.
Um, no new sex partners, eh?
It truly is about to become a “survival of the fittest” evolutionary phenomenon. The man now leading our country is not fit to be president, and I AM FIT TO BE TIED that I have to continue to witness this lying sack of poo-poo who continuously tries to convince America of his own personal righteousness. His dog and pony show supporting his declaration of a national emergency and his “acts” of addressing this catastrophe has made me want to vomit. He lies, deceives, manipulates, obfuscates, cheats, and continues to be adored by the Fox news watching idiots of our country.
Speaking of Fox News, why isn’t there more accountability to the truth?
Fox News insiders are concerned that the network could face “potential legal action” from viewers over its misleading coverage of the new coronavirus, according to Vanity Fair’s Gabe Sherman, though experts say a “viable claim” against the network is unlikely.
Sherman, the author of the Fox News exposé “The Loudest Voice in the Room” who frequently covers the conservative network, told MSNBC on Sunday that “there’s a real concern inside the network that their early downplaying of the coronavirus actually exposes Fox News to potential legal action by viewers who maybe were misled and actually have died from this.”
Sherman noted that polls show Republican views on issues like the coronavirus are “completely different” than “people who gather their news from a wide array of sources.”
“Fox News tried to do their original playbook — which was dismiss it as a hoax, say that this is another partisan attempt by Democrats to hurt Donald Trump — and this was the case where they could not prevent reality,” he said.
Wow, the truth would not stand a chance on Fox News, or in Donald Trump’s divisive brain.
Our future may boil down to a survival of the fittest natural selection process, if our technology does not meet this COVID-19 challenge. Who will survive? What does it mean to be “fit”?
Stay tuned, stay connected, stay away from each other.
It is about to become the end of the world for many innocent people.
It is hard for me to feel fine about mass death and suffering.
For a little musical interlude, I will let the rock and roll gods REM sing about their understanding of an END for you.
It’s the end of my world as I knew it. All future visits to athletic clubs, concerts, movie theaters, and groups of people greater than ten people, and association with people known to have traveled to virus infested areas are on full suspension. My wife and I are now practicing self-quarantine. I have just cancelled important eye surgery that was scheduled for March 17th. I can’t see taking any extra risks that might expose myself or my wife to those who are carriers of the disease.
Panic buying with my fellow stressed Oregonians at Costco are now OUT! (The shopping experience of March 11 was just plain fucking amazing, and troubling, with hordes of people gathering products that they think will help them over the hump).
Our country is woefully unprepared for this, and our corrupt President Trump must carry much of the blame for this one. This is happening on his watch, and he remains more concerned with economics and the preservation of his self-image, than with human lives. He monetized reality, and now
WE ARE ALL GOING TO PAY THE COST.
On March 21, Trump stated that the cure can’t be worse than the disease. Of course, he was referring to the economic impact of measures to prevent the spread of the disease. The dark directions that this stream of thought lead to are heartbreaking, and showcases the disease of the human spirit that has already captured this man.
In 2018 Trump Fired CDC’s Entire Pandemic Response Team.
The potential for an American tragedy is huge. Had Donald Trump not disbanded the CDC’s pandemic response team two years ago (to spite Obama), we would not be entering into this territory blind and stupid.
Ad from a Brazilian condom company. A condom won’t keep us safe from Covid-19, or from the Prez, however
As many of us are in the most vulnerable group of humans (60 years and older), becoming aware of the risks, and planning for constructive responses to the growing threat, is appropriate and necessary. This is NOT FEAR BASED behavior, but instead a rational approach to our new age. We all would prefer to live out our lives and die of other, non-corona virus related causes. With the Stock Market tumbling, the survivors may have to exit retirement, and return to the working world to recover assets.
