So Painful To Watch

George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police is very difficult to watch. I suspect the aftermath will make for equally painful viewing, yet turning away can hardly be the answer.

Decide for yourself:

The Village Idiot

I suspect few regard British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as anything other than a village idiot. If you have been following the scandal surrounding his Chief Adviser, Dominic Cummings, you will also see that like attracts like.

Boris has been twisting himself out of shape defending the hypocritical Cummings; after the grilling he has been facing from fearless British journalists, he may well need the services of a good chiropractor, when such is once again permitted (or not, given that the rules don't seem to apply to the likes of him and Cummings):

Being Black In America - The Story Is Always The Same

There is much more graphic video available online, but the following succinctly shows the horror of being black in the United States:

Facebook And The Unravelling Of Truth

At a time when access to accurate, well-informed and well-researched information is crucial, it is probably not surprising that there are bad actors who promote disinformation. After all, chaos, their preferred state, constantly needs stoking, and oh, what a friend they have in Facebook.

Earlier this month, the BBC exposed the internet giant for the amoral, greedy and even nefarious entity it is, one quite content to promote the ranting of the far-right fringe as it exploits the Covid-19 pandemic. Here is a sample of the posts regarding the virus gleaned from Mark Zuckerberg's baby:

"What if [they] are trying to kill off as many people as possible" reads one Facebook post.

"Eventually, these scum will release something truly nasty to wipe us all out, but first they have to train us to be obedient slaves" reads another.

A third: "Coronavirus is the newest Islamist weapon."

That Facebook willingly makes itself a vehicle (a very profitable one, of course) for hatred, prejudice and conspiracy theories comes as no surprise to me. A post I wrote almost five years ago shows why. Yet in our current situation, it can be argued that the stakes are even higher today.

Writing in The Markup, Aaron Sankind explains Facebook's tactics of open solicitation, i.e. prostitution, which openly contradict its promise to combat misinformation about Covid-19.

Facebook was allowing advertisers to profit from ads targeting people that the company believes are interested in “pseudoscience.” According to

Facebook’s ad portal, the pseudoscience interest category contained more than 78 million people.

This week, The Markup paid to advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience, and the ad was approved by Facebook.

Interestingly, after posting it, Sankin writes that

an ad for a hat that would supposedly protect my head from cellphone radiation appeared on my Facebook feed on Thursday, April 16.

Concerns about electromagnetic radiation coming from 5G cellular infrastructure have become a major part of the conspiracy theories swirling around the origin of the coronavirus.

The social media giant's synergistic (some would say parasitic) money-making techniques are obvious here.

Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington studying how conspiracy theories spread online, said one hallmark of the ecosystem is that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to be convinced of other conspiracy theories.

By offering advertisers the ability to target people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories, she said, Facebook is taking “advantage of this sort of vulnerability that a person has once they’re going down these rabbit holes, both to pull them further down and to monetize that.”

Actions speak louder than words, as they say, and it appears that Facebook may talk the talk, but refuses to walk the walk:

Facebook has also said that it is cracking down on ads on products related to the pandemic. “We recently implemented a policy to prohibit ads that refer to the coronavirus and create a sense of urgency, like implying a limited supply, or guaranteeing a cure or prevention. We also have policies for surfaces like Marketplace that prohibit similar behavior”...

However, earlier this month, Consumer Reports was able to schedule seven paid ads that contained fake claims, such as stating that social distancing doesn’t work or that people could stay healthy by drinking small doses of bleach. Facebook approved all of the ads.

Business is business would seem to be the only ethos Facebook lives by. And the consequences for a credulous public couldn't be more lethal.

An Accelerated Deterioration

With the exception of his mindless cheerleaders and coterie of sycophants, it is obvious to the world that Donald Trump has led the United States into a steep, perhaps irreversible, decline. His response to the Covid-19 crisis has only accelerated that process.

And the public record, unlike Trump, does not lie.

About his early response to the crisis, Edward Luce writes:

People often observed during Trump’s first three years that he had yet to be tested in a true crisis. Covid-19 is way bigger than that. “Trump’s handling of the pandemic at home and abroad has exposed more painfully than anything since he took office the meaning of America First,” says William Burns, who was the most senior US diplomat, and is now head of the Carnegie Endowment.

“America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.”

Trump's refusal to heed warnings about what was coming was nothing short of criminal, and will likely be apparent to all if and when a commission of inquiry into the pandemic response is struck:

The inquiry would find that Trump was warned countless times of the epidemic threat in his presidential daily briefings, by federal scientists, the health secretary Alex Azar, Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, Matt Pottinger, his Asia adviser, by business friends and the world at large. Any report would probably conclude that tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented – even now as Trump pushes to “liberate” states from lockdown.

