Remember Faces

Remember?

Remember music?

Remember singing?

Remember faces?

Beethoven Symphony No. 9

Flash Mob performed May 19, 2012 at Placa de Sant Rocin Sabedell, Spain

Remember

When So-Called Pastors Don't

More drivel from this so-called pastor making the rounds on Facebook, along with the requisite puffery ("This.").

Worth reading with red pen in hand, perhaps as a useful example in an introductory course on argument (as in, how NOT to) and fallacious reasoning. For example, a cursory read reveals sweeping generalizations, false dichotomies, binary thinking, and the fallacy of the excluded middle. I'm sure someone with more experience in logic could do a better job than I in analyzing this screed.

I'd respect this man's argument more readily if he'd named a name, or better yet, written a personal letter to specific white evangelicals he has in mind rather than to "White Evangelicals" writ large, and appealed to them each in turn.

This approach would be more consistent with the Scriptural principle having to do with church accountability, as described here in Matthew 18:

If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.

There's a process at work here that involves speaking privately to someone who has transgressed before moving to next levels. The idea of a fellow believer being part of one's family ("brethren") suggests respect for the dignity inherent in the transgressor.

Following the process described, the offended "brother" (in this case, Pavlovitz) would speak privately with the offender (in this case, presumably, someone he has heard or seen has "trespassed, which implies a violation of some kind of personal asset, perhaps an intangible asset, like trust).

But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

Pavlovitz might find that the offending brother won't listen to the correction proffered. At that point, Pavlovitz would find one or two other believers to take with him to the offender.  

And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church

After all these steps have been thoughtfully and prayerfully followed and the offender still plans on voting for Trump,

but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

No, Pastor John, not a Republican, a publican.

Then and only then is Pavlovitz permitted post his public blog.

That's the procedure set up in the Bible for people of faith to address the Trump voter in their midst. Of course, all of this would imply that John Pavlovitz actually reads and lives by the Scriptures, which is probably too much to expect from someone who seems more interested in fawning praise and book royalties than he is in pastoring.

I'm Vile, You're Vile: Politics in 2020

It's mind-boggling to me how little choice we really have in presidential elections.

Something trending on Facebook right now is an open letter directed to "White Evangelicals," penned by a so-called Christian pastor named John Pavolitz. 

A friend, chastising evangelicals who support President Trump, said, "It is a high price to be paid. If you support Trump, your support becomes a part of your testimony whether you want it to be or not. It is a part of your contribution to this generation & it matters."

To which I reply: 

The person on the ballot is a figure-head. We vote not for the person but for the policies his party represents and promotes. Are the policies good? Do they represent what I believe and value? Or are they abhorrent? Even if the figurehead of that party is handsome and well-spoken, what should matter is what the party will do, if it represents my worldview, if it will advance ideas I support and agree with.

That’s what should influence my vote. Other than that, what choice do we have?

Nevertheless, the condemnation leveled toward someone that will vote Republican is personal, a smear on your character: You support a vile man; ergo, you are vile (“becomes part of your testimony”).

Not surprisingly, it’s easy for me to flip the script: I find the policies of the Democratic Party platform to be vile. You support a party whose policies I find vile; ergo, you are vile.

Tit for tat.

But it doesn’t have to be. If only we could trust each other to be true to our values.

Politics has always been ugly. But never more so than now.

Argumentum ad Hitlerum

Reductio ad Hitlerum

(also known as: argumentum ad Hitlerum, playing the Nazi card, Hitler card)

Definition: The attempt to make an argument analogous with Hitler or the Nazi party.  Hitler is probably the most universally despised figure in history, so any connection to Hitler, or his beliefs, can (erroneously) cause others to view the argument in a similar light.  However, this fallacy is becoming more well known as is the fact that it is most often a desperate attempt to render the truth claim of the argument invalid out of lack of a good counter argument.

*****

What seers see often depends on where they are standing, their vantage point. Two people standing on the same mountain looking at the vista before them are likely to see different things depending on where each is perched. One is perched looking east, the other looking west. Same mountain, different vista. 