In early February, I awoke in the middle of the night to a traumatic event. As I abruptly arose from bed, I grabbed a breath of air, with an extreme sense of distress, and then panic. I thought that I was dying from an apparent lack of oxygen. My mind tends to pick up the vibrations from other people’s life experiences through intense empathetic connection, so just know that you do not want COVID-19, and we all should do all that we can to avoid exposure. I really am not yet ready to die, yet I know that such an outcome is now possible for me, and for many of those who I love. The last time that I had this type of unusual experience, one of our best friends died.
Our breath is just too precious to give up.. So is our lives. Please give up your excess public exposure for at least the next two to four weeks, and increase the time if it becomes apparent that the pandemic has not abated. We all will eventually breath easier because of the sacrifices that are being made right now.
Our household continues to stay in touch with family and friends, especially the more vulnerable ones. I continue to feed our ducks, our multiple variety of birds including crows and blue jays, and our squirrels. Sharon and I are now practicing several workouts at home that we used to participate in group formats at our local 24-Hour Fitness Club.
I hope that I will be able to continue to help my spiritual companions, be they human, aviary, or mammalian in nature. I am here to help, until I am no more.
And, I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE ANY OF YOU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BA9eTXwGIk
Trust in God, but tie up your camel!—–Mohammed
Do not trust in our government, or our national leaders. Shelter in place, wash hands, keep a safe distance from others, and keep informed. TIE UP YOUR CAMEL!
Click on the black rectangle for a clip from the classic TV program Cheers.
Hooverville, The Great Depression, and fallout from the COVID-19 Pandemic
During the Great Depression there were “Hoovervilles”. There is now an ominous sign on the horizon, with a tsunami of negative economic possibilities threatening to take down our world economy. The new towns that could arise from the ashes of our fallen economy might be called “Trump Towers”, or “FOX (News) Holes”. So shall the grave markers, and tombstones, representing the hundreds of thousands of victims of the COVID-19 pandemic be also declared Trump Towers, ultimately being dedicated to President Trump’s narcissism, denial of reality, mental corruption and incompetence.
One of my retirement accounts based on real estate just closed up shop, because commercial real estate paper is now “garbage” for an unknown period of time into the future. This troubling development may be the harbinger of the beginning of the end of our economy. It ended one monthly income stream for me.
Worst case scenario, if the money runs out, be prepared to barter goods and services. I am thinking of stocking up on booze and cigarettes, which are becoming more valuable than the empty promises from our Federal Government.
The Rise Of Hoovervilles
As the Depression worsened and millions of urban and rural families lost their jobs and depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called Hoovervilles, after the president. Democratic National Committee publicity director and longtime newspaper reporter Charles Michelson (1868-1948) is credited with coining the term, which first appeared in print in 1930.
Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and whatever other materials people could salvage. Unemployed masons used cast-off stone and bricks and in some cases built structures that stood 20 feet high. Most shanties, however, were distinctly less glamorous: Cardboard-box homes did not last long, and most dwellings were in a constant state of being rebuilt. Some homes were not buildings at all, but deep holes dug in the ground with makeshift roofs laid over them to keep out inclement weather. Some of the homeless found shelter inside empty conduits and water mains.
What we will construct our Trump Towers, or Fox (News) Holes, out of? They will arise out of the broken promises from our Government, and from the ardent support of the broken minds of multitudes of ignorant, cult-personality driven minions of the American population. Right now, the worst case economic scenarios are becoming increasingly more possible to many people, as a result of the FAKE GOVERNMENT, masquerading as the President Trump administration. His ongoing criminal negligence, monetization of the human spirit, narcissism, ignorance, lying, and deceitful ways continues to threaten the very fabric of civilization.
Never forget, he was the one who disbanded part of the CDC, and cancelled advanced technical support for pandemics beginning in 2018, and he cancelled the contract of a pandemic expert in China, who might have been able to be on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, giving us two or three extra months of advanced information and preparation capability. could have provided real-time information to U.S. and other officials around the world during the first weeks of the outbreak, when they said the Chinese government tamped down on the release of information and provided erroneous assessments.
