Hispanic Fanatic

In theory, by this time next year we will all be vaccinated against COVID-19. And then we’ll hug and clap hands and laugh about the silly virus.

“That whole killer pandemic thing,” we will chortle. “What was that all about anyway?”

Well, before we banish the coronavirus and the entirety of 2020 into the deep, dark memory hole where we bury all our unpleasant thoughts, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the here and now.

You see, because of the Trump Administration’s unique combination of incompetence, hubris, idiocy, and depraved indifference, we are now at about 14 million Americans infected, with over 270,000 dead. We are seeing higher numbers of death on a daily basis, and soon we will endure the equivalent of “a 9/11 every single day.”

In response, the administration has fluctuated between doing nothing, embracing denialism, promoting quackery, and dismissing the experts, which is “in keeping with their guiding philosophy that there is no problem so great that it cannot be solved by knowing lessa bout it.”

Of course, this is not a recent collapse. Months ago, the administration basically gave up fighting the virus and hoped that “Americans will go numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day.”

And that’s pretty much what conservatives have done. Hey, over half (52%) of Republicans believe that “the U.S. reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic is overblown,” which is double the percentage of Democrats who think the same thing.

So if you’re in the GOP, overflowing hospitals and widespread death is no reason to get all excited. This is despite the fact that “only cancer and heart disease will kill more Americans this year” than coronavirus. In fact, the bug has already “killed more than twice as many Americans as either strokes or Alzheimer’s disease, about four times as many as diabetes, and more than eight times as many as either gun violence or vehicle accidents.”

Again, none of that is reason to be concerned — if you’re a Republican.

If you are not, and you actually respect science, you might be interested to know that recent studies verify “what health officials have been telling us for months: Masks do work by significantly slowing the spread of COVID-19.” In fact, there may be up to “a 50% reduction in the spread of COVID-19 in counties that had a mask mandate compared to those without.”

But of course, our disease-ridden president mocked facemasks for months, and provoked the stupidest culture war of all time, apparently because masks weren’t manly or would hurt the economy or something similarly incoherent.

Oh, and speaking of Republicans and their favorite subject — the economy — keep in mind that mask mandates lead to “greater confidence and spending among consumers,” and “are also linked to higher consumer mobility.”

So if conservatives really wanted to rescue the economy, and not just kill grandma in a futile ploy to boost Wall Street, they would be clamoring for everyone to wear a mask. Also, the conservative insistence that lockdowns would destroy the economy looks even more pathetic now, considering that most economists say “the U.S. would be in a better economic position now if lockdowns had been more aggressive at the beginning of the crisis.”

In essence, the Trumpian approach killed more people and made the economy worse — a win-win only if you are a delusional Republican or a cackling demon from the underworld who loves human suffering.

Yes, the virus was always going to be bad, but this level of calamity is the direct result of an infantile, self-obsessed president and his “incessant destruction of reason, evidence and science in the service of his personal whims, conspiratorial mindset and political requirements.”

In future generations, there will be myriad books, documentaries, and feature films about American life during coronavirus. And they will all come to the same conclusion:

It didn’t have to be this bad. 

There is no master plan. 

There is no four-dimensional chess game being played.

There is no laying the groundwork for 2024, nor is there a rebranding campaign going on.

He is not focused on establishing his own television network, and he is not interested in implementing conservative policies on his way out the door.

And of course, all of his pathetic acts of desperation are not the final maneuvers in a ludicrous, idiotic conspiracy involving satanic cannibals.

It’s perfectly obvious — or should be at this point — that the president is a narcissistic sociopath who is incapable of long-term planning. And although he lies nonstop, he is honest about his lust for power and contempt for humanity, democracy, and Americans in general. 

So why are so many people — from respected journalists to intelligent politicians to pretty good actors —mystified about what is going on?

Perhaps we want to believe, despite all evidence, that Americans did not elect a corrupt con man who is indifferent to the nation’s well-being. We want to imagine some hidden depth to a vapid egotist who received the enthusiastic support of over 70 million citizens. We want to believe that he is not as buffoonish and corrupt as he clearly is, and that there is some misguided principle being manipulated here.

But here is the truth about what Trump wants.

He wants to be president, and he wants Republicans to help him pull off a coup.

That’s it. That’s all.

Sure, there may be supporting malignancies, like his desire for revenge and gluttonous appetite for cash.