Similarly, people looking out at the political or cultural landscape are apt to see different things, depending on where they’re perched.

 

That’s true of most of us. What we read, who we listen to—our news sources, our circle of friends—tend to inform our views. This tendency has been called many things—confirmation bias, filter bubbles, herd mentality, group-think. Its allure is strong, and it takes deliberate effort to resist.

 

There are some good books on the subject. 

Former NPR CEO Ken Stern wrote a book in 2017, awkwardly titled Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right. I’m sure he got skewered by his liberal colleagues. 

Eli Pariser has written and spoken about filter bubbles (see his TedTalk here).

Jonathan Haidt wrote about living in "moral matrices" in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. 

Clay Johnson wrote a book called The Information Diet: The Case for Conscious Consumption in which he encouraged people to be more deliberate about the news media they consume.

What prompted these thoughts about argumentum ad Hitlerum was a friend's Facebook post referring to Donald Trump as a modern-day Hitler, and one of her friends subsequently posting a list of what she "sees" when she looks out at the current political moment. Ah, a modern-day seer.

 

I could be wrong—perhaps this "seer" traipsed the country and visited small towns across a wide swath of America, interviewed people of varying ages, ethnicities, professions, life experiences, and religious affiliation, trying to understand their world view. Perhaps she has reams of data to support her claims. If so, then her conclusions are worth taking seriously.

 

If not, if what she “sees” is based on her limited vantage point—the news media she consumes, the friends she associates with—then it’s hard to put much stock in what she sees. So much of this list seems culled from something one might hear on cable news. Each item is presented as a fait accompli, end-of-discussion, self-evident fact. However, where she sees fact, I see sweeping generalizations, logical fallacies, incomplete or skewed information. Each of these issues is much more complex than her epigrammatic one-sentence descriptions suggest.  

 

By ending her list with another mendacious comparison to Hitler (“now I begin to understand how so-called good Germans supported a madman”), people like her lose all credibility as an honest broker of information. And by slandering those whose political views she disagrees with by comparing them to Hitler’s “willing executioners,” people like her also lose my respect.

 

We go far afield in our attempts to work through difficult or polarizing issues when we refer to our political opponents as Nazis and reduce complex issues into single-sentence maxims.  

***** 

(Source: a foolish woman on Facebook) 

It always perplexed me that Hitler could do the terrible things he and his comrades did with such relative ease. These past four years have been instructive in that regard.

- I see Christian people call a cold-blooded murderer a “patriot”, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for him.

- I daily read the violent and vile threats that nice people publicly direct towards those who disagree with them.

- I see Christians supporting a man who openly bragged about sexual predation, defends white supremacists, lies with impunity, while he pretends to share their faith.

- I hear upstanding citizens disparage and insult people who aren’t white or straight or...

- I see anti-abortion proponents who have little or no concern for the the predicament of children separated from their parents and kept in confinement indefinitely.

- I see good people of faith who naively believe that Trump will abolish abortion, something he was in favor of before he ran for office.

- I see immigrants senselessly deported or treated shamefully while good people silently stand on the sidelines.

- I see respected members of society excusing Trump’s well-documented immorality and adultery.

- I see a pandemic mishandled and good people think it is funny or a hoax.

- I see people who refuse to wear a mask for the safety of others because it infringes on their perceived freedom.

- I see people being indoctrinated by news outlets that are really propaganda.

- I hear incendiary phrases like “fake news” and “nasty women” over and over.

- I see nice people making light of those who have suffered from the effects of Covid-19.

- I see respected politicians who expressed their utter disdain for Trump before he came into power, now eagerly defending and excusing everything he says and does.

- I see pastors enjoying the flattery of a man who has never even read the Bible, rarely attends church, and shows no signs of Christian attributes.

- I see a leader who has insulted our first Black President and the current vice-presidential candidate by questioning their birth places despite overwhelming proof.