Trump, as late as February, called the national reaction to the pandemic an overreaction and a hoax, spun out of proportion by Democratic Governors and the wayward media. The Trump administration is now belatedly pushing for aggressive monetary policy steps to stem the economic hit of the epidemic, after the dotard spent several weeks playing down the health risks and its rapid spread.
Bow down before me, and kiss my ring, and thou will be saved
The greatest public health threat in our history is not only the COVID-19 pandemic, it is also the corrupt leader of our country, aided and abetted by his propaganda machine, FOX News. Fox News and Trump are now promoting a return to normalcy, even encouraging the idea that many seniors should sacrifice their lives so that the economy can recover (read-save Trump’s presidency). (true story-read about Texas lieutenant governor’s terrifying story line).
March 29 (Reuters) – U.S. deaths from coronavirus could reach 200,000 with millions of cases, the government’s top infectious diseases expert warned on Sunday as New York, New Orleans and other major cities warned they would soon run out of medical supplies.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, estimated in an interview with CNN that the pandemic could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in the United States.
Some men just want to watch the world burn, as long as they can make money from it. So sorry that you may have to lose your life to support his corrupt view of reality. Remember the Fukishima and Chernobyl disasters? The governments had to enlist the help of the workers there on suicide missions to try to save the plants, or to shut them down before a worse disaster occurred. I am sure that most Americans do not want to sacrifice their lives so that the billionaires and corporations retain their obscene, selfish, greedy monetary positions.
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. 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.
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.
The real American hoax of the CENTURY is “President Trump”, and his pseudo-religious cult following, including those poor, misguided fools who believe his every word, and the words of Trumpian sycophants on FOX News.
From MSNBC’s JOY REID:
You’ve had Fox anchors who are going, or as likely as anyone who is on this panel to know someone who gets sick with COVID-19. It’s interesting to have to watch them have to confront reality, that as you say, is deadly reality, that they can’t cover for Trump on this. There’s no way they can keep doing it. I wonder if the same sort of dynamic is going to happen with Sinclair, which is ten times — it’s Fox times ten — and in your traffic and weather together and they’ve tried to also spin things in his favor. They do add commentary from people like former Trump officials. How are they handling it?
SHERMAN:
Yea. I mean, this is the question, what’s more pernicious or deceptive about Sinclair is that their local newscasts are not labeled as a Sinclair channel. You don’t know that it has a right-wing ideology behind the owners of the local news station, so you’re absorbing it as if it’s just straight network news. I just want to get back to the Fox of it all real quick. When I’ve been talking to Fox insiders over the last few days, there’s a real concern inside the network that their early downplaying of the coronavirus actually exposes Fox News to potential legal action by viewers who maybe were misled and actually have died from this. Trish Regan’s has been taken off the air is, you know, reflective of this concern that Fox News is in big trouble by downplaying this virus and The New York Times reported days ago that the Murdoch family was privately taking the coronavirus seriously. The Murdochs, of course, own Fox News. So, they were taking personal steps to protect themselves while anchors like Trish Regan and Sean Hannity were telling viewers that it’s a hoax and putting themselves in potentially mortal danger. So I think this is a case where Fox’s coverage, if it actually winds up being proved that people died because of it, this is a new terrain in terms of Fox being possibly held liable for their actions.
Trump wants us to line up for the COVID-19 equivalent to playing Russian Roulette. With the 2020 election on the line, it may also be Trump himself pointing the gun into his, and our collective, mouth now.
WE ARE THE EXPENDABLES, THE NEW SOYLENT GREEN. WE ARE THE NEW SUICIDE SQUADS TO BE RECRUITED BY TRUMPIAN EVIL TO PREVENT THE MELTDOWN OF OUR ECONOMY.
Please do not take medical advice from a man who looked directly at a solar eclipse.—Hilary Clinton
It is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE to keep our “higher power” immediate and accessible to us during these most trying of times. With uncertainty, anxiety, loneliness, and depression attaching their heavy anchor of suffering to the COVID-19 pandemic, we must continue to keep our spiritual ship afloat and moving forward.
