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Categorie: Media (502)

Gepubliceerd: 17 april 2020

Scapegoating

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

Scapegoating is one of the features of modern fascism, and lately Donald Trump has provided some textbook examples.  On Tuesday he announced that he is halting the funding of the World Health Organization until a study of its role in the corona crisis has been conducted.  In Trump’s current view the WHO has been ‘too close to China’ in its assessment of the COVID-19 threat, and although it’s probably true that China has underreported the fatalities caused by the virus in January and February, during those months the president has effusively praised China for its transparency while the WHO was issuing dire warnings he ignored.  Instead, Trump declared that due to his decision to stop entries from China into the US the situation was totally under control, even though 40,000 travelers still got into the country.  After calling the virus a ‘hoax’ and a ‘plot against his presidency’ and blaming Obama he said that there were only 15 cases that would soon be reduced to 5 and that COVID-19 would miraculously disappear in the spring.   Meanwhile all of February nothing was done about testing, respirators, ventilators and PPE.

When the federal government’s failures in these areas became obvious the president found a new scapegoat in the governors, who according to him should have stockpiled those supplies a long time ago.  It has been hard to keep up with Trump’s idea of the governors’ authority and responsibilities.  In March he announced that ‘beautiful’ tests had been developed by the CDC and that everybody who wanted to be tested could be tested, but when this week the testing was still severely lagging he declared that it was the governors’ responsibility.  On Sunday the president said that decisions about gradually ‘reopening the country’ should be made by the governors, but on Monday – in violation of the Constitution – he claimed to have ‘total authority’ to make those decisions.  By Tuesday Trump had creatively compromised with himself and stated that he authorized the governors to be the deciders.  The president’s thought process must be fascinating material for psychologists and psychiatrists.   As a day trader he only lives in the moment and often does not seem to remember what he said 15 minutes ago, let alone two months ago.

At one of his daily press briefings, apparently furious about a New York Times analysis of his administration’s inadequacies, Trump played a video that intended to show how he had been on top of things from day one, but that made painfully clear there had not been any White House activity between February 6^th and March 2^nd, the time the country should have been preparing for the pandemic.  And next to misinformation those pressers exhibit a total lack of empathy on the part of the president, who is only interested in getting into a rant and fighting with reporters.

Asked by a reporter why his name would be on the stimulus checks that were supposed to go out this week Trump first said that he knows very little about it and then lied that it would not cause any delays.  In a peculiar tirade about the appointment of judges and an overseer of the Voice of America the president threatened to adjourn Congress so that he can make recess appointments, something he cannot do unless Congress is in disagreement over adjournment, which it is not.

At Tuesday’s presser the president read a laundry list of names of CEOs who were to be consulted during a conference call about reopening the country.  Some of them didn’t know that they were on the list and others were surprised that they were not  called.  Later today Trump will issue guidelines for easing restrictions related to the coronavirus, but it’s an exercise in futility because governors will do as they see fit.

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Categorie: Media (502)

Gepubliceerd: 10 april 2020

De boktor van drs. Barend-Otto

Een paar dagen geleden schreef ik een stukje over de toenemende invloed van Omroep Max op NPO 1 en de ergerniswekkende stoet aan herhalingen. Ik constaterde een soort machtsgreep van Jan Slagter en zijn discipelen. Daarop kreeg ik deze reactie van meneer Ter Vloot te Steenwijkerwold.

Kijk zo’n omroep Max, in het zadel geholpen door Ledy van der Maan of iets dergelijks, betekent die iets voor mij als bejaarde, laat die bijvoorbeeld zaken zien of horen, die mij uit mijn jeugd buitengewoon dierbaar zijn, het antwoord kan kort zijn: nee, Max woelt geen nostalgische gevoelens bij mij los; waar is het bezoek aan een ouderwetse kermis met een cakewalk, een spookhuis of voor mijn part een vlooientheater, nee, ik word voor de buis weggetreiterd door ene Jan Slagter tot de antiperistaltische bewegingen mijn rectum bereiken; terwijl het toch heel eenvoudig moet zijn om een vlooientheater te tonen en wanneer zoiets als te achterhaald beschouwd wordt, waarom dezelfde kunststukjes niet eens geprobeerd met boktorren uit te voeren, men maakt mij niet wijs dat het IQ van de gemiddelde vlo (Pulex Irritans) hoger is dan dat van de gemiddelde boktor (Hylotrupes Bajulus L.) (tekening) en hoe aardig zou het zijn zo rond de klok van half negen ‘s avonds een zestal boktorren een zilveren koetsje voort te zien trekken, haasje-over te zien springen of te zien kopjeduikelen, ik denk dat men de oudere kijker daarmee een veel groter genoegen bereid, dan met het gekeuvel van de heer Slagter.Wellicht is het tijd om de omroep Max Sr. op te richten, voor de echte bejaarde.

Drs. Barend-Otto ter Vloot, Steenwijkerwold

De geachte Barend-Otto is ook regelmatig te vinden op de blog van mijn oud VPRO-collega Wim Bloemendaal.
      Op zijn beurt is de doctorandus dus ook bezig met een machtsgreep

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Categorie: Media (502)

Gepubliceerd: 10 april 2020

Cheerleader

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

When asked at yesterday’s White House presser why he had persisted for the longest time in denying the threat of COVID-19 and downplaying its danger to the American people Trump answered that he sees himself as the main cheerleader for the country, whose role it is to give positive information, apparently even if that information is incorrect and the message costs lives.  Because of that attitude Trump only wanted to talk about lifting the ban on flavored vaping when in early January HHS Secretary Alex Azar wanted to inform him about the virus, and didn’t he read the ‘Memo to the US President’ China hawk Peter Navarro wrote on January 29^th about the already spreading pandemic.  Meanwhile the president was calling the virus a ‘hoax,’ fabricated by the Democrats to undermine his presidency, said that only fifteen Americans had been infected, of which ten had already recovered and the other five would soon follow, and predicted that the virus would miraculously disappear in the spring.  The only action he initially took was blocking travel from China, although approximately 40,000 travelers still entered the US.