- I see nice people very comfortable or dismissive of Trumps’s racist comments.

- I see smart people believing that all the violence going on right now is Obama or Biden’s fault.

-I see religious leaders obsessed with the “evils” of the BLM movement and socialism while ignoring the Sermon on the Mount.

-I see the senseless and cruel deportations of some of our military veterans.

- I see Trump make fun of a man with a disability and nice people think it is funny and harmless.

- I see this administration denying asylum to those who are persecuted. This is not a commitment to life.

So now I begin to understand how so-called good Germans supported a madman and it terrifies me.

Not Everyone is Agog about "White Fragility"

It's been refreshing to discover that not everyone out there is on board with Robin DiAngelo's best-selling, Must-Read, Very Important Book, White Fragility. 

Though it goes without saying that people on the right, particularly those who are, well, white, might be critical, I was surprised to see that not everyone on the left is on the bandwagon (Matt Taibbi), nor are all DiAngelo's critics white (John McWhorter).

Linked below are their reviews, each followed by a few excerpts that stood out to me:

On White Fragility, by Matt Taibbi 

Favorite lines: 

DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory.

DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly. 

White Fragility is based upon the idea that human beings are incapable of judging each other by the content of their character, and if people of different races think they are getting along or even loving one another, they probably need immediate antiracism training. 

(White priests of antiracism like DiAngelo seem universally to be more awkward and clueless around minorities than your average Trump-supporting construction worker). 

Most disturbing section: 

People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of “anti-black racism” to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other’s careers before they’ve even finished growing?  

“People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I don’t want people like that to keep getting jobs,” one 16 year-old said. “Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives… I love twitter,” wrote a different person, adding cheery emojis.

The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility, by John McWhorter (The Atlantic)

Favorite lines: 

I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract.

The problem is that White Fragility is the prayer book for what can only be described as a cult.

By the end, DiAngelo has white Americans muzzled, straitjacketed, tied down, and chloroformed for good measure—but for what?

A corollary question is why Black people need to be treated the way DiAngelo assumes we do. The very assumption is deeply condescending to all proud Black people. 

In 2020—as opposed to 1920—I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me. Nor do I need wider society to undergo teachings in how to be exquisitely sensitive about my feelings.  

Best lines: 

I cannot imagine that any Black readers could willingly submit themselves to DiAngelo’s ideas while considering themselves adults of ordinary self-regard and strength. Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome.

The sad truth is that anyone falling under the sway of this blinkered, self-satisfied, punitive stunt of a primer has been taught, by a well-intentioned but tragically misguided pastor, how to be racist in a whole new way.

***** 

For more on John McWhorter, here's an interview he did with NPR on the same subject. 

Hamilton Live: Two Questions and an Epiphany

I watched Hamilton Live.

I had never seen the play, so it was all new to me.

I loved the play! I laughed! I cried!

I also had two questions and an epiphany.

My first question was: why did Eliza gasp at the end.

I realize I'm arriving to the party late, so probably most of you have already figured this out. But here's how I'm working it out:

It seemed to me as if that final scene, where everyone was looking back on Hamilton's life, that we were well into the future. At least, that's how it seemed when Elisa was speaking. Her recollections were those of an old woman, looking back.

As she was speaking, Hamilton appears behind her. When she turns to leave, their eyes meet, they smile. He takes her hand and leads her to the end of the stage, facing the audience.

She gasps.

End scene.

End play.

Actors bow.

What did she see? Why did she gasp?

I asked my kids.

One of my daughters Googles it. A suggested answer is that the 4th wall was "sundered."

What's the 4th wall?

I ask Alexa.

She answers (reading from Wikipedia): The 4th Wall is an "invisible, imagined wall that separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this 'wall' the actors act as if they cannot."

Ah. The 4th wall. Sure. Theater people already knew this.

So the 4th wall was sundered. Eliza saw the audience.

But she gasped. Why would she gasp at an audience?

