Ted Chiang Explains the Disaster Novel We All Suddenly Live In (electricliterature.com) 117
The esteemed science fiction author, best known for movie "Arrival" that is based on his novel, on how we may never go "back to normal" -- and why that might be a good thing. From an interview on Electric Literature: EL: Do you see aspects of science fiction (your own work or others) in the coronavirus pandemic? In how it is being handled, or how it has spread?
TC: While there has been plenty of fiction written about pandemics, I think the biggest difference between those scenarios and our reality is how poorly our government has handled it. If your goal is to dramatize the threat posed by an unknown virus, there's no advantage in depicting the officials responding as incompetent, because that minimizes the threat; it leads the reader to conclude that the virus wouldn't be dangerous if competent people were on the job. A pandemic story like that would be similar to what's known as an "idiot plot," a plot that would be resolved very quickly if your protagonist weren't an idiot. What we're living through is only partly a disaster novel; it's also -- and perhaps mostly -- a grotesque political satire.
EL: This pandemic isn't science fiction, but it does feel like a dystopia. How can we understand the coronavirus as a cautionary tale? How can we combat our own personal inclinations toward the good/evil narrative, and the subsequent expectation that everything will return to normal?
TC: We need to be specific about what we mean when we talk about things returning to normal. We all want not to be quarantined, to be able to go to work and socialize and travel. But we don't want everything to go back to business as usual, because business as usual is what led us to this crisis. COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care, so we don't want to return to a status quo that lacks those things. The current administration's response ought to serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of electing demagogues instead of real leaders, although there's no guarantee that voters will heed it. We're at a point where things could go in some very different ways, depending on what we learn from this experience.
TC: While there has been plenty of fiction written about pandemics, I think the biggest difference between those scenarios and our reality is how poorly our government has handled it. If your goal is to dramatize the threat posed by an unknown virus, there's no advantage in depicting the officials responding as incompetent, because that minimizes the threat; it leads the reader to conclude that the virus wouldn't be dangerous if competent people were on the job. A pandemic story like that would be similar to what's known as an "idiot plot," a plot that would be resolved very quickly if your protagonist weren't an idiot. What we're living through is only partly a disaster novel; it's also -- and perhaps mostly -- a grotesque political satire.
EL: This pandemic isn't science fiction, but it does feel like a dystopia. How can we understand the coronavirus as a cautionary tale? How can we combat our own personal inclinations toward the good/evil narrative, and the subsequent expectation that everything will return to normal?
TC: We need to be specific about what we mean when we talk about things returning to normal. We all want not to be quarantined, to be able to go to work and socialize and travel. But we don't want everything to go back to business as usual, because business as usual is what led us to this crisis. COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care, so we don't want to return to a status quo that lacks those things. The current administration's response ought to serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of electing demagogues instead of real leaders, although there's no guarantee that voters will heed it. We're at a point where things could go in some very different ways, depending on what we learn from this experience.
Arrival (Score:2)
What an idiot. (Score:5, Informative)
So, like Italy. From a couple of easily found sources:
What makes the political rants of some fiction writer informative, or even interesting? This is not "News for Nerds." It's thinly veiled political commentary.
Re:What an idiot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What an idiot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the US would have to pay the fines too?
Because if it was 10000% tarrif (Score:1)
Also we tried that with NAFTA and by the time politicians like Joe Biden were done (yes, I'm calling him out, he should be called out, he was front and center on this crap) there were so many loop holes it didn't matter.
I don't think we can fix this with simple market tools. There's just too much money to be made. We need a vastly more engaged electorate. Sta
sure (Score:2)
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Yeah, no-one ever discussed politics before and it's terrible, we shouldn't be questioning our leaders, this must stop immediately. ~
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Nobody is saying that federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care would have been able to overcome gross incompetence and stop the virus. They are saying that the economic damage would be mitigated if we had such things.
Italy's median age is 47 (Score:1)
Their Universal Healthcare and paid sick leave helped. A lot. But there's only so much that can be done. If the other larger, wealthier countries had those things as well as a functioning government that doesn't do things like this [slashdot.org] we would have been in a position to help Italy more. That would have helped us, since it would have slowed the spread of the virus and blunted the economic impact.