Now that after the ‘70 days of denial and inactivity’ documented by the Washington Post, and 15,000 American deaths, Trump finally realizes that the threat is real, he has gone to his default response to bad news caused by his own deficiencies: blaming everybody but himself.  First China, for not having shared the seriousness of the pandemic from the very beginning, second the World Health Organization, for ‘calling it wrong,’ and finally the Governors, for not having better prepared their states.  Instead of acknowledging the stupidity of his closing down the pandemic response unit of the National Security Council and removing its observers from China the president is considering to cut funding for the WHO in the middle of a global health crisis.  Meanwhile Trump is continuing in his cheerleading role, crediting his leadership with having secured millions of respirators and tens of thousands of ventilators, while he claims that the US has done more testing than everybody else, which is demonstrably untrue.  The truth is that there is only still scant access to testing, so that health care systems function largely in the dark.

As encouragement for the weary the president continues to peddle hydroxychloroquine in combination with one different drug as a potential cure, in spite of the fact that there is only anecdotal evidence of its benefits but more than anecdotal evidence of its risks.  He keeps repeating that he’s not a doctor, but had no qualms about shutting up Dr. Fauci when the latter was asked about the potential benefits of that cocktail, after Peter Navarro, who is not a doctor either, got into a spat with Fauci during a meeting and had started stockpiling millions of pills.

Not losing sight of other pressing issues Trump fired the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, who according to him had done a ‘terrible job’ by sharing the whistleblower complaint with the House Intelligence Committee, as is mandated.  The president also removed the candidate for Chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee and replaced him with a White House Associate Counsel, so that he can turn a $500 billion support package into a slush fund for corporations.

Probably the most important function of leadership is ‘modeling,’ setting an example that can be followed by subordinates.  At his daily pressers Trump sets a horrible example, constantly lying and attacking reporters, sometimes even from Fox News.  Fortunately his example is not followed by most of the governors who are effectively in charge of the response to the crisis, and that is a reason for some hope.

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Categorie: Media (502)

Gepubliceerd: 03 april 2020

A Different Tone?

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

Sometime last Tuesday Donald Trump bumped into reality and, convinced by Dr. Birx’s trend-lines and Dr. Fauci’s passion, realized that 2 million corona deaths would be worse for his re-election chances than an economic depression, so he announced that the government’s stay-at-home advisory would be extended through April.  Some pundits believed to have detected a different tone coming from the president, and it is true that on Thursday he called Jim Acosta by his first name, but other than his finally taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously very little changed in Trump’s behavior.  He kept on lying that the testing problem had been solved, while Montana Governor Steve Bullock said that his state is one day away from not being able to test, and criticized New York for having ‘hoarded’ ventilators in a storage facility.  Adding insult to injury the president accused NYC health workers, who often have to work with inadequate protection, of making masks disappear ‘through the back door.’  Governor Cuomo explained in a response that if all the available ventilators would be used today no ventilators would be available tomorrow.

On top of his other criticism Trump blamed New York for having been’ too slow’ to respond to the corona pandemic, and although it’s true that certain measures could have been taken earlier, like closing the schools, blame coming from a president who until Tuesday played down the danger of the outbreak is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.  Cuomo did not respond in kind, because he realizes that if Trump is attacked he’ll retaliate and deny New York State federal assistance, so instead he focused on the dysfunctionality of the procurement process of medical supplies, where the states and the federal government are bidding against each other, driving up the prices.  The Governor demands that the White House play a coordinating role, but instead it appears that occasionally the feds take orders away from one state to give supplies to another state, frequently one with a Trump-friendly Governor and/or electorate.   Trump claims that the government’s strategy is to have supplies directly delivered to states and hospitals, which makes most of it untraceable, but in spite of his happy talk there is a persistent shortage of testing kits, masks, PPE and ventilators.

In other areas Trump is also back at his old tricks.  He called Yamiche Alcindor, who is black and one of the best White House correspondents, ‘snarky’ and urged her to ‘be nice’ after she had asked a totally fair question.  On Fox News the president said that he opposed voting by mail because making voting easier is bad for the Republican Party.   In a signing statement with the $2 trillion ‘Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act’ Trump indicated that he did not agree with the appointment of an Inspector General and would play an oversight role of his own.

Distinctly cruel is the president’s decision not to reopen the Obamacare marketplace, so that those among the 6.6 million Americans who filed for unemployment this week who lost not only their job but also their health insurance cannot buy a different plan and are left without insurance while a deadly pandemic rages in the country.  Of course Trump knows that his lawyers are still fighting in court to have Obamacare terminated altogether, which would cost millions more their coverage.

Early in the week the president bragged about the viewership of his pressers and yesterday he initially didn’t want to talk about the corona crisis but presented speakers about anti-drug actions in the Pacific and saber-rattling with Iran.  En passant Trump mentioned that he is ‘number one’ on Facebook, which is not true, and promised that the economy ‘is going to go up very quickly, but maybe slowly.’

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