“It is as though we knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen for months, did nothing to prepare for it and then shrugged a few days later and said, ‘Oh well, there’s not much we can do about it,’” says Gregg Gonsalves, a public health scholar at Yale University. “Trump could have prevented mass deaths and he didn’t.”

True to form, the Infant-in-Chief blames others for his manifest failures, China and The Who not the least:

A meeting of G7 foreign ministers in March failed to agree on a statement after Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, insisted they brand it the “Wuhan virus”.

Most dramatically, Trump has suspended US funding of the WHO, which he says covered up for China’s lying.

Trump alleged the WHO’s negligence had increased the world’s death rate “twenty-fold”. In practice, the body must always abide by member state limits, especially the big ones, notably the US and China. That is the reality for all multilateral bodies. The WHO nevertheless declared an international emergency six weeks before Trump’s US announcement.

So where does all the blaming, the posturing, the incompetence of a depraved president lead to?

Early into his partial about-turn, Trump said scientists told him that up to 2.5 million Americans could die of the disease. The most recent estimates suggest 135,000 Americans will die by late July. That means two things.

First, Trump will tell voters that he has saved millions of lives. Second, he will continue to push aggressively for US states to lift their lockdowns. His overriding goal is to revive the economy before the general election. Both Trump and Kushner have all but declared mission accomplished on the pandemic. “This is a great success story,” said Kushner in late April. “We have prevailed,” said Trump on Monday.

It is the kind of simpleminded triumphal language that a nation weary of restrictions and given to uncritical acceptance of Trumpisms welcomes, but it doesn't change reality.

And it doesn't change a truth recently uttered by George Conway, husband of one of Trump's chief promoters, Kelly Anne Conway, about the lamentably ill-equipped president:

“In my view he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasize and lose any ability to think rationally.”

A terrible combination in the best of times. A literally lethal one is these worst of times.

I Rest My Case

Yesterday I offered, shall we say, an unflattering appraisal of the American 'character' and psyche. Further evidence supporting that assessment is to be found in the following video:



Perhaps those of similar disposition dying for a night out on the town should ponder this cautionary tale?

An Armchair Analysis

One of the benefits (and, to be honest, drawbacks) of having a blog is the freedom it confers on the owner. He or she can write on a range of topics which, in my case, is sometimes determined by the mood I'm in. And these days, that mood is often less one of outrage than it is of resignation. The belly fire that once drove me is now often but a vaguely uncomfortable feeling easy to ignore.

But I do soldier on, in fits and starts.

Since compelling empirical proof is hardly a requirement for blog opinions, I shall offer one today about the United States of America. It will hardly be a shattering insight, merely one I have been thinking about more and more during these days of confinement and reading.

The United States of America is an infantile nation.

Consider but a few examples. There is the violence incited by refusal to wear masks; there are the states reopening despite rising numbers of Covid-19 infections; there is fairly widespread defiance of state laws through protests and illegal re-openings of shuttered businesses. And, of course, there is their selection of the Orange Idiot to lead their nation.

Clearly, the United States lacks the kind of character that the world's current situation demands.

Recently, while watching a commercial during the American news, something else also occurred to me. They haven't always been this benighted and childish.

Allow me to illustrate with a few American Public Service Announcements.

The first one is from many years ago; those of a certain age will remember Perry Mason who, each week, bested District Attorney Hamilton Burger in the courtroom. The actor who played him, William Talman, made an anti-smoking ad in 1968 when he was dying from lung cancer:



You will notice that the tone is poignant as Talman invokes the powerful images of his family to show the terrible losses he is facing, urging viewers either not to take up smoking or to quit if they are already in its grips. No one could argue that such an ad is shocking or graphic in any way.

Contrast that restrained tone with what is on offer today:









Each of the above PSAs approach the viewer in a way far different than the Talman ad did, replacing reason and poignancy with what are guaranteed to reach a blunted, debased sensibility: fear and repugnance. If this won't get you to quit smoking, nothing will, eh?

What is my point? Only to suggest that those commercials can serve as a measure of the undeniable decline in the American character. Where once reason and basic sentiment might have served public discourse well, today fear has become the weapon of choice to influence people's behaviour.

And the use of that weapon is most evident in contemporary American politics. The Trump playbook, the one that serves him so very well, is a textbook example. Fear of the other, the Mexican rapists and drug dealers who must be held at bay by massive walls, the deep state conspirators, the Wuhan virus and so many more are all part of his abysmal arsenal.

And the Pavlovian dogs salivate.