And _everything
Re: What an idiot. (Score:2)
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Yeah, even the paid sick leave argument doesn't work in this specific situation, since there turns out to be so much asymptomatic transmission, either with no symptoms or before or after symptoms. Even people with paid sick leave don't stay home when they aren't sick!
And I'm in favor of paid sick leave, since it would greatly decrease the number of flu deaths. Also in an epidemic of slightly different character it could make a big difference, just not so much this one.
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"COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care"
So, like Italy.
Italy, by all signs, are getting the virus under control.
Next week, around Easter, we can come back and see how exactly true your comment actually was, when NY became worse than Italy at its worst.
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Like the fiction author in the article, you need to provide hard facts which support a causal correlation with socialized medicine or sick leave if you want to support his position. Just saying "COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need
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Er... sick leave benefits have nothing to do with health care costs.
The health care costs for everyone in Italy is $0.
This 66.6% of their pay is money to live on, not to pay the hospital.
Back to normal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just think how many cities burned down before people finally got around to imposing fire regulations.
Re: Back to normal (Score:2)
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People will certainly use disease as a justification to oppose open borders - but it really would be only an excuse to do something they already desire. There's no scientific backing. You can't just close down travel and keep a pandemic out. You can slow it down a bit, but it will always slip through - it only takes a single infected individual. An illegal migrant, a politician returning from a conference, a wealthy businessman on a charter flight, a returning citizen who was on holiday. Do you think any po
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Now, let's imagine that that had been possible. So, somewhere around the beginning of February (being optimistic), we decide to build new factories to address the medical supply line problems. Given that start date for building the factories, when do you believe the factories would have been producing enough of whatever to make a difference?
If your answer is earlier than 2021, you're, well, high. Sorry, empty fields don't turn
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If your answer is earlier than 2021, you're, well, high. Sorry, empty fields don't turn into high-productivity factories in a month. Wasn't EVER a real possibility.
Just to dogpile on the above, the Corps of Engineers has been doing work to prep emergency hospitals with a 2 week buildout time. They've specifically said, "this time line is what it is. You do not get to dictate what you want. There is not and cannot be a perfect solution, and we will not be spending 3-4 months just talking about projects before doing them. Pick from this list: large COVID, small COVID, large non-COVID, small non-COVID. That's it."
All of that is predicated on taking existing spaces t
Re:Getting the government we deserve (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually after SARS China realized there might be a need for emergency hospitals. It was not economic to build extra hospitals everywhere so they instead build pre-fab modules and stored them. That way when the outbreak happened in Wuhan they brought the pre fab modules and put them together in 10 days.
If the US manufactured and stored pre-fab hospital modules in a national stockpile,US too could build greenfield hospitals in 10 days.
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So, you are saying that if US was as organized as China, it would be as organized as China.
Using the DPA is a non-starter (Score:2)
Companies also didn't want a ton of equipment made because it would risk flooding the market and cannibalizing their sales. See here [slashdot.org] for my comments on ventilators.
The average voter doesn't have enough information. Large swaths of our media are owned by special interests and they protect their interests first and foremost. Google "Manufactured Consent".
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No, what we needed is a CDC and FDA that didn't lie to the state health departments and abuse emergency powers to forbid them from doing their job of test development, deployment, and community monitoring in order to make Trump look better for re-election. With that change, none of the measures you're talking about would even be needed. We'd be stabilizing at 50,000 or so infected right now with closures isolated to the worst areas and discussions of community testing strategies to mediate economic disrup
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All we really needed was an immediate ban on travel to and from China on Jan 7 when Human to human transmission was confirmed by China accompanied by a statement from the US that any country which does not do the same by Jan 10 will also be hit with a complete travel ban.
This should have been accompanied by a crash program to develop 5 minute test kits and a crash program to manufacture masks.
Then wearing masks should have been mandated in public places and then the airports opened back up but everyone had
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Total travel bans have no science behind them. They have never worked in history. Someone always slips through.