Here's my take, my "epiphany": She gasped, not because she saw an actual audience. That's not worthy of a dramatic gasp. I think what she saw when the "4th wall was sundered" was centuries worth of audiences, of audiences yet to be born, hearing this story. That was a recurring theme during the play--who will tell your story?

I think that's what she saw. I think that's why she gasped. The revolution was not for naught.

The second question: Why was John Adams not included in this telling?

***** 

A brief follow up. Apparently I'm not the only one who has questions about the gasp. After I posted the above reflections on Facebook, a friend sent me the following article from Slate.

"Looking into the Light: Hamilton Movie Ending Explained" 

It's a good theory, but honestly? I like mine better. As one of my friends put it, "a bit more complex and ethereal, transcending time." Well put! 

I Dreamed a Meme

I Dreamed a Meme

 

In the moments before dawn

just before I awoke

I saw a cave

filled with butterflies

millions of them

quavering

pulsating

cloistered

inside the cave

 

"Stay home, Stay safe"

 

It made sense . . . until I awoke 

and opened my eyes.

 

That’s not what butterflies are made for.

Shopping in the Time of Pandemic

This morning I went shopping at Trader Joe's during their early (8-9 a.m.) senior hours. It's the first time I've been in that store since the pandemic. It was surprisingly busy.

People seemed tense, as if in a hurry to get done. Not a lot of eye contact.

There were directional arrows taped on the floor. I almost went the wrong way. One time, my shopping cart faced the arrows correctly but I walked backwards with my cart a few feet to pick up something I'd missed.

In the produce aisle, a woman was walking against the arrows. I laughed through my mask and said I'd done that too. We both laughed through our masks. She asked me if I knew if Traders sold jicama. I said they probably did but I hadn't seen any yet. She continued forward while I backed up against the arrows to retrieve some broccoli and cauliflower. That's when I saw some jicama and called over to her. She came back and picked some up, thanking me.

There was one gentleman shopping who was clearly not a senior citizen. More like in his 30's.

I didn't say anything.

I don't believe in publicly shaming people.

Nor do I believe in snitching.

Stupidity in the Time of Pandemic

I'm responding to a column that recently appeared in the Tampa Bay Times called, "I Will Not Die of Stupid," by a columnist named Leonard Pitts, Jr. A friend of mine posted the column on Facebook with the comment, "This is spot on." I could think of nothing he said that was spot on, and said as much to my friend. Here are my edited comments to her post. I linked Pitts' column at the end, as well as a link to a Commentary podcast that deeply troubled me, having to do with what we should really be afraid of--the disruption of the supply chain. 

I'm not sure I understand what Mr. Pitts wants. He closes this essay by saying, "I need to know sufficient testing has been conducted and that they [serious, credible people] feel the virus is no longer a threat." The virus is a threat today, tomorrow, and likely for years. It may always be a threat. What is he asking? What is he advocating?

I agree that he should stay inside, stay safe, stay away from restaurants and crowds. I don't agree if he's saying the same should apply to everyone. He says we should defer to Dr. Fauci. But Dr. Fauci's expertise is immunology, not the economy. What is Dr. Fauci saying about the supply chain? What will Mr. Pitts say when the entire country is facing not just toilet paper shortages, not just meat shortages, but store shelves that are empty of milk, bread, fresh vegetables, eggs, dairy.

I find it truly offensive that he derides the "MAGA-wearing halfwits." He shows his hand here. This is not about Trump followers. This is about people like my hairstylist who hasn't had a paying client since end of March and, if the governor of California has his way would not be able to cut hair for several months. Is Mr. Pitts fine with that?

Here's the thing. The world is not safe. Mr. Pitts is entitled to stay confined to his home, and if he's fortunate to have a job that will pay him to do so, then God bless him. But for him to deride others for being seriously worried about what will happen if people like him had their way and wanted everyone to stay sheltered until the virus was vanquished, regardless of what happens to the supply chain and the serious damage this will incur to our nation and to individuals—I’m thinking riots and violence and abject poverty.

Honestly, the arrogance.

