I do not support Joe Biden, but I do feel sorry for him. And I’m angry at his family.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve noticed Biden’s cognitive health declining. You’ve seen his identity come under [constant] attack, and you’ve witnessed critical judgment cast by many Americans. At the same time they vilify and attack his agency, they are robbing him of his dignity.
Come on, man! (Sorry, had to … but it fits here!)
An individual’s agency is the trait that makes them an effective agent in their own life. It’s a fundamental part of being human. What is happening is gruesomely blatant. While people continue to chip away (they’re not even subtle about it), his family obliges, allowing this parade and show. They should be ashamed.
More fuel – for the Trump critics!
In my opinion, if Biden had normal cognition, he would not have said this – at least not out loud – on September 17, 2020, during the CNN Town Hall:
“If the President had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive. All the people — I’m not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data.”
As ridiculous as they are, these words absolutely add to the scope of the hysteria fanned by mainstream media. And after hearing this, Trump-critics have become more arrogant than ever. They argue there is no one more responsible for this pandemic (and all the deaths) than Trump himself, and Biden is their bullhorn.
On the other side, President Trump has been reminding people [daily] that this pandemic was an attack by China on the entire world. He’s reminding citizens, over and over, that he closed borders and shut down travel early, which, in doing so, saved hundreds of thousands of lives. And he also points out [daily] that the great Dr. Oz Fauci praised his decision and attested that these steps saved lives.
What about everything else? I recollect a whole bunch of other things President Trump did in the early days when America found herself face to face with a novel coronavirus pandemic. But the Trump campaign seems to be fixed on speaking only about “borders, travel, Fauci, and let’s not forget he did shut down the country.”
What people don’t know and don’t remember
Let’s look at the timeline and decisive actions taken by this President – who, some say, failed at responding to the Coronavirus, and who is responsible for all the deaths. I urge you to read every line of this timeline. I had planned to list and highlight only the important actions. But honestly, every one of these responses is a critical action. I’m betting none of us even knew about most of these (even though we absolutely should know).
In a word, governors
Governors are the pivot about which all COVID-failure and COVID-deaths should turn. Whether they’re red or blue doesn’t matter, they are an elected official with considerable control and power. When it came to the pandemic, some of them won, some of them failed.
I live in Arizona, with a population of 7.279 million across 15 counties.
The largest county, Maricopa, (in which I live) has a population of 4.5 million. Pima County, number two on the list, has 1 million. From there, the population goes down to the smallest county, Greenlee, with less than 10 thousand people.
March 16, 2020, Governor Doug Ducey shut down the state. On this day, Arizona had 53 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and zero deaths amid 7 million people.
He then re-opened the state 49 days later, despite an 833% increase in positive cases on May 4, 2020. The state recorded 495 confirmed cases and 19 deaths.
Ducey then waited 55 days before making his next decision: to shut down a second time on June 29, 2020. The state reported 5,504 confirmed cases and 52 deaths.
Again, if I did my math correct, Arizona saw a 1,000% increase in positive cases and a 174% increase in deaths before he acted.
I’d break all this down by county, but that’s getting incredibly granular and beyond my math capabilities. I can tell you that Maricopa County outnumbers the other counties by a lot, yet the entire state was shut down – even the rural areas that reported low double-digit positives (as of 9/19/20):
- Cases: Maricopa, 139,586 to second-highest, Pima, 24,511, to most rural, Greenlee, 58
- Deaths: Maricopa, 3,259 to second-highest, Pima, 613, to most rural, Greenlee, <3
The point of all this math is this: while the President was busy failing rapidly developing test kits, building make-shift hospitals, sending big ships across the ocean, banning travel, signing over billions of dollars in aid, cutting taxes, waiving co-pays, authorizing stimulus, providing millions of meals a week to children in rural areas of the country, building ventilators, declaring disasters in each state so they could access millions of those aid dollars, stopping hoarders, lending billions of dollars to businesses, upping our unemployment benefits to more money than some of us made at our jobs, calling China, developing treatments and vaccines, while the President was doing all this (and more), our governors were making their own decisions –
- Closing businesses
- Closing schools
- Closing religious institutions
- Not testing enough
- Maybe testing too much
- Denying families an opportunity to see each other
- Denying families a chance to be together and say goodbye as they lost loved ones
- Denying families a chance to bury their loved ones
- Shall I go on?
“… all the people would still be alive.”
Joe, President Trump didn’t fail. He got every one of our 50 states precisely what they needed – what they asked for, and even what they didn’t ask for. Where is your supporting evidence to back up your statement, and what is your rationale? I’m hard-pressed to believe this is your own opinion or belief. Prescriptive voices are telling you what to say. You’re reading their words on the teleprompters.
To Jill Biden and the Trump critics: come on, man, look at the data!