But really, he is trying to bully and cajole the GOP into overthrowing the government for him. And he has gotten more than a few conservatives to say, “Sure, why not destroy democracy?”

Apparently, this fact is too disturbing for many Americans to acknowledge, so they scratch their heads and wonder what Trump is possibly trying to accomplish by filing one ridiculous lawsuit after another. Or they question why he flings out wild accusations that shatter upon the slightest analysis. Or they ask why the White House took so long to acknowledge reality and allow the transition process to begin.

OK, one more time —Trump is trying to subvert the will of the people so that he can remain in the White House. It really is as simple as that.

The fact that he is sucking at this endeavor doesn’t mean that he has a hidden agenda. The Trump Administration has been one long study in cartoonish incompetence — from building his mythical wall to protecting Americans from Covid-19. So why should his attempt to seize power be anything other than haphazard and flailing?

There are no smokescreens. His lawyers really don’t know the difference between Michigan and Minnesota. But this just means that Trumpists are idiots. It doesn’t prove that they are master manipulators with unknowable goals. 

After all, if we saw a kindergartener throw a massive temper tantrum for ice cream, we wouldn’t say, “I wonder what he really wants” and attribute complex motivations that end with the assumption that the kid is angling for broccoli.

No, we would say that the little brat wants some goddamn ice cream.

The president, who has been compared to a toddler more than once, is that spoiled kid who wants ice cream. You can tell him that he can’t have any more, or that the store is out of ice cream. Hell, you can tell him that thousands of people might die if he keeps shrieking for ice cream.

It won’t matter. Because he has always gotten everything he ever wanted, no matter how horribly he has acted.

He will never stop kicking, screaming, and threatening. And there is no mystery about what he wants.

Look, I don’t know if the guy is planning a coup, or plotting revenge, or just being pissy. Nobody can figure it out.

Even after 48 months of daily insanity, we are still perpetually shocked at the scattershot behavior of a septuagenarian whose rambling self-absorption should disqualify him from hosting a neighborhood bingo night, much less guiding a nation of 300 million people through a pandemic and an economic collapse.

What we do know is that Trump’s administration is “taking on the characteristics of a tottering regime — with its loyalty tests, destabilizing attacks on the military chain of command, a deepening bunker mentality, and increasingly delusional claims of political victory.”

We also know that the number 70 is popping up with disturbing regularity, like it is some kind of mystical numeral.

Witness the fact that 70% of Republicans “say they don’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair.” Their entire basis for this belief is, of course, that their guy lost.

Contrast this with the statistic that Biden’s winning base “encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity.” This means the areas that voted for Trump account for less than a third of our nation’s economic output, which is interesting in that they are supposedly the hardworking ‘Mericans being victimized by the big evil cities, when in truth they are being subsidized and would starve in the gutter without urban areas to prop them up.

The third appearance of this magical number is the stat that more than 70 million citizens voted for the reelection of the worst president in history. They apparently believe that these last four years of hell were the fault of liberals, the media, the Chinese, or anybody but a president who can’t string two sentences together without complimenting himself. Yes, almost half of our fellow Americans are fine with this guy.

Of course, this reveals another disturbing fact, which is that although “pundits suggest that the two different political ideologies in America are about values and principles,” the truth is that “the primary difference between the two camps is between those who are living in a fictional world, created by generations of right-wing media, and those who are living in the real world.”

And speaking of living in the real world, keep in mind that despite the bellowing of conservatives, there is not a micron of proof that massive voter fraud took place. In fact, it appears that the most significant lying and cheating is being done in the name of the GOP. 

Furthermore, Biden’s win was actually more decisive than you think, and it was certainly more convincing than Trump’s victory in 2016. Yes, I’m sure plenty of right-wingers are politely debating those very points on Parler right now.

You see, conservatives are depressed that their hero went down in ignominious defeat. Of course, for most people, the first stage of grief is denial. But for Trump supporters, it’s more like denial interspersed with shrieking, foaming at the mouth, and issuing death threats.

In any case, our favorite soon-to-be ex-president has more or less checked out, and he isn’t even pretending to do his job anymore.

This isn’t all bad, in that a monkey with flamethrower would be a more effective leader than Trump.

But it is interesting that he is abandoning his post just as coronavirus makes its dreaded encore. The stable genius who said the virus would magically disappear seems to have gotten it just the tiniest bit wrong. But he clearly doesn’t care about that insignificant detail.

