The Coming Head-On Collision

Axios is reporting--and we see this coordinated with Trump media--that POTUS is readying an "everyone back to work" strategy designed to save the economy at the possible expense of coronavirus spreading even more than it has. This is very on-brand: the president touts his stock market performance above just about anything else and it has sunk to the point where it has wiped out all the gains of his presidency.

Indeed, the messaging is coordinated: McConnell tried to schedule an early (for the Senate) 9:30 vote on the relief package which, he pointed out, would happen 30 minutes after the NYSE opened. His attempt, clearly, was to make Democrats "own" a real-time decline in the morning that would dominate the news if they voted against it.

But Schumer stuck to his guns . . . and the Senate opens at noon (note: McConnell is playing other games as well, not allowing the Senate to vote remotely--something that seems calibrated to sideline senators who don't want to take a tough vote and will self-quarantine--maybe just to get rid of Rand Paul?).

The second prong of Trump's Save-The-Stock market plan will be to try to authorize a giant slush-fund for businesses without any oversight and blame the Chinese for it. This will work gangbusters on the Trump-media captives who already believe corona was brewed in a lab or that it's primarily spread by bat-eating Asians. Investors would see a 2T bailout for big business and pile in to get them some of it: it's a good strategy . . . IF everyone goes back to work.

The problem . . .  is that they just might. In Trump-states and Trump counties there is already a strong resistance to doing what medical professionals tell them to. This, even with the current lockdown, is a looming crisis.

So, what do we do?

Well, The Omnivore doesn't really know, it turns out. The intellectual poisoning of the American Right has been so thorough and so specific that there may not be anything you can do to reverse the damage. People are going to do what Fox News and Donald Trump tell them to and if you ask them about it, they'll tell them they're willing to die for it--for their cause--their people--their president.

In the end, we may just have to let them.