FAILURES UPON FAILURES

Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas. Humming “Waiting for the End of the World” while trying to decide whether to even bother caring. Failure to address and defeat the coronavirus, when we could have, should have, would have if we had federal leadership. But what did/do we get instead? “In October, not long before the novel coronavirus began sickening people in China, a comprehensive review ranked the pandemic preparedness of 195 countries. The project … assigned scores to countries as a way to warn them of the rising threat of infectious-disease outbreaks. With a score of 83.5 out of 100, the United States ranked No. 1. How did the nation get caught so flat-footed? By not really trying, said Beth Cameron, who helped lead the project for the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The federal government punted the coronavirus response to the states, counties and cities, said Cameron, who was senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council and helped write a pandemic response plan under President Barack Obama. The team Cameron led was disbanded after Donald Trump took office. …” Then we got: “Kristin Urquiza, 39, said she tried warning her father, Mark — a lifelong Republican — against going out and risking infection. In their home state of Arizona, as leaders including Gov. Doug Ducey (R) sprinted to reopen in May and June, Urquiza could tell she was losing the argument. ‘When the president, the governor and people on cable news are all saying one thing, how do you compete with that?’ she said. ‘He would push back. ‘I hear what you’re saying, but why would the governor say it’s safe to go out if it’s not true?’’ Her father died of the virus June 30. In the obituary she wrote, she lashed out at government leaders. ‘He was a huge supporter of Trump and [Ducey]. He believed what they said. And they betrayed him.” And to divert attention from all that, we have this: Christopher David, the Navy veteran who went to downtown Portland to ask federal officers about their oath to defend the Constitution. For his effort he was beaten, gassed, and had his hand broken. His message? “It’s just us normal people out there,” he said. “There were a whole group of pregnant moms standing out there linking arms and they got gassed. You hear people like [President] Trump say it’s just a bunch of wacko fringe people in liberal cities who are out there, but no way. We’re all just normal people who think what’s happening is wrong.” How do you feel about your President now?