This collection of motley facts is the full extent of what we know.

So let’s not indulge in conjecture about what happens next. Because to be honest, it’s anybody’s guess.

Like all of you, I am exhausted, so I’m not going to get it into too much until we have a declared winner. But as of right now, you would rather be Biden than Trump.

In any case, many Americans are shocked at how close this election turned out to be. 

Yes, we have plenty of commentators rehashing the same argument from 2016, which is that Democrats have alienated swing voters because of their embrace of “socialism.” This is interesting, of course, because it implies that Joe Biden (i.e., the most politically moderate man in America) has either hid his secret socialist agenda for decades, or that a small group of congresswoman is deviously pulling the strings (and no, there is nothing insane, illogical, or flat-out misogynistic about that — nope).

This argument also lets the Republican Party off the hook, because it implies that they have not built a cozy home for bigots, conspiratorial lunatics, and neo-fascist freaks, who in turn, now feel emboldened to get out the vote for the GOP. It also hints that millions of kind-hearted, good-natured Americans have no choice but to vote for a corrupt, incompetent, authoritarian racist whose degeneracy is obvious to a 10 year old. They just have to vote GOP!

No, my friends, it is perfectly obvious who Trump and the modern Republican Party are. And it is also clear that millions of Americans like it.

But if you want to keep blaming liberals for this mess, go ahead.

I’m just going to get some sleep.

No doubt you’ve run into those surly Americans who shout, “Both sides are crazy,” when discussing politics, or who insist that liberals are just as bad as conservatives when it comes to reprehensible behavior.

Now, one can definitely criticize the Democratic Party for failing to address the nation’s most egregious problems, and progressives are not flawless individuals.

But saying that the left is as unhinged as the right is like saying that your kooky tia Rosa is as insane as Charles Manson.

Because the truth is that “the American right today has a bigger violence problem than the American left.” For example, “top Republican politicians have encouraged violence in ways no prominent Democrat has,” and have even assaulted people.

And when it comes to homicidal acts, please note that of the 42 politically motivated killings that occurred last year, right-wing extremists committed 38 of them. Going back even further, we see that of 893 politically motivated terrorist incidents in America since 1994, “just one attack that led to a death came from an anti-fascist agitator” (and that single person killed was the anti-fascist agitator himself). But in the same time period, “White supremacists and right-wing extremists have killed at least 329 people.”

With a lopsided tally like this, it is not exactly surprising that 13 members of a right-wing militia were recently arrested and charged in a plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The alleged scheme “included plans to overthrow several state governments that the suspects believe are violating the US Constitution.”

The last I heard, nobody in the ACLU, MoveOn, or Black Lives Matter was plotting to kidnap people and overthrow the government.

Of course, those neo-fascist militia members are the same loveable types who stormed Michigan’s state capital, with guns drawn, and screamed that their freedom was being taken away because of a mask mandate. They are also the people who take Trump’s command to “liberate Michigan” quite literally.

One could point out the hypocrisy of conservatives who are more furious about face masks and vandalism than they are about people getting murdered in the street. But of course, it is not about consistency or principles.

Because despite all the flowery talk of “freedom” and “liberty,” the fact is that many conservatives are doing nothing more than “defending their America — where white men can rule and brutalize without consequence.”

Ethnic minorities demanding equal rights are, to right-wingers, “the sounds of violent attacks on their supremacy.” And so they morph to Trumpism, which is “the violent defense” of white dominance. They believe they face “a choice between white male supremacy and anarchy.” And you can guess which option they will choose.

This threat of violence from Trump loyalists, and the president himself, is part of a historical pattern that “echoes the strategy of southern Democratic leaders in 1860, when they knew they did not have the numbers to win the upcoming election fairly.” Back then, the Southern leaders threated open warfare, and “promised supporters that if it came to a fight, weak and frightened Northerners would run away.” 

It didn’t quite work out like that, and in the ensuing war, “Confederate soldiers learned the hard way both that Northerners would not run away, and that their leaders cared about protecting the economy, not them.”

The parties have switched roles since 1860, but the philosophy is the same.

So you have Trump “using federal law enforcement officers in unprecedented ways, not to quell protests, but to escalate them.”