Stupid? Yes, the rest of us will die of stupid because of stupid columns like this. But he'll be safe. He and these arrogant governors will still get their paychecks. This kind of thinking is what I call stupid.  

If Mr. Pitts lived on an island that was separated by a body of water that was swarming with crocodiles and the other side of the island had a fresh-water well, such that the only way one could survive would be to somehow cross the body of water and retrieve water, surely he would figure out how to cross that body of water. No, he would not step into the water. He would get eaten alive and would die a horrible death. But if he didn't want to die another type of horrible death—thirst, say—he would have to figure out how to navigate the unsafe world he inhabited. In other words, he would have to step outside his door.

That's what we need to do. It will never be safe. Never. Even if Covid19 is finally vanquished, either through vaccine or treatment, there will be another, and another, and another thing that will threaten us. We need to cross the crocodile-infested waters and start to live again. But figuring out how, that's the hard part.

Staying inside? That's stupid.

****

"I Will Not Die of Stupid," by Leonard Pitts, Jr. Tampa Bay Times, April 26, 2020 

Commentary Magazine Podcast "When is it Time to Panic?" (May 5, 2020)

Churlishness in the Time of Pandemic

Yesterday while walking I heard this on a podcast I like:

People do not deserve to die because they vote the wrong way or have opinions that are unfashionable.* 

I thought about the kind of comments I hear now and again, not just on social media, but yes, mostly on social media. Like if someone we don't like--typically a politician or maybe a public figure--gets sick, maybe catches this Covid 19 virus--there's a kind of gleeful gloating. I heard it when Boris Johnson was stricken with the coronavirus. I've heard it about Rush Limbaugh's Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis. I'm pretty sure I'd hear it if Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi got the virus.

It's human nature, I guess. But maybe we need to push back against our human nature. 

I'm reading a book by C. S. Lewis called The Abolition of Man that I admit is way above my pay grade. But what little I do grasp so far is this: There's a higher law, not just for one religion or another, but that simply exists. Being aware of and even conforming to this law is what makes us human. Though Lewis was a Christian, he's not even talking about Christianity. He calls it the Tao--a kind of objective set of values that transcends and yet permeates all doctrines. It's the thing which elevates us, that distinguishes us from animals, that enables us to choose to be good, to be decent, to be kind or generous or sacrificial. To jettison this higher law is to become less than human. That's what he means by the abolition of man.

I'm still trying to get my head around this (will probably have to re-read a few times), but I think there's something to this. Maybe it's what Jesus was tapping into when he told his followers to love their enemies. And so on a practical level, when people we despise suffer, even if we can't genuinely wish them well, at the very least, we shouldn't celebrate, shouldn't gloat. To do so makes us less human.

There's a famous saying, probably attributed to any number of people but which I first heard years ago in a book I was reading by a missionary named Amy Carmichael: 

Let nothing be said about anyone unless it passes through the three sieves: 

Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

This is neither religious nor secular advice. But I think it's good advice.

******* 

* Podcast

Mad Dogs & Englishmen Episode 262

Kevin D. Williamson and Charles C. W. Cooke

Restaurants in the Time of Pandemic: Remembering Walt's Wharf

Many good memories of Walt’s Wharf. I first heard the gospel here, sitting in the fish market, on break, and became a Christian a year or so later. It was January 1979, around midnight, in a studio apartment where I lived by myself, down the street from Walt’s on 13th and Electric.

A few memories. My favorite lunch-break meal was mesquite-grilled salmon sandwiches, open-faced on sourdough, seasoned lightly with paprika and a squeeze of butter. I was hired first as a hostess, then graduated to waitress along with my friend Karen. We wore brown skirts with cute flowered aprons tied at the waist and gold puffed-sleeve peasant blouses. Karen and I housesat for another waitress one summer in an apartment on Main, down a ways from Walt’s. There were fleas and goldfish. There’s a story.

Karen has her own tales to tell.

So sad about the closure. This is going to be a very hard time for independently-owned restaurants.

There will be more.