Hope remains in the here and now, though we must be vigilant in preparing for the near future, as well. Just doing the control work IS NOT ENOUGH, we must be connected to our HIGHEST POTENTIAL to overcome the pitfalls presented by the threat of the pandemic.
And we must stop listening to the political inspired machinations of the Criminal In Chief.
Trump Related Extreme Anxiety Strikes Our Nation (TREASON)
I am not much of a Bible thumper. I am also not too aligned with much of the “religious thought” of the day, or of any day for that matter. I tend to be more discriminating, and selective, of the modes of thought that I choose to use as my own. Yet, “God’s wrath” may be another term for our planet Earth attempting to strike a balance between the “virus” known as the human race, and Earth’s natural ability to create and sustain life. Global warming, destruction of forests and nature, and the sixth extinction of species may well be the generative force behind the proliferation of viruses that are about to descend upon mankind.
Mother Earth, and a healthy human system, have much in common, being made of the same material, and being naturally self-organizing systems. The nature of self-organizing systems is that once the quiescent point (also known as the Q point, set point, the functional operation level, the balance or the homeostasis point) has been altered, the system naturally seeks a return back to its native state, or “normalcy”. Typically, if we stretch a rubber band, and then release it, it returns to its original state. But, if we have stretched the rubber band too hard and too often, the rubber band loses its elasticity, and will never again return to its original state. We presently do not know if we have stretched planet Earth beyond its capacity to return to its former state. For an immense system like planet Earth, that may mean huge shifts in geologic, meteorological, or even world-wide life system transformations. This may result in earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, enhancing the populations of predators to reduce overpopulation of species, or even the creation and introduction of new bacteria or viruses into life systems to also reduce overpopulation.
For our human experience, this may be both a blessing and a curse, depending on the “state” to which we are collectively being returned back to. A human being who has been stretched beyond their capacity through excessive stress, anxiety, and/or addictive behavior cycles will NOT be returning to their “normal” state, once it is recognized that the “normal” state was, in fact, an unhealthy, abnormal state of being in the first place, which in turn led to the creation of their present chaotic mindset. There are those who become irreparably damaged emotionally and psychologically through the trauma and disease of their lives, living out the rest of their lives in psychosis, social disorientation, and with varying degrees of suffering.
For our planet Earth, this may mean ridding itself of any or all offensive life forms that threaten its very existence, and that continues to drive it out of balance with itself. The time intervals for finding a new, or returning to an old, “set point” that indicates a healthy life is far different between an individual human life and the life of planet Earth. The Earth may take thousands, or millions, of years to return to or reach its optimal state, whereas the evanescent ones must act immediately and decisively, lest we not live long enough to witness any real healing progress. Humans have driven the sacred planet Earth out of balance, and planet Earth is working through its need to return to homeostasis. As we have witnessed within the natural order, when a population of deer or rodents gets too high, predator populations naturally increase to meet the enhanced need. Nature thinning out the herd is a well documented phenomenon. Unfortunately for mankind, viruses may be considered the predator, and part of the package of treatments that might be necessary to facilitate planet Earth’s healing and its eventual rebalance.
It is now being reported by pandemic experts that new viruses are being produced by “Mother Nature” at an exponential rate. Time will tell if we can develop the technology to fight the viruses, or to mitigate the irritants to planet Earth that humanity has been hurling at it for thousands of years. Some system experts have stated that mankind has overpopulated itself ten to twenty times the value that planet Earth can continue to sustain itself in balance. We are on the cusp of a dramatic change. Will mankind learn to live in harmony with planet Earth, or will the human race be eliminated by the anti-bodies being produced by our planet?
(the following four paragraphs are from Paul Levy)
The worldwide coronavirus epidemic is tough love on steroids – it is teaching us something we desperately need to know. To quote American journalist I. F. Stone,
“Either we learn to live together or we die together.”
