Well, that brings up an image I would rather forget.
Eric Trump predicted COVID will magically go away and disappear after the election. HE MAY BE RIGHT. Of course it will still be here. But his father certainly has inspired his base, and more than a few of his fellow Republican politicians, to start shoving facts down the memory hole. Even to the point of enforcing political correctness by humiliating a nurse on national TV because she very mildly stated that they had had some problems getting necessary PPE.
Helping him is the worst of his Flavor Aid swilling rabble. Those who like to run over counter protesters, assault them at rallies, threaten hospitals, threaten public buildings. Threaten those who won’t go along with his politically correct spin. Using enforcers, like those fake patriots who pretend to dress up as if they’re patriots; armed with assault rifles, rocket or grenade launcher. Forcing their way into businesses, government offices and beaches. By now you should know Trump Co and enablers will do what they can to suppress anything: even any stats that don’t make Trump look good. You know they will stop at nothing. You know his goosestepping lemmings will use social media to enable all that.
I keep my Facebook page open to people of many persuasions. I like knowing where the other side is going next. My conservative posters were talking about a woman in the hospital who had cancer, got COVID and died. Their over the top anger was over how, since she already had had cancer, her death was listed as from COVID. It was “deceptive;” an intentional attempt by the left and the ‘deep state’ to inflate the figures. It got far worse after that as I looked through responses. OBVIOUSLY IT WAS TIME TO OPEN UP THE REICH’S BOTTOMLESS LOONY CONSPIRACY BIN! When it comes to the Hulk smash efforts of Trump’s Reich Pandora’s box must be jealous.
And since the response I typed had no blow back I’m sure I managed to lose a Facebook ‘friend.’ I’m crying. Boo-de-hoo hoo hoo.
Even a simpleton might know that those who only want simplistic answers hate nuance as much as roaches hate very bright lights and being swatted.
My response was no in their face-based framing. I commented that it mattered the nature of how advanced that cancer was. About to kill her? Well, maybe more of a point made, though at least a mitigating factor. If she was relatively stable, even in remission, COVID caused her death, not cancer. Claiming it otherwise is what would be deceptive.
No replies from them.
You know Facebook silence can indeed be golden? Like Limbaugh having a call from a caller who successfully challenges him potted down, or dropped, cowards use the memory hole to make it seem like they won. I had been memory holed.
Ewe, another disgusting image.
Other indications: before the ACA insurance companies posing as medical experts were quite expert at finding supposed, unconnected, preexisting conditions to memory hole their obligations. Trump wants that back and has been moving through the courts to achieve that: all the way to the Supremes.
And surely you have heard the reports of changing graphs by mixing up dates to make it look like Georgia rates are going down. Or the claims that infection rates at meat processing plants are ‘proprietary,” and hence won’t have to be reported.
More memory holing, with promises to take legal action against media who displease him, challenge his official spin, pretend to have free of the press in Trumpania.
Helping with all this is the gutting of large groups of inconvenient voters from voter rolls in crucial Electoral College states, shutting down polls stations where the politically incorrect tend to vote, sending too few machines, defective ones to those not shut down yet. Plenty good ones to compliant districts. But that trend has been ongoing long before Trump came to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. Might as well call Republicans; like Georgia’s Kemp, founding members of Trump’s Ministry of (Politically Correct Only) Voting.
I think the plan here right now is, oh, so familiar, and quite familiar literary-wise. Anything that doesn’t reflect well on Der Donnie is minimized, blamed on anything, anyone else, or simply goes away. Memory holed. Using another literary comparison the mechanical hounds have been very, very busy. Seems the goal is also those who displease go away as well: from encouraging assaulting protesters at rallies, to Charlottesville, to armed terrorists forcing their will on those who haven’t been obedient. You do know that actual ‘protesters’ don’t carry rocket launchers or assault rifles, right? Ready for concentration camps part two where we join those seeking freedom he so eagerly demonized for political gain?
Too far? Did you, or I, imagine how far this administration would be willing to go in 2016? Imagine how far after 2020. Firing anyone who doesn’t go along with the propaganda program alone indicates active memory holing. The message here should be so familiar to English majors. We have always been at war with the deep state: the deep state being anyone and anything who realizes the Emperor has worse than no clothes. Trump, Barr, DeVos and the rest are redesigning government into institutions like The Ministry of Truth where lies become fact or don’t even have to be told. Like Barr’s recent statement that as long as he’s AG his office will not be used for partisan purposes. TOO LATE, BILLY!
Gutting the ACA works right into all this during a time of COVID. Preexisting conditions will apply to all, COVID stories turned into, at best, a rise in deaths by other means… if that. Eventually even that will seem to fade to nothingness as Trump gets his every judge appointment, all his pleasures agreed to by a Trump packed Supreme Court.
Hell, Ginsberg damn near has two feet in the grave already.
Sorry Ruth.
Please hold on.
What’s going to be left is a nation’s infrastructure, since suing the 4th estate when it publishes what displeases Big Bro Don is also becoming an executive branch ‘thing?’ Post 2020 all the branches and the estate could eventually look like they’re Trump’s COVID Task Force clones: suck ups all.
1984 didn’t end so well for Winston and Julia. One hopes there’s still time to turn this around so the ending might be more like Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Maybe, just maybe, we have enough left, and the courage to start to rebuild. Then the phoenix, reborn, will slowly rise again.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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