The same goes for the public wearing masks. There is no evidence that it works. The masks would need to be proper N95 masks, changed every few hours, with training provided on how to use them properly. Improperly used masks can be a hotspot for viruses.
Testing and contact tracing and quarantine and social distancing and hygiene are known to work (at various success rates, depending on the particula
Here we go... (Score:3, Insightful)
" COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care..." - No it hasn't. Last time I checked there is universal health care in Italy, the UK and Canada and that didn't stop the spread of the virus one bit. Given that there is no vaccine for Covid-19 how does having universal health care help?
Based on what we know now the best thing to do is social distancing and self quarantine, neither of which are aided by UHC. This guy is just another anti-Trump shill looking to make a government power grab.
As Rahm Emanuel once famously said: "never let a crisis go to waste". The contents of the stimulus bill should make that abundantly clear. Or perhaps this guy would like to explain to us how the Kennedy Center and NPR and cancelling the Postal Office debt and tax credits for wind and solar and student loan forgiveness have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with Covid-19?
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"The best time to redecorate the living room is when the house is on fire" -- Xiaran 2020
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Last time I checked there is universal health care in Italy, the UK and Canada and that didn't stop the spread of the virus one bit.
How do you know that?
Pleas publish your paper and research, that would be important for mankind!!
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"How do you know that?" - Seems pretty obvious to me. There are cases in Canada, Italy, the UK. They have UHC. There are cases in the USA, which does not have UHC. Italy, until very recently, had the highest number of Covid-19 cases. The US now has the highest number but keep in mind that Italy has 60 million people and the US has 300 million people. Five times the population.
So if UHC works so well, as you claim, then maybe you could explain to me why Italy has so many cases with only 1/5 the population of
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As you point out, the situation is more complex than "zomg, people are sick" but you also fall into the trap of saying "Italy proves this doesn't work." Germany is a few hundred km to the north and while they have a lot of cases, their healthcare system has NOT collapsed, and their number of deaths is incredibly low. Maybe it's socialized medicine, maybe it's cultural (if you can forgive a stereotype, Germans are extremely orderly people for the most part). We may be able to look back after this is all o
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Obviously something you don't grasp happened in Italy.
Perhaps you want to research it?
Without UHC, the situation there would be like in the USA, I'm an Atheist, but I pray for those idiots.
So if UHC works so well, as you claim, then maybe you could explain to me why Italy has so many cases with only 1/5 the population of the USA?
That was all often enough in the news. So I spare me to explain it to you.
But as a further hint: "Italy" actually has not so many cases, it is a very small region, Lombardy, that ha
Re:Here we go... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you misinterpreted Ted Chiang's statement, made up your own strawman and then failed to knock it down.
His statement was that: "COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care [...]."
Assessing people at risk for COVID-19, regardless of their ability to pay for healthcare, as in a country with UHC, is clearly going to have better outcomes for a population than just assessing those who can afford healthcare. This is obvious to a layman, any layman, even one who specializes in systems as simple as ERPs.
Federally mandated paid sick leave is also of obvious benefit in slowing COVID-19's spread. If the only factor in my decision to stay home sick is whether I'm actually sick, rather than having to take into account reduced income from staying home, then I will be much more likely to stay home, slowing the spread.
And comparing the US with Italy is clearly unfair. Italy got hit both hard and early, with an aged population. When looking at the UK and Canada, both countries are maintaining much lower population-adjusted COVID-19 infections than the US. Perhaps they will match the US at peak, perhaps not, but at the moment, they look better off. That's even taking into the account that COVID-19 infections seem to be outstripping the US' ability to test, which makes the US numbers lower than they otherwise would be.
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Obviously, you harbor the misconception that UHC means unlimited resources when in fact it means fewer resources.
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UHC is cheap. It is built on delaying treatment. Delaying treatment is the opposite of what you want in a pandemic. It is also why the US created a 5 minute test (and are working on a TWO minute test) while the rest of the world thought 4 DAYS was good enough.
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Federally mandated paid sick leave is also of obvious benefit in slowing COVID-19's spread.
Preface: Generally speaking, I support paid sick leave as a policy in general, though I would leave the mandating of it to the states (the constitution does not seem to give the feds power to mandate such, though obviously some will just handwave that away with "commerce clause.")
That said, I don't agree that it is of "obvious benefit" in slowing the spread. Sick leave generally applies when you're sick. COVID has asymptomatic carriers, and a long incubation period where those who have yet to show symptom
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"Assessing people at risk for COVID-19, regardless of their ability to pay for healthcare, as in a country with UHC, is clearly going to have better outcomes for a population than just assessing those who can afford healthcare." - I know that Aetna, for example, has waived the fee for the Covid-19 test. It's free. The issue is not the cost of the test it is availability of testing kits. Something that UHC does nothing to address.
"This is obvious to a layman, any layman, even one who specializes in systems a
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Last time I checked there is universal health care in Italy, the UK and Canada and that didn't stop the spread of the virus one bit. Given that there is no vaccine for Covid-19 how does having universal health care help? Based on what we know now the best thing to do is social distancing and self quarantine, neither of which are aided by UHC.
It's not UHC that makes the difference in this case. It's social security. Not sure about other European countries, but in the NL people that catch COVID-19 are advised not to come to a hospital. Mild symptoms? Stay home! Mild fever, dry cough? Stay home! Fever worsening, otherwise it's bearable? Contact your family doctor on how to proceed. Short of breath / trouble breathing? Only then contact a hospital. Result is that most people contracting COVID-19 sit it out at home, and it's the serious cases that
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" COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care..." - No it hasn't. Last time I checked there is universal health care in Italy, the UK and Canada and that didn't stop the spread of the virus one bit.
Actually, although I am for universal health care, and I agree. COVID-19 hasn't demonstrated the critical need for that *yet*.
We're at what Winston Churchill would characterize as not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. We haven't even stopped exponential expansion of infections yet. We've got a long, long road ahead of us. Even the White House is talking about 100,000 deaths, and so far we're at less than 1% of that.
So far if you discount China, which is both unreliable and a special
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Italy is possibly nearing the end of the beginning. The US will be in the beginning for weeks or months still.
Churchill's statement came after the Allied victory at El Alamein, long after the Battle of Britain had been won. By that standard, even China might not be at the end of the beginning.
New Normal (Score:2)
Also, we've found that "work from home" works. So many have thought it could never work. Now, we know there are differences in time management, differences in KPIs, but people who work from a compu
Italy Universal Healthcare turned away patients (Score:2, Insightful)
Universal Healthcare NOT SYNONYMOUS with UNLIMITED HEALTH BANDWIDTH. Universal Healthcare is what Italy has. Italy has triaged people over the age of 60 (feel free to fact check this number - but the triage did take place) as "not worth treating due to unfavorable outcomes" and has turned them away.
Universal Healthcare doe not mean "health care for every person that ever wants it whenever they demand it." We cannot have enough doctors and nurses and hospitals to even service 10% of the population all at on
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All healthcare is an insurance model which is an actuarial model. An actuarial model balances the number of people that might need service against the number of people that pay for service. This allows for lower cost service based on the people who never need service compared to those that do, when all pay for the service.
Sure, but the US pays almost double per capita for healthcare as other developed countries for similar average outcomes. A large part of that is the insurance companies themselves, which suck up fully one third of your health care dollars which are obviously not going towards actual health care.
If the US spent as much per capita on a public system as you do now you would have by far the best system in the world bar none. Instead you still have the best system in the world - but for shareholders, not patie
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US pays double or triple per capita for a lot of things like plumbers, fruit pickers, Bus drivers.
Its not just medical care.
Universal Health Care will not reduce the cost of health care significantly on a per procedure basis as doctors would still be paid the same. It will however lead to better health outcomes as people would get treated at earlier stages thus avoiding costlier interventions later on.
Some of the fat of Insurance billing and hospital profits may be taken out too but competition does keep fo
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You are talking about the canard of choice and elective procedures.
I never went there. My point was that despite the per procedure cost stating the same an universal healthcare system means people get care earlier before things get serious as they are not afraid of the costs of going to a doctor for a false alarm. This in turn means fewer expensive late stage interventions are needed.
Now whether you should spend a million dollars to add 15 days to the life of a 90 yr old is a different debate altogether. An
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I completely agree, but I don't think we could do worse than having many different insurance companies whose only reason to exist is to create red tape, and profit from it.
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The left thinks new rights can be invented or derived by economic/technological progress, but universal health care doesn't necessarily imply that. It could simply be good defense strategy. I wouldn't ever say society owes me the "right" to not have to worry about Soviet "Red Dawn"-scenario paratroopers or for radars to check for incoming ICBMs, but it's a good idea for government to be doing those things and it would perform very poorly by compa
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Am I the only one who asks himself this? (Score:1)
It's nuts. Totally, completely nuts. All of it.
Left (Score:3)
>"COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care, so we don't want to return to a status quo that lacks those things. The current administration's response ought to serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of electing demagogues instead of real leaders,"
Exactly the kind of posting I would expect from msmash- way Left, and Tump-bashing. Never let a good crisis go to waste; great time to keep enlarging the Federal bureaucracy and making sure it REMAINS FOREVER after the crisis.
I am so sick of this stuff, and there apparently is no vaccine ever coming for it.
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Exactly the kind of posting I would expect from msmash- way Left, and Tump-bashing
Looks like you have a strong case of what people seem to be calling "Trump derangement syndrome". Any mention of Trump seems to make you deranged and unable to think.
Trump's response outside the lens of party politics as been poor. If a democrat did as badly, you would eviscerate them and rightly so. You should do the same for Trump as well.
And statutory sick leave and universal healthcare is hardly "way left". It's easily cov
This idiot... (Score:1)
This idiot asks "Will we ever elect a careless an incompetent leader again, knowing what is at stake?" /shampeachment without a crime) that delayed any action on COVID-19 for a full month. Add in some affirmative action hires that botched the ear
I expect we will elect another Barack Obama.
The real problem with POTUS Trump's response was the FBI's criminal behavior (espionage, sabotage, etc.) that prevented him from reforming the CDC in time and then the Democrats' / Demoncrats criminal behavior (impeachment
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You have no idea about universal health care, the Doctor here makes the decisions, not some accountant in a for profit company, I know which one I prefer. I’ve lived my entire life under Australia’s great universal health care, and In my 40 years Ive never once heard of anyone being refused needed treatment. How about pulling your head out and smelling reality for a change. I’m sick to death of Americans telling flat out lies about what works so well everywhere else. As for you, sure go wi
What a load of drivel (Score:4, Interesting)
So Slashdot is now just commentary about U.S. politics from some science fiction author? I thought this was an international site about news for nerds? If the topic is "why we're never going back to normal", then why isn't there any discussion about:
- the inherent risk of international travel, and why traveling less may be a good thing for a number of reasons
- why having international health organizations beholden to less-than-forthcoming nations is problematical
- the inherent risk of having international supply chains for national security items such as pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, etc.
- the sytems, testing, and border controls that need to be in place for quickly identifying and isolating contagions before they spread
- whether or not there will be long-term impacts to the education system with regard to distance learning (both K12 and college), the role of parents in their children's education, and the impact on initiatives such as Common Core (in the U.S.)
- whether or not the EU can stay together when every time there's a crisis it adopts an 'every nation for itself' posture
And so on. Most of which, really, aren't news topics for nerds, but at least don't automatically devolve into unnecessary political tripe.
Interesting use of the word demagogue (Score:1)
Looks like BS politicization and propaganda. (Score:2)
Second answer: We need to implement far-left policies.
Stop trying to politicize this crisis. Now is not the time.
Also, reel in the hyperbole and learn what an f'ing dystopia is before using the term.
Re:The Whole Fucking World Has It (Score:4, Insightful)
Fact is, your idea is so dumb and has been discredited so many times that you are too cowardly to express it while logged in.
Re:The Whole Fucking World Has It (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact is, if trump had done what is truly necessary to stop this in it's tracks, the Alt-Left would be screaming bloody murder.
Fact is, your idea is so dumb and has been discredited so many times that you are too cowardly to express it while logged in.
With regards to the US, I'm pretty sure if any president would have done what needed to be done to contain this, damn near everyone would have been screaming that the president was proclaiming themselves a tyrannical dictator.