And yet, some of us are not getting the lesson, which creates blowback that can literally kill all of us. For example, the United States government has imposed strict sanctions on Iran and some other countries to fulfill longstanding geo-political agendas, which is hindering these countries ability to deal with the outbreak of the coronavirus. The sanctions might cause the healthcare systems in the affected countries to collapse, which would have adverse effects on the global situation, which is to say on all of us. For this reason, United Nations human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet recently suggested that these sanctions should be “urgently re-evaluated” or suspended altogether. To quote Bachelet, “in a context of a global pandemic, impeding medical efforts in one country heightens the risk for all of us.”
The lesson of the pandemic is clear – a health problem in any part of the world can rapidly become a health problem for everyone around the globe. Our world has shrunk – we truly live in a global village. Our tolerating, or worse yet, engendering disease in any place in the world is at our own peril. This new way of seeing the inter-related unity of humanity can be called “holographic awareness.” Just like every fragment of a hologram contains the whole hologram, each of us contains encoded within us the whole, which is to say that if any of us are sick we all are affected.
Here is a beautiful image to help us understand the idea that, although we appear to exist separately from each, in reality we are seamlessly interconnected as one. Consider how two eddies or whirlpools in the same river convincingly appear to be two separate entities, but are in essence indistinguishable parts of one another. Each whirlpool, not being an independently existing entity separate from the river, cannot be separated out from the river in which it exists. Being that the two whirlpools both share and are composed of the same river, although they convincingly appear to be two separate entities, it is nonsensical to talk about the two whirlpools ultimately being separate from each other. The two whirlpools, just like us, are interconnected and interdependent parts of one another, inseparable aspects of a single flowing reality in which they are both contained and of which they are both expressions. Both whirlpools mutually, reciprocally co-arise as part of a larger undivided process.
The idea of separation between these two whirlpools (or between any of us) is just that – an idea, a convenient construct made up by our minds that we mistake for reality. The coronavirus pandemic is a revelation showing us that for each of us to truly thrive we literally depend upon the health of the whole – we are truly one, with no “others” anywhere to be found, except in our minds. (end to Levy)
Please, save yourself. Please, save our world.
I am ready for a trip to the covid-19 free world. I am ready for a trip to a world where mankind no longer abuses Mother Earth, no longer destroys her forests, lands, and oceans, and the sacred life upon it or under it. I am ready to take a trip to a world where men stop spinning self aggrandizing tales, and no longer neglect the true needs of the human race, and all of its relationships with the universe.
I am ready.
The Trump administration is pushing to reopen much of the country in May, raising concerns among health experts and economists of a possible covid-19 resurgence if Americans return to their normal lives before the virus is truly stamped out. The body count could rise considerably higher if Trump and his administration act impulsively and only with economic interests guiding their decisions.
Behind closed doors, President Trump — concerned with the sagging economy — has sought a strategy for resuming business activity by May 1, according to people familiar with the discussions. He is afraid that the tanking economy will cost him his presidency. He remains without humility, and is not afraid that COVID-19 will bring damage to his own health, or to the health of his family and close circle of friends. It is quite easy for the rich and powerful to avoid the ravages of COVID-19, because they do not work in the trenches where the disease spreads the easiest, like in grocery stores, workplaces, hospitals, or nursing homes. Lower middle class citizens have no financial laurels to rest upon, and feel obligated to keep working, keeping them exposed to much higher risks of infection.
The coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world will turn global economic growth “sharply negative” in 2020, triggering the worst fallout since the 1930s Great Depression, with only a partial recovery seen in 2021, the head of the International Monetary Fund said.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva painted a far bleaker picture of the social and economic impact of the new coronavirus than even a few weeks ago, noting governments had already undertaken fiscal stimulus measures of $8 trillion, but more would likely be needed.
My father lived through the time of the Great Depression when Hooverville cities sprung up around the country.
We now get to live through the new Trump Towers era.
Modern day Trump Towers?
What type of Trump Tower will predominate, the tombstone, or the tent?
My fear is that both will be the result of Trump’s incompetence and hubris.
Stay tuned.