You have Trump advisors saying that he should declare martial law and arrest his political enemies. You have right-wing talk show hosts shrieking that Trump “will have to… put down the enemy” after the election, using the Insurrection Act, which permits the president to “use the military against citizens to stop civil disorder and rebellion.” You have administration officials insisting that “there are hit squads being trained all over this country” to stop a second Trump term. And you have the president himself dismissing the idea of a peaceful transition of power if he loses, all while mumbling, “There has to be retribution.”

Yes, the party of law and order could not give a fuck less about either of those concepts. If they did, they might be concerned that a whistleblower alleges that top political appointees in the Department of Homeland Security “repeatedly instructed career officials to modify intelligence assessments to suit President Donald Trump’s agenda by downplaying … the threat posed by White supremacists.” They might also be concerned that the FBI says that threats by right-wing militias “will likely increase in the run-up to the November 3 election.” Hell, they might even offer words of support to Governor Whitmer rather than insult her and complain that she hasn’t been sufficiently grateful.

But Trumpists will do none of those things, because liberty and freedom and democracy are not particularly important to them. What matters is power, and if holding on to it means that the nation collapses “into a state of civil war and widespread political violence,” hey too bad.

Yes, I’m pretty sure that both sides are not equally bad. In fact, the disequilibrium is absolutely murderous.

Look, we understand that these are tough times for you unwavering Trump supporters.

You’ve discovered that you cannot yell, “Support the troops” while waving around a Trump 2020 sign. That’s because your idol made some, shall we say, unfortunate remarks concerning American’s veterans — something about “losers” and “suckers.” To be honest, the fact that the president has complete disdain for everybody except himself (and certain homicidal dictators) cannot be a shocker. Hey, it’s not like military leaders are rushing to deny the story, and even Fox News verified it. Plus, he has more or less said the same thing out loud (and you applauded).

But wait, because it gets worse. Apparently, your beloved president “admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and ‘more deadly than even your strenuous flus,’ and that he repeatedly played it down publicly.” The result of his little fib — this tiny lie — was that tens of thousands of Americans died. So clearly, your bewildered leader messed up, and your claims that he knew what he was doing are even more pathetic than we realized.

OK, so you’re having some cognitive dissonance right now.

How can you support a corrupt dolt who has complete disdain for you and everything you supposedly revere, and whose selfish grandstanding has decimated the country?

Well, fortunately for you, we progressives are here to help. Next week, I’ll list all the ways that liberals are bending over backward to help Trump supporters feel better about themselves.

Consider this an introduction to a field guide. Or a teaser. Or a way for me to admit that I cannot possibly keep up with all the crazy shit coming out of the White House nonstop.

In any case, stay tuned and see you next week.

As I may have mentioned, I’m from Wisconsin.

I’ve written before about growing up Latino in an overwhelmingly white state, and living in the most segregated city in America, and attending the flagship university where less than 0.5 % of the student body was Hispanic.

But one thing I never wrote about was Kenosha. And the reason was simple: It’s a boring suburb where nothing interesting ever happens.

Ahem.

As many commentators have pointed out, Kenosha is where a Black man can get shot seven times in the back while a White guy waving an AR-15, who had just killed multiple people, will barely get noticed.

And here I should mention that in my most recent novel, I wrote a scene in which the police tackle an unarmed Latino. Those same cops ignore a nearby white person who is juggling multiple handguns. In that scene, I was going for black comedy mixed with social satire. But clearly, the real world is even more farcical than anything I could imagine.

In any case, after the unrest in Kenosha, our oblivious, bloviating president did his part, flying in to order up fraudulent photo-ops, shout over Black leaders, and express sympathy for a homicidal teenager. Really, do you expect anything else from “a sociopathic narcissist running on a platform of fear, intolerance, and authoritarian, conspiratorial doublespeak” at this point in his presidency? I know I certainly don’t.

And speaking of gun-toting, bloodthirsty teenagers, please note that many right-wingers have done more than excuse one of their brethren for the slight transgression of shooting unarmed people. They have actively celebrated him. A Christian website is raising funds for the shooter’s defense, because after all, there’s nothing more Christian than murdering someone in the street.

Now, I’m tempted to pick on my home state for becoming the newest battleground — both literal and figurative — in the ongoing war of right-wing extremism against, well, everybody else. Believe me, I glance at my Facebook feed — which always contains posts from guys I went to high school with — and I wonder, “You were sane once upon a time, so when did you become a terrified, angry suburban apologist for racism and neo-fascism?” Is it a law that growing up White and male in Milwaukee means that you will eventually clamor for the violent demise of liberals? 