It wouldn't matter if it was Trump, Obama, or any president in the last 50 years. Closing the boarders, restricting domestic travel and forcing closure of all nonessential businesses and actually enforcing it would have required a declaration of martial law. Considering this would have had to have happened while impeachment proceedings were ongoing, there is no way in hell that that would have been acceptable with anyone left, right or center. No matter who was president.
Re:The Whole Fucking World Has It (Score:4, Insightful)
"With regards to the US, I'm pretty sure if any president would have done what needed to be done to contain this-
That may well be true, but we can only say for certain that the president in charge at the time didn't.
"Considering this would have had to have happened while impeachment proceedings were ongoing, there is no way in hell that that would have been acceptable with anyone left, right or center. No matter who was president."
President is a tough job, and being stupid makes it tougher.
If he hadn't been behaving in a corrupt manner, he wouldn't have been impeached.
If he cared about this country, and was competent, he'd have done what was necessary, regardless of the cost to himself.
If he'd successfully managed the crisis then even many if not most Democrats would have given him credit. We'd have been able to compare to other nations which managed the crisis more poorly and determine that his response was valid. Instead we're comparing to other nations which are managing the crisis poorly and being forced to conclude that we are among them.
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"With regards to the US, I'm pretty sure if any president would have done what needed to be done to contain this-
That may well be true, but we can only say for certain that the president in charge at the time didn't.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) this is unprecedented and no nation really handled this well outside of a handful. And the only reason those that did was because of fairly recent dealings with the SARS outbreak. The US hasn't had to deal with something like this since diphtheria in the 1920's.
"Considering this would have had to have happened while impeachment proceedings were ongoing, there is no way in hell that that would have been acceptable with anyone left, right or center. No matter who was president."
President is a tough job, and being stupid makes it tougher.
If he hadn't been behaving in a corrupt manner, he wouldn't have been impeached.
If the House of Representatives wouldn't have handled impeachment so poorly this wouldn't have been occurring at the same time. As annoying as Trump is, the House impeachment proceedings were a joke and the articl
Re:The Whole Fucking World Has It (Score:4, Informative)
"As annoying as Trump is, the House impeachment proceedings were a joke"
The joke was told by the Senate, which as it is controlled by Republicans, refused to permit any witnesses to testify. The punchline is that there were several witnesses available, and the joke is on us.
And here you are laughing, proving that you didn't get it. Talk about woosh.
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Why didn't the House have those witnesses testify during their side of the process? If they did, what new testimony would be added by doing it over again in the Senate? I suppose the idea would be to repeat a bunch of carefully worded, emotionally charged rhetoric in hopes of swaying a Senator or two, but if so that's a hail Mary when you don't control the venue. That is, if the Democrat's entire strategy relied on a Republican Senate doing the exact thing that would benefit their political opposition th
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Because that's not where that happens.
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So far Germany has handled this better and is not overtaxing the health care system. It looks like the social distancing measures are working and that cases are plateauing before the system overloads. The grocery stores also still have pretty much everything. Toilet paper tells out pretty fast but most stores are getting more several times per week.
There has also been nothing draconian about the response. I have been living in Germany while working on a PhD and everything has been pretty calm and orderly. P
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Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) this is unprecedented and no nation really handled this well outside of a handful. And the only reason those that did was because of fairly recent dealings with the SARS outbreak. The US hasn't had to deal with something like this since diphtheria in the 1920's.
Unprecedented. Except for the fairly recent precedent you mentioned in the next sentence.
Flawed logic. (Score:2)
I usually try to avoid left/right debates...I am just can't resist responding to two glaringly and dangerously wrong statements you made. First:
If he hadn't been behaving in a corrupt manner, he wouldn't have been impeached.
Nope. Guilt cannot be inferred from accusation alone. A president who is absolutely perfect can still be impeached, as nothing more than an attack from political rivals. Therefore, impeachment in-and-of-itself is no evidence that the president was "behaving in a corrupt manner."
You a
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Well there you have it: Both parties are full of idiots, and that's just human nature.
I think I've had enough shore leave, Scotty, beam me up.
