Cinderfella
At Sunset Crater National Monument--sitting in a huge field of volcanic cinders.
I've more or less finished my first piece for the paper (as mentioned previously, I've decided to pull back from flickr and photography while I concentrate more on writing), so am taking a brief break from writing to process a photo from my winter trip to the Southwest. Kind of at random, this photo popped up as I was searching through the possibilities.
The title, BTW, comes from a silly Jerry Lewis movie from the sixties, essentially turning "Cinderella" into a male character.
For anyone interested, what I've written over the past few days follows. I wish I could have inserted more specific examples to back my assertions, but space simply would not allow it. I have not titled it as the newspaper usually does that.
A recent poll found that 45% of Americans still approve of President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. This leads one to ask, if his actions were so exemplary, how is it that in spite of the fact we knew weeks in advance that this terrible disease was coming—a luxury China did not have—we now have almost four times as many cases as any other country, with more deaths—soon to be many more? If his response was worthy of approval, how is it that the outcome of that response is presently far, far worse than in any other country in the world? China, in spite of not having any warning, now has the disease under a measure of control, as does South Korea. We had a month to prepare and did virtually nothing.
For weeks, Trump ignored the intelligence community's dire warnings, consistently downplayed the seriousness of what we were facing and did nothing to bolster our preparedness. Trump's nonstop minimizing of the problem (“It's very mild” “It's going to disappear . . . like a miracle”) and misinformation (“Anyone who wants a test can get a test”) dissuaded many from taking the situation seriously, but it was the inexcusable failure to act that was the gravest problem. The single positive action taken by the President before the pandemic began to spread like wildfire was closing off travel from China—but even that was handled incompetently as there was no systematic effort to screen or quarantine the thousands of American citizens returning from that country.
Unfortunately, this administration continues to demonstrate incompetence every single day. And everyday, though his messaging of late has cleaved closer to reality, Trump continues to give out false and misleading information, all the while bragging about his ratings and patting himself on the back for his miserable performance. And as for responsibility for failures?—“I don't take any responsibility at all”—because of course he doesn't.
Except he is the president of the United States. He is responsible—responsible for the criminally bad mismanagement, the chaos, the abysmally slow response and the numerous failures. Yes, there are others who can share some of the blame, but the buck stops at his desk. Tens of thousands are going to die that shouldn't have. He is responsible for that which makes him guilty of nothing less than negligent homicide—10,000 times over.
And now we know the consequences of electing someone who is unqualified by every conceivable metric to the most important office on Earth. Perhaps one hard-earned positive will emerge from this disaster—that in the future, we will approach our right to vote not as an exercise in expressing frustration, but as a sacred duty--a duty to ferret out the candidate most dedicated to the advancement of our nation and all humanity . . . not merely themselves.
Cinderfella
At Sunset Crater National Monument--sitting in a huge field of volcanic cinders.
I've more or less finished my first piece for the paper (as mentioned previously, I've decided to pull back from flickr and photography while I concentrate more on writing), so am taking a brief break from writing to process a photo from my winter trip to the Southwest. Kind of at random, this photo popped up as I was searching through the possibilities.
The title, BTW, comes from a silly Jerry Lewis movie from the sixties, essentially turning "Cinderella" into a male character.
For anyone interested, what I've written over the past few days follows. I wish I could have inserted more specific examples to back my assertions, but space simply would not allow it. I have not titled it as the newspaper usually does that.
A recent poll found that 45% of Americans still approve of President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. This leads one to ask, if his actions were so exemplary, how is it that in spite of the fact we knew weeks in advance that this terrible disease was coming—a luxury China did not have—we now have almost four times as many cases as any other country, with more deaths—soon to be many more? If his response was worthy of approval, how is it that the outcome of that response is presently far, far worse than in any other country in the world? China, in spite of not having any warning, now has the disease under a measure of control, as does South Korea. We had a month to prepare and did virtually nothing.
For weeks, Trump ignored the intelligence community's dire warnings, consistently downplayed the seriousness of what we were facing and did nothing to bolster our preparedness. Trump's nonstop minimizing of the problem (“It's very mild” “It's going to disappear . . . like a miracle”) and misinformation (“Anyone who wants a test can get a test”) dissuaded many from taking the situation seriously, but it was the inexcusable failure to act that was the gravest problem. The single positive action taken by the President before the pandemic began to spread like wildfire was closing off travel from China—but even that was handled incompetently as there was no systematic effort to screen or quarantine the thousands of American citizens returning from that country.
Unfortunately, this administration continues to demonstrate incompetence every single day. And everyday, though his messaging of late has cleaved closer to reality, Trump continues to give out false and misleading information, all the while bragging about his ratings and patting himself on the back for his miserable performance. And as for responsibility for failures?—“I don't take any responsibility at all”—because of course he doesn't.
Except he is the president of the United States. He is responsible—responsible for the criminally bad mismanagement, the chaos, the abysmally slow response and the numerous failures. Yes, there are others who can share some of the blame, but the buck stops at his desk. Tens of thousands are going to die that shouldn't have. He is responsible for that which makes him guilty of nothing less than negligent homicide—10,000 times over.
And now we know the consequences of electing someone who is unqualified by every conceivable metric to the most important office on Earth. Perhaps one hard-earned positive will emerge from this disaster—that in the future, we will approach our right to vote not as an exercise in expressing frustration, but as a sacred duty--a duty to ferret out the candidate most dedicated to the advancement of our nation and all humanity . . . not merely themselves.