But in truth, what happened in Kenosha is happening all across America. Indeed, it has been going on, more or less, for centuries. For example, “the narrative that dangerous Black people are causing violence that White men must suppress for the good of the community serves Trump’s election narrative, but it is a trope right out of Reconstruction.”

However, this trend has accelerated and become more visible in recent years because “White fear has become the unalloyed rallying cry” of Trump’s followers, and the GOP has morphed into nothing more than a national “White grievance party.” 

So now add in America’s love — fetishization, actually — of guns. And soon, we have the realization of the “long-held fantasy of right-wing militia groups,” which is a “scenario in which they can put their gun collections to use by showing up, unbidden, to ‘protect’ businesses that in many cases aren’t theirs and don’t want that service.” 

Armed thugs roaming the streets should alarm Americans. But many of us enthusiastically cheer for these “self-anointed, weapons-bearing so-called enforcers of order” who have no legal authority and “very little stopping them.”

By the way, all 50 states have legal provisions prohibiting private militias from operating outside of governmental authority, “but the statutes are largely unenforced.”

So much for law and order.

To be honest, I’ve been boycotting Goya for years. Not for political reasons, but because their canned salty slop sucks.

Regardless of motive or rationale, however, I appear to be one of those unhinged progressives who want to cancel everyone and everything for the slightest digression.

Yes, as you know, “cancel culture” is the direct heir to “political correctness.” 

Of course, PC was always overblown nonsense — an imaginary threat and convenient scapegoat. Many of the ideas that conservatives labeled as “political correct” were just basic decency. And many of the people who proudly proclaimed that they were “not PC” were just belligerent assholes. And it didn’t help that the individuals shrieking the most about snowflakes and being oversensitive were themselves the most easily triggered Americans alive.

However, right-wing culture warriors are not idiots. They’re dangerous, hate-filled lunatics, but not idiots.

So they have been working hard on replacing the antiquated “political correctness” with the new, hip “cancel culture.” In both cases, it refers to the right of conservatives (usually white men) to say or do whatever they want without the fear of consequences, or even criticism.

But in truth, “the right and the left both cancel; it’s just that today’s right is too weak to do it effectively.”

Indeed, our old friend Ted Cruz recently proved this point by ranting about cancel culture. Cruz mocked all these outraged Latinos who are sickened by the Goya CEO’s grotesque praising of Trump.

This, of course, is the same Ted Cruz who called for people to boycott the NFL when players started taking a knee. But attempting to get Colin Kaepernick fired or shouting for Nike boycotts was apparently not canceling someone.

Aren’t you happy to have that cleared up?

In any case, our scattershot president has railed against cancel culture at times. Naturally, this is hilarious coming from a guy who wants to cancel anything that even mildly displeases him.

But he’s old, so he keeps coming back to the original term: “politically correct.”

And what, exactly, has Trump identified as PC outrages?

Well, he believes that removing the Confederate flag or tearing down Confederate monuments is PC, as is changing the name of the Washington Redskins. And just a few years ago, most Americans agreed with him on both counts. But now, weirdly enough, they do not, which proves that much of what was considered politically correct in the 1990s is now regarded as goddamn common sense. So all that screaming and yelling in defense of antebellum symbolism and racist monikers was totally worth it. I’m sure there are no regrets there — nope.

But the biggest symbol of the insidious reach of political correctness — in the conservative mind, at least —- is the facemask.

No doubt you’ve seen or heard of brave patriots across the nation who shriek about freedom and refuse to wear the mark of the weak-willed lemming (i.e., a facemask). They often seem to do this while spewing insults and threats at minimum-wage workers, or throwing tantrums so crazed that even toddlers might say, “Wow, time out.” But that’s another story.

It’s no surprise that our president long refused to listen to scientists, doctors, epidemiologists, economists, and a majority of the American people by insisting that he would not wear a facemask. Yes, it is the most effective, simplest way to limit the infection rate. And there is no real constitutional issue with asking people to mask up. And no other country in the world has our bizarre, obstinate, illogical, sociopathic opposition to facemasks.

The point is that wearing a mask is something wimpy liberals do, so donning a mask or practicing social distancing is clearly politically correct.

And then this past weekend, Trump finally wore a fucking mask.

His capitulation means that all the bellowing and fury directed at facemasks was complete idiocy on a homicidal level, and that we have lost a chance to make real progress against coronavirus. Or maybe the president just caved to PC pressure and cancel culture because it’s so, you know, all-powerful. Who can tell which is true?

(Hint: It’s the former, not the latter.)

There can be no doubt that the conservative hatred of facemasks has directly lead to the proliferation of Covid-19. Right-wingers despise imaginary enemies — political correctness or cancel culture — more than they fear a lethal virus.

Keep in mind that liberalism in the form of PC, at its very worst, is annoying and self-righteous. But to my knowledge, cancel culture has never killed anyone.

In contrast, hardcore conservatism — whether through intentional attack or misguided hubris — has now killed thousands of people.

Can anyone blame Americans if they want to cancel it?

A majority of Americans now say they would sooner trust a one-eyed, rabid hyena to lead our country than Trump.

OK, they didn’t actually say that. But they might as well have, because the fact is that most Americans disapprove of our bleach-guzzling chief executive’s response to Covid-19, and the percentage who recognize the president’s bumbling ineptitude is steadily rising.

Foremost among the president’s critics are Latinos, which is only fair, considering that he is highly critical of our very right to exist. You see, we have a new reason to dislike the Trump Administration — yes, an additional reason for our continued antipathy to the most powerful racist in modern American history.

It turns out that Hispanics are “disproportionately dying” because of the coronavirus.

For example, in New York, Latinos make up 29% of the population but are 39% of those who have died. In San Francisco, Hispanics make up 16% of the population but constitute 80% of those hospitalized for Covid-19. Or look at Austin, Texas, which is 34% Hispanic, but where Latinos make up 53% of all Covid-19 patients. And then there is the whole state of Illinois, where “Latinos are testing positive to coronavirus at higher rates than any other demographic group.”

Across the country, “a combination of factors — including working in low-paying front-line jobs and a lack of savings and health insurance,” plus systemic racism and institutionalized poverty, means that “Latinos are shouldering a disproportionate burden of the pandemic.”

But wait, it gets even grimmer. On the economic front, the country’s “widening income inequality gap has led to many minority groups paying a higher price” during this pandemic. About 40% of Latinos, compared to 27% of all Americans, have taken a pay cut, and 29% have lost their jobs, as opposed to 20% of the overall population. 

The Hispanic Consumer Sentiment Index (a real thing) is way down, and many Latinos don’t have enough money to send remittances to Latin America, which affects “the well-being of families and cripples the economies of developing countries.”

Also, Latinos often have worse health insurance and tend to have less money saved. Here is where I will mention that “for every $1 of liquid assets of a white family, the median Hispanic family has 47 cents.”

As one final insult, keep in mind that if Latinos dare to go out for a walk, we are more likely to get ticketed for violating social distancing orders, even while white Americans “in privileged neighborhoods flout mask-wearing and distance rules.”

In essence, this crisis has increased the odds that we will die early, fall into poverty, or get cuffed by the cops, all of which is ironic considering that Latinos are more likely to be deemed “essential workers” and are a huge reason that this country hasn’t totally collapsed.

So yeah, it’s a bit irksome.

Now, you might ask what our president is doing to alleviate this grossly imbalanced suffering. Well, considering that he himself is grossly imbalanced, the answer is clear: A whole lotta nothing.

For example, although 86% of Latino small-business owners “reported significant negative impact on their businesses by the pandemic,” a survey of Latino small-business owners who applied for coronavirus relief loans found that fewer than 20% of them received money.

The government’s mislabeled, mishandled Paycheck Protection Program money “went to Wall Street billionaires” and banks, with the result that “Lupita’s taqueria or Juana’s quinceañera shop didn’t get money while Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and major hotel chains are getting millions of dollars.”

Sounds about right.

Now, it seems odd that this depressing cavalcade of information is not influencing the Trump Administration’s response to the pandemic. After all, the president is charged with ensuring the safety of our country’s residents. There is really nothing in the job description more important than that.

But of course, you just forgot that the Trump Administration is nothing more than thugs, cronies, morons, zealots, con men, hypocrites, xenophobes, and straight-up lunatics.

And that’s on their best day.

No, the orange man with the tiny fingers and the big temper will not save us. Nor will his lickspittle flunkies in Congress come to the rescue. Keep in mind that “because the disease is disproportionately killing black and brown people in cities, Republican powerbrokers simply don’t care about it as much as they would if it were disproportionately killing their supporters.”

So conservatives will not plug in until the virus hits the heartland. By the way, this is already happening.

But even then, Latinos will not be considered “the regular folks,” or have their sacrifices acknowledged or their pain relieved.

As long as this administration is in power, it simply will not happen.

Your life is worth $10 million.

Reading that statement, you may have one of the following reactions:

Wow, I am seriously undervalued.

Does that include the black-market price of both kidneys?

Is that how much the hitman wants?

Just give me five minutes to develop a scam involving life insurance.

What the hell are you talking about?

I will now address the last of those statements.

What I am talking about is the fact that “when evaluating the impact of government policies that affect public health, analysts place a statistical value of about $10 million on each human life as a way of measuring the appropriate amount of risk a policy may cause or mitigate.”

That’s right — when it comes to implementing new policies or jettisoning old procedures, we crunch the numbers and assign a cash value to each life.

Makes you feel valuable, doesn’t it? 

Keep in mind, however, that our old assumptions about the value of human life are changing in this hellish new era. Local governments are fretting about economic damage and the possibility of armed lunatics storming their capitals, and they are responding by ending lockdowns even though “in every instance, looser restrictions improve the performance of the economy but also lead to more deaths.”

This means that the value of a life varies from state to state. For example, one analysis found that “relaxing business closures and stay-at-home rules could cost 13,000 lives in Texas and 12,000 lives in Georgia by September 1, [but] it will also preserve $3.4 billion in statewide income in Texas, and $1.7 billion in Georgia.”

Extrapolating those numbers to “determine the income gained per death when comparing moderate and strict measures” means that your life in Texas is worth $254,000. But your life in Georgia is worth just $247,000.

Talk about a loss in value.

The study estimates 116,000 American deaths by the end of June “if tough restrictions remain in place —but 353,000 deaths if those restrictions are partially lifted.” The researchers add that “if fully lifted, with no further restrictions, deaths would spike to 895,000,” before helpfully adding that “that would save jobs, though.”

Now, when we refer to hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, we most certainly are not talking about you. We are talking about someone else — anyone else — and never you or someone you know. It’s always someone else, probably someone poor with darker skin.

Indeed, most of the people who advocate for reopening the economy don’t seriously believe that they or their loved ones will be infected. Oh, they might say they’re willing to die for the economy, but come on. Who would want their epitaph to be, “He heroically died for a microscopic uptick in GDP”?

On some level, perhaps even subconsciously, most of these people believe that they are magically immune to the virus, or that it won’t kill them because they pray to the correct god, or because they are tough Americans, or because they can buy their way to safety (ok, that last one might be true).

In any case, it’s always a numbers game. For example, consider this hypothetical scenario:

“There is contagious disease that will kill 99 Americans if we do not shut down the country.”

It is doubtful, of course, that we would go into full lockdown if fewer than a hundred people were at risk of dying.

But let’s change a key detail:

“There is contagious disease that will kill 99 million Americans if we do not shut down the country.”

I’m pretty sure most of us would say, “Bolt the doors now,” if one-third of Americans could potentially be killed. Hey, even most of the gun-toting, freedom-lovin’ protesters would suddenly abandon their “principled” arguments if they and their families were in an epicenter.

So that’s the problem. Somewhere between 99 and 99 million is our problem.

There are those who argue, of course, that we should never take economic concerns into consideration when we talk about human life.

But we do this all the time, usually in a subtle, easily acceptable manner. We give cash awards in civil trials for wrongful deaths. We value interstate commerce so much that we built a freeway system that kills thousands of Americans each year. And then there is that aforementioned $10 million number (or $247,000 in Georgia).

Yes, we routinely roll the dice with death.

Of course, it’s a lot more fun to gauge the odds of non-lethal matters. For example, the odds of Joe Biden being elected president are pretty good, as of this writing. But they should be even better, considering that he is running against the only president in history to be both impeached and run the country into an economic meltdown. Plus, this president thinks swallowing bleach is a good idea.

Seriously, how is this even close?

But ultimately, we return to the question of our very existence. What are our odds of making it out of this Covid-19 mess alive?

Well, perhaps we can listen to our old friend Chris Hedges, widely regarded as a brilliant writer, insightful thinker, and possibly the most pessimistic man alive.

Hedges recently discussed our terrifying new era, and he encapsulated his thoughts with the following sentence:

“These days are the good times, as compared to what is coming next.”

Well, I feel better now. Don’t you?