I Have A Reason To Stay Alive. It's Right in Front of Me.

I could just fold the tent right here, you know. On the surface, there's no reason why not.

I don't have kids. I'm retired, so I'm not working for anyone. I could get in my car, drive to a place where Republicans will always be in control, just hang out for a while, and get the disease. They don't seem to be worried about it. They seem to be in control, without a concern. It will, somehow, avoid them.

I might as well get it over with. The stats are not in my favor. I have a heart condition; my triple by-pass qualifies as one, though I feel okay right now. I could get sick and die within, oh, maybe two weeks. I'm 68 years old, so I qualify for the riskiest.

But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stay alive, damn it, if I possibly can (and even though I'm observing social distancing, I'm not sure of that). I just figured it out. Sometimes, what's right in front of you doesn't appear to be significant until you think about it a while. And sometimes, something happens that tells you that someone's catching on.

About ten minutes to six last night, I turned on the TV to see our terrible president try to snow everyone again. He was given the line "war president" by someone reporting for Fox News, so that's an easy piece of garbage to throw into his completely bogus self-description. If he really were a war president, he'd be acting much, much differently, much like FDR or Lincoln in expanding his powers to make sure everyone's on the same page. But he isn't, saying that the states should handle this, which is exactly the wrong way to deal with it. He will learn this, too, in the next two or three weeks, when this virus completely overruns us (by Easter, we will be a completely different country). But in the meantime, just being a large person and talking real tough will substitute for having the skills necessary to deal with this crisis.

When he figures it out, it will be too late. We will be in the thick of it, right up to our necks, with no one to help us quick enough. The hospitals will be packed tight. The state governments will be backed up with orders for equipment. People will be getting sick and dying, and doctors will have to make the terrible decision about who they can keep living, if they themselves aren't stricken.

If I'm wrong about this, I'll apologize right here. But we are behind the help curve now, and all the predictors are showing that we will not catch up until thousands die. 45 had a chance to get out ahead of this, but his obsession with making money overtook his obsession about life itself.

In the meantime, someone's starting to catch on. Someone's starting to think that it really doesn't matter much what 45 thinks, because first, he exaggerates; second, he lies; and third, he's exactly the opposite of what we need here--a leader who has a grasp of the situation, which he doesn't.

How do I think this? Because NBC was the only one of the three networks to cover the press conference in its entirety yesterday. CBS did not allow it to get in the way of its regularly scheduled broadcast of "60 Minutes" (note that it always allows itself to delay the broadcast because NFL games go past 6 p.m. CST). And ABC, at least the Milwaukee affiliate, didn't broadcast it at all.

I checked, twice. I came back to all of them after 6 p.m. CST.

And when I turned on NBC, I heard just two things: First, that 45 was complaining that nobody thanked him for giving up his salary, as if that matters to anyone right now; and second, that he "gave up billions of dollars" when he became president (a clear lie, what with his utter brushing away of the emoluments clause of the Constitution). He tried to get people to feel sorry for the rich, who have to give up their riches to run for office.

I stopped listening after that. It's still all about him. He can't help himself. That about 38 percent of the population still seems to care about him and think of him as a leader is pathetic. He will have to lie a lot, and in new ways, to keep hold of that base. The use of religion will be next. Count on it. So will attacks on certain governors, on Obama, maybe even on Hillary Clinton, even though he eliminated the pandemic response team tied to the National Security Council, to cut costs, and tried to say that it was subsumed within the government somewhere else, which is a lie. It's all so predicable, and none of it's believable.

Thousands will die, so he mocked Mitt Romney for self-quarantining in case he could have gotten the virus from the arrogant Rand Paul. That's the spirit. Make sure you trash anyone who's done anything against you.

Sure, you can trash the "liberal media" for its bias. You can think of this as some kind of plot against 45, as if the virus was somehow planted to make him look bad. Or you can conclude, as the networks seem to be doing, that he's mouthing continued nonsense because he doesn't know what else to say and saying something seems to be what is called for now, instead of saying nothing until the facts are determined.

I heard that trash, and I made up my mind right then and there that I would stay alive if I possibly could to usher in a new president, whenever that was possible. This one should have absolutely nothing to do with this. He should be kept as far away as possible. He is probably the most inadequate person alive who should be in the most important position alive to deal with this.

I don't want to die with him in charge. What a terrible way to end it. I really don't deserve this, and I know plenty of people who don't, either. The 38 percent don't realize that they don't, but there's little I can do about that. All I can do is keep writing this, read some books, and minimize my contacts until this awful disease eases its grip.

But that's what I'm gonna do. By God, I won't die with this monster, this incompetent fool, this nasty person who's taking advantage of his position to insult whomever he wants, free to speak for my country, my great country, the one that people around the world once relied on as a moral beacon, the one I taught thousands of kids about. I want to live, and live in a different country than the one he's created and desperately wants to continue.

It won't be easy. It's already been a little depressing. I come close to crying when I think that I have friends in Sturgeon Bay who would like to hear this, but I can't drive up there and read it until further notice. But I'm going to remind myself of what I'm doing and why. At those moments, it'll be a little easier.

Be well. Be careful. With a little luck, I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark