Tasks after returning from travel – The Democratic Convention – Biden’s closing speech – Donald Trump on New Zealand – The risk of dying by COVID in the U.S. – Jacinda Ardern – North Korea recalls dogs – Evening statistics
How much must be done after returning from a trip, even a short one! When driving back home yesterday the malfunction indicator light went on. This is an invention by automobile manufacturers for which, if there is any divine justice at all, they will undergo years of purgatory during the after-life. It says in effect, “There’s something wrong with your engine, but we’re not telling you what it is”: not the most reassuring message to receive while driving along an interstate highway. So I took the car into the shop – it was due for a filter and oil change in any case. The issue turned out to be trivial and was fixed easily. There was also tending to the garden, which had run to seed a bit in the short time I was away, mowing the lawn, shopping for groceries, preparing food for the next few days, and making bread as I was down to a few slices left of the last loaf. None of these tasks took a long time individually, but they did add up.
So much has happened this week, and I lacked the space in my previous entry to touch upon the events at large. The headlines listed here are by no means inclusive; it simply is impossible to cover them all without writing several pages. Of course the main event of the week was the Democratic Convention. It was an unusual convention in many ways. To begin with, the speeches were delivered virtually. But the Democrats managed to turn this seeming handicap into an advantage. The speakers were posed for the camera with great care: lighting, focus, voice amplification, musical interludes – all were perfect. I am not being sarcastic when I say that it was a brilliant piece of stage-management. Just contrast it, for example, to the fiasco that occurred at Tulsa two months earlier. In general, the Democrats seem more adept at incorporating new technologies into their campaigning technique than the Republicans. One is reminded of the campaign in 2008, when Obama gained headway by (among other things) his superior deployment of Internet.
There was a brief diversion when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed Bernie Sanders as the nominee, but that actually rather pleased me; it made the event seem less like a coronation than it might otherwise have been. Sanders, though, is a non-starter. His idea of problem-solving is to throw money in every direction and in order to do so he would print endless amounts of dollars until the currency becomes as worthless as the deutschmark in the Weimar Republic.
In the event, Biden secured the nomination, and now the confrontation against Donald Trump can begin in earnest. In fact, it has begun already. Biden has somewhat changed his tactics; not that he has any reason to regret his former policy of giving his opponent enough rope, but at this point he has calculated that it is safe to go into a more aggressive mode. His remarks on Trump’s handling of the virus during his acceptance speech were withering, though no less than what Trump deserves. Even Fox News went out of its way to praise the effectiveness of his speech.
The other unique feature about this convention is the number of people from the rival party who participated. Some, no doubt, are operating on the principle of deserting a sinking ship; but I believe that several are motivated by an honest indignation at how Trump has trashed the Republican Party. It cannot be pleasant to decide to work for one’s political opponents, after all. In order to repair the damage done to the Republican Party, Trump must be defeated, so soundly that he never can hope to re-emerge. After he is gone from the scene, the restoration can begin. From their point of view, joining the campaign against Trump is as necessary as a surgical operation: painful, certainly, but it must be done if there is to be any healing at all.
However, Donald Trump invariably has methods of calling attention to himself under any set of circumstances. He has done so this week by deploring the “surge” of the virus in New Zealand. How unexpectedly modest of him! Surely he cannot fail to be aware that the rate of infection in our country is, at the most moderate estimate, more than 50 times as great as theirs? And since our proud record of accounting for 25% of the virus cases worldwide and over 22% of the deaths, when we comprise a mere 4% of the global population, can largely be laid at his door, why does he hide his light under a bushel and slight his own achievement? I’m assuming at any rate that he looks upon it as an achievement. He certainly hasn’t shown any sign of shame about it.
To be fair, there is so much under-reporting in nearly every country that the American percentages may have to be downgraded by a few points. Brazil, for instance, could be under-reporting by a factor of 10, according to some experts. If so, its case count would exceed ours, even though its population is only about two-thirds the size of our own. Then again, under-reporting is going on in this country as well. At this point the aggregate death count from all causes in our country is more than 200,000 over the median, which suggests that the official number of deaths from the virus is under-rated.
In any case, even accepting the official figures as is, COVID-19 is now one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. The CDC has said that heart disease and cancer, which have been around since before any of us were born, are the only two causes of deaths currently ranking ahead of a virus that didn’t even exist a year ago. An American is eight times as likely to die from the virus as a European.
Since Trump has mentioned New Zealand, I may single out for his attention an episode concerning Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern some months earlier. She was dining with a friend and when they arrived at the restaurant they were told by the management, who did not recognize her, to wait outside until a table became empty, in conformance with the imposed restrictions. Ardern quietly retired. When the management became aware that it was the Prime Minister they had ordered about in this way, they hastened to invite her in. But she declined, on the principle that if she did not observe the restrictions imposed on others, the restrictions would become worthless. Her example is one of the main reasons that the toll of the virus in New Zealand has been so low in comparison with that of other countries.
It is not only Trump who is incapable of demonstrating such restraint. I cannot imagine any American politician behaving in such a manner – certainly not Hillary Clinton, and probably not Joe Biden, who already has displayed unexpected reserves of arrogance during his campaign. They may call themselves servants of the people, but they look upon themselves as an aristocracy. They have consistently betrayed themselves into revealing their conviction that they are not bound by the rules that they have imposed upon their constituents.
Admittedly, our leaders are not as bizarre as some others. Kim Jong Un recently ordered all pet dogs to be confiscated, claiming that they are a display of Western decadence. The probabilities are that he is imposing this edict as a result of the food shortages that continually plague North Korea. In this way he can ensure that the dogs will no longer consume food needed elsewhere; indeed, it is a distinct possibility that several of them will wind up as a food source themselves.
There are so many other news items that occurred over the last few days: record heat in the West (several successive days of triple-digit temperatures in some cities), colleges being forced to close after re-opening on account of students and staff promptly becoming ill, COVID cases occurring in one state after another among attendees returning from the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, protests seething in Belarus over the recent election – but enough! I think that spending hours on the rockiest and most unrewarding of trails in Pennsylvania is preferable to reading too much news these days.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 23,096,647; # of deaths worldwide: 802,318; # of cases U.S.: 5,795,337; # of deaths U.S.: 179,153.