Face Masks in the Time of Pandemic

I hate face masks. 

One of my girlfriends texted a picture of herself grocery shopping the other evening. She was wearing a green bandana over her face, and she said, "I thought of you as I hurriedly chose my produce." 

I replied, "Don't you just hate this?" and she said, "I thought you might hate it the most, taking away your greatest pleasure...squeezing produce." 

And I said, "And smiling at people."

That's the saddest part. When this whole thing started, I texted my kids this: "Don't forget to smile at strangers. And say good morning." 

That was before the face mask decree. 

I have always felt that making eye contact with strangers, smiling at them, was my small way of making this world a better place. Now, suffocating beneath a stupid mask, people have no idea if I'm friend or foe.

I guess we just take this thing one day at a time.

Facebook Doesn't Get Irony

Early this morning after my second cup of coffee and a quiet time of reading and prayer, I checked Facebook on my phone to see what I'd missed over the last eight or so hours and happened upon a post from a member of a private group I belong to (see first screenshot, below).

The post oozes with both irony and rage--a good brew for some early morning repartee. I posted a quick response, one I thought was both witty and ironic in its own right (particularly because I'm a white woman), then rose from the couch to start my day.

About 10 minutes later, I checked back in to see if anyone liked my witty remark. Sadly, no one had seen it because Facebook's censors didn't approve (see second screenshot, below).

Facebook apparently does not "get" irony.

Tattling in the Time of Pandemic

I've been reading about Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti's recent announcement in which he encouraged residents to "snitch" (his word) on non-essential businesses that aren't complying with requirements to shut down during this Covid 19 crisis. The good mayor even said something about a reward for such snitching, though details are sketchy.

A cursory Google search on this story so far shows only "right wing" media reporting on this story (I use scare quotes because you never read about other media outlets being labeled as left-wing).

A closer look takes me to a Google Doc form provided by the City of Los Angeles which allows people to report so-called non-essential businesses who are violating the stay-at-home order. I don't see any such form for "snitches" to report regular people who, for example, are walking outside without a mask or something. Let's hope it doesn't get to that point.

Yes, we're scared. Most of us alive today have never experienced something so monumentally terrifying as this once-in-a-century global pandemic. So we're willing to temporarily suspend some--no, many--personal liberties.

But how far do we want to go, not just personally but societally? The fact that this story is apparently only alarming people on the right is telling. Let's hope that changes and more people--left and right--sound the alarm.

Like the opening of Pandora's Box, something like this--"snitching" on our fellow citizens, even for a supposedly good cause--once it's accepted by the community, could easily mutate into a society of real "snitches." This is apparently happening today in parts of Europe: they're called "Corona-Snitches" (link in comments).

Free societies who accept such policies do so at their peril.

******

For Further Reading

"Corona-Snitches Thrive in Lockdown Europe" (Politico)

More Random Thoughts: Government Paychecks in a Pandemic

Another thing. 

I don't want the government to send me any money. 

Nor do I want it to forgive student debt in its attempt to address the economic tsunami that's on the horizon. 

If the government's going to start issuing checks, I'd much rather it focus on small businesses, helping them weather this storm and come out on the other side or providing cash to hourly employees who have been let go. Or come up with creative ways of mitigating the pain broadly speaking for some of these small business. For instance, in one article I read the other day, the authors suggested the government shouldn't be writing checks to everyone. Rather, it could issue debit cards which could be used after this is over, once we come out on the other side, when we all emerge from our caves and look around to see what's left (assuming we emerge, that is) 

The cards could only be used to boost the economy, focusing only on those businesses that we shut down (by government decree in the interest of slowing down the spread of the contagion). When the restaurants and the theaters and the amusement parks and the bars and the concerts and the caterers all put up their shingles again, consumers could use the cards for only for these venues. In other words, we couldn't use the cards to buy a new couch or something. This would have the effect not only of injecting cash back into economy down the road, but also would serve as a sort of guarantee to lenders (now) that money would be coming back later. 

