Don's Tuesday Column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Bluff Daily News   3/10/2020

Democrat Socialist; coronavirus panic

“The making of a ‘Democratic Socialist’ and a COVID-19 panic” really captures the point. Things in common: 1) ignoring long-term actual experience and skepticism of collectivist schemes as well as prior disease outbreaks; 2) misrepresenting economic problems for the purpose of impugning the abundance of free-market systems, aka capitalism; and misrepresenting the dangers, lethality and handling of coronavirus.

3) Ascribing perfidy and evil to President Donald J. Trump as a symbol of wealth and success—while avoiding similar aspersions on the wealth of left-of-center Democrats like Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros; and 4) misrepresenting Trump (the head of the branch of government running the CDC and NIH) through nearly endless accusations—inaccurate at best and maliciously phony at worst—for cheap political gain.

I guess it’s expected for political adversaries to use situations to the detriment of opponents but there’s a deep difference between Obama, Hillary Clinton and Trump. Obama really did implement the illegal “Fast and Furious” gun running scheme, and really did sit on his hands for 6 months while the H1N1 flu spread, killing 1,000 Americans. He and Hillary really did facilitate (and lie about) the deadly attacks on the Benghazi, Libya diplomatic facility by failing to provide prior protection and timely rescue.

Hillary really did commit numerous crimes associated with her illegal private server—then-FBI head James Comey itemized them—but unbelievably avoided indictment over “lack of intent” to commit them. Obama really did preside over—arguably oversaw and approved—the “Crossfire Hurricane” operation to conduct espionage via FISA warrants and wiretaps on Trump. Together with the fabricated Steele “dossier” they undermined him, and created impeachable pretexts to remove Trump from office.

Trump, on the other hand, has taken timely actions—beginning with closing our borders to Chinese travelers—which prompted disingenuous cries of racism, xenophobia and human rights violations. To impugn his team of experts is to impugn many of the people he inherited from Obama’s term. To accuse—without evidence—that Trump is engaged in a coverup or disinformation is to abuse the freedom to criticize for fallacious political ends.

Nonpartisan, objective observers and experts praise the response and seriousness of Trump’s team. Might it be more effectively implemented? Possibly, but when dealing with a new and deadly virus, the “unknown unknowns” will inevitably complicate things; America has by far the lowest coronavirus death rate of any nation.

I read that in 2016 (Trump was not elected) some private sector researchers were close to creating an anti-coronavirus vaccine but lacked funding—not necessarily government funding—but that is how close we came to serious prevention. Currently, only medical professionals are making the calls in the COVID-19 response.

Nobody is minimizing the deadliness of COVID-19—at 0.1 to 1 percent fatal (Adm. Giroir, HHS), it’s higher than influenza but a fraction of SARS or MERS. It could peter out by summer and return next flu season in October. Partisans spreading lies about Trump’s efforts—like saying that he cut the CDC and NIH budgets (CDC +24%, NIH +39%) or that V.P. Pence prefers prayer to science—are despicable.

Democratic Governor Inslee of Washington tweeted criticism of, but now praises, Trump’s efforts; deadly coronavirus spread from one person Inslee let into his state from China. “Washington Post Lies About Trump’s Coronavirus Presser,” by Paul Mirengoff, says it all.

Rather than absorbing more anxiety-, stress- and hysteria-inducing network and cable news, look up “5 Reasons to Stop Freaking Out About Coronavirus,” by Joel B. Pollak. “Coronavirus is an ‘info-demic,’ a panic caused by the spread of partial and often misleading information about a health risk, sometimes deliberately.”

“The making of a Democratic Socialist” is relevant; most local Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders. Election results showed that 70+ percent of local primary voters (95 percent of Republicans) chose President Trump, in spite of the fact that he is not running unopposed. Hoping for Trump’s defeat? His primary votes are higher than any previous incumbent running for reelection, including Obama, Bush or Reagan.

Bernie Sanders may drop out; he has never seemed to want to be president and says he’ll defer to Joe Biden if and when Biden has enough delegates. It behooves this writer to devote a few lines to the man—his past and present beliefs—that has captured the Democratic Party’s soul.

Medicare-For-All (MFA) and the Green New Deal (GND) have solid support among the faithful. MFA is a literal imposition of “single payer” or socialized health care—like the British National Health Service with long wait times and neglected, dead patients—and has no downside to Sanders’ supporters and Democrats. Their last time in power produced Obamacare, misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care—a complete lie in all respects. They’re now saying, in effect, “health care needs more government.”

The GND is simply a government takeover and mandate of every detail of America’s economy and every American’s life. Their ideology, demonizing fossil-fuel emissions, is deluded, fanatical.

 Bernie Sanders never held a private sector job. In the 1960s, he lived in an Israeli kibbutz devoted to communistic socialism and USSR’s dictator Joseph Stalin. In the 1980s, he took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union and, apparently, never observed oppression or deprivation. He visited American prisoners in a rathole Cuban prison and told 5-year prisoner Alan Gross—in 2014, unbelievably—that he didn’t understand why others criticized Cuba.

Finally, Sanders made Burlington, Vermont a sister city to Yaroslavl, Russia; it was seen by the Soviet Union’s Kremlin as “One of the most useful channels for actively carrying out information-propaganda efforts…” (Yaroslavl archives). Any doubt about Sanders’ antipathy for American capitalism?