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"Guilt cannot be inferred from accusation alone."
No, but it can be inferred from Trump's own statements in which he said he did exactly what he was being impeached for. And we know that Senate Republicans know he's guilty because they refused to permit witnesses to testify. If you don't know it, it's because you've been playing hear no evil, see no evil, because Trump definitely spoke the evil.
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When one side claims the world is 6000 years old, and the other claims it is 6 billion years old, are you going to claim that neither party is more objective than the other?
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When one side claims the world is 6000 years old, and the other claims it is 6 billion years old, are you going to claim that neither party is more objective than the other?
Oh, you want to play that game?
When one party was founded on freeing slaves and the other founded the KKK, which one is full of racists?
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This isn't about history, this is about the present.
The creationists are still stupid. The Democrats are now the party of relative freedom, when compared to the Republicans anyway. Which is where the creationists hang out.
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"With regards to the US, I'm pretty sure if any president would have done what needed to be done to contain this-
That may well be true, but we can only say for certain that the president in charge at the time didn't.
We can also say for certain that those in power in many, perhaps most, countries of the world have also failed to contain the virus effectively. As such, Occam's Razor suggests that America would have failed to contain the virus effectively, regardless of who was in power.
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If he hadn't been behaving in a corrupt manner, he wouldn't have been impeached.
He was acquitted, ya moron! What else did you expect with no actual evidence other than hearsay?
The real reason for this article submission is right there in the summary:
Trump admitted on tape to doing exactly what the Democrats said he did. It was reported nationally. The dispute was never over the evidence. No, it was all about irrelevant information like the name of the whistleblower and the procedures used in the investigation. Dems would have loved to have a debate over the evidence itself. From the reporting, Trump himself wanted a debate over the actual evidence. Republicans in the House and Senate didn't want to go there because they knew the evidence was solidly against Trump.
The reason Trump was acquitted is because the Republicans control the Senate, not because Trump is innocent. For example, Susan Collins stated that she voted to acquit because Trump learned his lesson and that she didn't believe removing him was an appropriate punishment - not that Trump was innocent.
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I really, really want to see this writer eat his words if the US final death tally is similar to everywhere else.
Damn!! You act like the numbers in the US are all rosy right now, and the US is just getting started.
If the opposite happens, will you eat yours and then re-evaluate your life decisions that led you to this point? ... Lol, I'm not holding my breath. :D
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I really, really want to see this writer eat his words if the US final death tally is similar to everywhere else.
Damn!! You act like the numbers in the US are all rosy right now, and the US is just getting started.
If the opposite happens, will you eat yours
What words will I have to eat? Not only am I not handing out interviews to the press in an attempt to not let a good crisis go to waste, I'm not the one making any claims.
and then re-evaluate your life decisions that led you to this point? ... Lol, I'm not holding my breath. :D
My life decisions, poor as some of them may be, have never included using a crisis in which people are dying to score political points. Your life decisions, apparently, do.
Your parents must be proud of you.
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>With regards to the US, I'm pretty sure if any president would have done what needed to be done to contain this, damn near everyone would have been screaming that the president was proclaiming themselves a tyrannical dictator.
TIL that Taiwan and South Korea are ruled by tyrannical dictators.
The US could have done a lot more without resorting to extreme measures. In fact, if the west collectively took this seriously, forbid all travellers from China in coordinated manner, and then implemented screening a
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if the west collectively took this seriously, forbid all travellers from China in coordinated manner, and then implemented screening and quarantine measures like the above two countries, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
Wasn't Trump accused of being a racist for wanting to do that? You can watch videos of Pelosi sucking up to Chinese in San Francisco as well as the Mayor of Florence and his "hug a Chinese" campaign.......how exactly is that working out?
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Crickets from the liberals on this site. As usual.
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Wouldn't have helped much anyway. May have brought just a little more time, at most, but even then only if implimented early on - and it's very hard to politically justify any action at that stage, when the virus is just a distant regional problem of uncertain danger.
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He was accused of being a racist by a vocal minority of people. Just like with any issues. All the liberals I know (scientists and engineers) agreed that the ban was the correct action to take and did not fault him for it.