I really like that idea. I like it when people start to think rather than react.

More Random Thoughts: Coronavirus Pandemic 2020

More random thoughts.

I'm no Trump apologist, so feel free to take this or leave it, but I'm noticing a constant mantra on Facebook (and probably elsewhere) about this Covid 19 pandemic and the flawed response by the government which, many claim, can be traced directly to Trump's defunding of the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health.

I decided to see what the fact checkers were saying on this claim. Apparently, this depiction of the situation is not true, or at least, it's not true in practice (though it may be true that Trump wanted to defund these institutions). 

As is often the case, the facts are more complicated than the charges. 

Linking below a few fact-check sources.  

Besides the complexity of funding issues and the tendency among partisans of both parties to blame the chief executive for failures in crises like this ("this is Trump's Katrina"), another important perspective that no one's talking about has to do with individual states' readiness. I found an article that analyzes states' readiness for pandemics individually. Interestingly enough, my state, the Golden State, was among the least prepared, financially, in terms of readiness.

I wish it were possible to discuss this terrible pandemic without the requisite partisan bickering, but I suppose that's wishful thinking. I'm pretty sure if this were President Biden making all kinds of mistakes and blunders the partisans on the right would be doing the same thing. It's not just a mad mad world, it's a sad and ugly world, as well. 

Politics.

Reading

"Democrats' Misleading Coronavirus Claims" (FactCheck.org)

"Did President Trump Cut the CDC Budget?" (Snopes)

"Which States are Least Ready for a Pandemic?" 

Random Thoughts: Coronavirus Pandemic 2020

Random thought. 

Say we go two more months of social distancing, confinement, shelter-in-place, business and restaurant closures, school closures, cancellation of sporting and cultural events, government distribution of checks to individuals and families, job losses, businesses shuttered. 

And then the curve flattens, we breathe a sigh of relief, start to return to some semblance of normalcy. 

And then, come fall, this virus returns. 

What then? Lather, rinse, repeat? 

You may say I’m a dreamer and you'd be correct. This is a nightmare. 

Are we as a society really prepared to exist like this long-term? There will be another virus, then another. And now that our response to this one has been so fierce, I can’t imagine future responses being anything less. And our lives will never be the same. 

Someone will chide. What choice did we have? 

Does anyone think they know? Does anyone know for sure? 

C.S. Lewis wrote in an essay called, “Is Success Possible? Willing Slaves of the Welfare State,” that a caged animal isn’t hungry. That’s the trade-off, I think. We’re so afraid. Terrified of this stalking monster. Cage me, and I’ll be safe. 

I’ve offended some of you, I know. But someone somewhere among my friends 
on Facebook said we should be writing our thoughts during this terrible time. 

And so I have. And I'll continue. 

Sorry in advance to all who will say, "Yeah but . . . " 

I know the "Yeah, but . . . " 

I already know who you are. And I'm among you saying it. 

But have we really thought this through? 

*** 

A few reads (sorry if they're behind a paywall).

"Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?" (David L. Katz, New York Times, March 20, 2020). 

Comments: 

The author is the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. I listened to an interview with him when the article appeared. He admits he writes against his own interest, having family members who are high risk. He also regrets taking a position that differs from his colleagues.

"Such is the collateral damage of this diffuse form of warfare, aimed at 'flattening' the epidemic curve generally rather than preferentially protecting the especially vulnerable. I believe we may be ineffectively fighting the contagion even as we are causing economic collapse."

He asks, "When does the society-wide disruption end?"
He answers: "We just don’t know. We could wait until there’s an effective treatment, a vaccine or transmission rates fall to undetectable levels. But what if those are a year or more away? Then we suffer the full extent of societal disruption the virus might cause for all those months. The costs, not just in money, are staggering to contemplate."

He has suggestions.

Is it too late to implement them?

This from the Wall Street Journal editorial board: 

Smile at Strangers

Just a reminder. Don’t forget to smile at strangers. 

And say good morning.

CoronavirusPandemic2020