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It wouldn't matter if it was Trump, Obama, or any president in the last 50 years. Closing the boarders, restricting domestic travel and forcing closure of all nonessential businesses and actually enforcing it would have required a declaration of martial law. Considering this would have had to have happened while impeachment proceedings were ongoing, there is no way in hell that that would have been acceptable with anyone left, right or center. No matter who was president.
You're not wrong. Far from wrong in fact.
Vis-a-vis: my own reaction to walking into a local grocery store when there are two sherrifs' deputies stationed outside, their cruisers clearly in view. 'Uncomfortable' doesn't even begin to describe it. 'Holding back my anger and outrage' gets closer. The boogeyman that is the threat of Martial Law is a Very Real Thing for me, and I suspect that's so for quite a large number of the citizens of the U.S., it's kind-of in our DNA to hate the idea of being under that
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With regards to the US, I'm pretty sure if any president would have done what needed to be done to contain this, damn near everyone would have been screaming that the president was proclaiming themselves a tyrannical dictator.
Exactly. When Trump closed off flights to China, CNN screamed for his impeachment (again).
This isn't a winnable situation for the president, but he's doing decently well. Even the governors of CA and NY have praised him.
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This isn't a winnable situation for the president, but he's doing decently well. Even the governors of CA and NY have praised him.
https://theintercept.com/2020/... [theintercept.com]
I think you must have missed the part where Trump requires praise to send aid.
I'm not a Democrat or Republic, heck I'm not an American - just an outsider watching in disbelief at how anyone can think Trump is at all capable of being the leader of a country.
Re:The Whole Fucking World Has It (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody's really blaming Trump for failing to stop Covid19 in its tracks, but we still don't even have widespread testing to find out how many actually have it? And no centralized procurement of medical equipment and supplies? I mean, come on. Do SOMETHING. And not just sending out checks.
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Nobody's really blaming Trump for failing to stop Covid19 in its tracks, but we still don't even have widespread testing to find out how many actually have it? And no centralized procurement of medical equipment and supplies? I mean, come on. Do SOMETHING. And not just sending out checks.
The federal government is doing what it is supposed to do: shutting down international travel, shuttering non-essential federal services, and supporting the states.
This is exactly when governors are supposed to shine. Their powers are much broader at the state level and each should be reacting in the way appropriate for his or her state. Oklahoma and New York are supposed to act creatively and decisively in ways that make sense for their area of the country. The federal government can, at best, hamper that
Re:The Whole Fucking World Has It (Score:4, Insightful)
But somehow, retarded fucks like this guy and the Alt-Left think Trump's responsible.
Fact is, if trump had done what is truly necessary to stop this in it's tracks, the Alt-Left would be screaming bloody murder.
The whole world may have the virus. However, some countries have managed the pandemic and have it under control, some have done a better job than others but they all have some level of control over the spread of the virus. The US is not one of those countries (although it should have been) thanks to the apathy and manifest incompetence of Donald J. Trump who wasted weeks doing nothing.
Re: The Whole Fucking World Has It (Score:2)
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Vs a self-serving demagogue with sexual assault allegations which are not only admitted, but which he boasted about *on camera* and entered into a documented NDA with one of the accusers. I don't know how much it even matters though - at this point, how many voters are actually influenced in their decision by the candidate, rather than loyalty to the party they stand for?
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I don't know how much it even matters though - at this point, how many voters are actually influenced in their decision by the candidate, rather than loyalty to the party they stand for?
I think this is so of modern politics in most developed countries. There needs to be a new party to shake the tree and give the voters more choice. Of course, that won't happen as the current system is so old it serves the two-party system. Each party will get a turn over time as it's impossible to rule for a number of years without offending enough voters which causes a power-switch.
Trump was the last turkey in the shop and it was starve or have turkey. The US has been chowing down on that corn-fed c
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Absolute Truth, and at this time it would seem the Media has been completely purchased by China to bury President Trump, as noted by your huge downvote and the +5 on the next response to your post.
The DNC and the Left has been taken over by the Communists nearly completely.
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Ad Hominem attacks are the refuge of the defeated.