To Some Conservatives

Well, I think the problem is that China may have deliberately withheld information about a disease that broke out in their country, and even lied about it, while quietly acquiring huge stores of the equipment necessary to fight it. Some people also believe that they punished doctors who tried to report it and deliberately refrained from instituting any kind of quarantine as part of the cover-up. It also seems likely that they're falsifying their infection and death numbers. For some reason, we can't consider this?

Yes politicians in China downplayed the emerging threat, but so did politicians in the US. Our government was informed about the spread of the virus months ago. Senators of both parties were briefed and aggressively responded - by selling their stocks. Our federal government downplayed the crisis, saying it will all just fade away like magic while resisting quarantine efforts. We don't know the infection numbers here because our testing is so far behind, but our government says there are plenty of tests. To me the big takeaway is that the Chinese politicians are just like the US politicians. If you want to hold someone to account, you should probably start with the ones who work for you.

You have no smoking gun to back up China hawks' quaint claims that it was China that made this virus in the first place. Such groundless accusations can be found on the website of Fox News, where hard-right conservatives asperse not just China but liberals as well; some of them even say liberals are de trop because they keep slamming Trump's policies.

How could people describe your own American fellows like this? Do conservatives think you are not American anymore if you boggle at the thought of supporting Trump?

Correct me if I'm wrong. Trump has called Kim Jong-un " my good friend" several times on Twitter. Don't you think it's absurd for Trump to call a despot from North Korea my good friend? I once read an article written by a someone who used to be Kim family's cook-he absconded to Britain. And he describes how Kim and his lapdogs lean on people living in North Korea and even rape young girls without facing trial.

Maybe that's why Trump calls Kim a good friend since he also has a thing about girls.

It's no use trading barbs over the origins of Covid-19 right now because we still have lots of impecunious people waiting for their leaders to throw them a lifeline in both developed and developing nations. It's time for world leaders to band together as a team instead of fending for themselves. America and China are the most powerful nations in terms of economic clout and global influence. Therefore, both nations have the obligation to not just help their own people but other small nations overcome adversity.

You know why lots of foreigners look up to America? Because they think America stands up for freedom of expression, justice, or the rule of law? I'd say the real reason why they respect America is they think America is a nation that prizes humanity over authority. Which is to say that they think most Americans still have sympathy for the oppressed or the poor.

It's so bad that Trump hasn't been able to prove that he has sympathy for an underclass. Conversely, Trump seems determined to go to great lengths to cozy up to his high-wattage friends instead of stopping the rot. He also recoils at the thought of soaking the rich simply because he claims to be another fat cat who is in clover, notwithstanding Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Forbes once published articles calling into question his real net worth.

Now you know why he is always using the word fake news? He doesn't even trust conservative publications like Forbes and the now-defunct National Review. To call him a Telfon president would be an understatement. You could simply call him a self-absorbed solipsist mewed up in a poky place hemmed in by the confines of his own small-mindedness and personal jealousies. And he balks at going out to see the light of enlightenment because he belongs to darkness.

Any way you slice it, I think Trump and his supporters should realize that it would be churlish to pitch into liberals since liberals are their American fellows. By the same token, it would be foolhardy for Trump to affirm that America only cares about its own national interests, what with doing that would render nugatory the hopes of seeing America as a responsible world leader in the eyes of lots of small nations. And such small nations may simply seek help from other big nations and even form alliances to challenge the American-led international order for which lots of nations still adhere to.
Yet it could be a different case if Trump keeps blathering on about America first. In my book, it sounds odd for Trump even to mention this since this reminds me of lady first.

America should be a gentleman or even macho man, not a lady or sissy like Trump.

He decamped to Britain.

Numerous things you said are false, but let's concentrate on one at a time. You falsely claim: "Our federal government downplayed the crisis, saying it will all just fade away like magic." Please post a link to anyone in the federal government saying that.

So, you're claiming that

(a) it isn't generally believed that the virus started in China
(b) there is no evidence that China endangered the world by deliberately keeping knowledge of the virus from the world
(c) China is not grossly understating their infection and death statistics.

Right? You're claiming all three of these?

The exact words were:



More here. Before you split hairs by saying "miracle" is not "magic", my comment was not a direct quote (but this one is) and IMO counting on a miracle is pretty much like counting on magic.

Unlike in the statement you attributed to him, he said, "one day" and he's right, at least given that "disappear" means to become a familiar virus for which there is a vaccine and good medical treatment.

If you choose to believe the US government did not downplay/minimize the threat facing us I can't force you to see reality. (More at the US timeline and the government reaction to it here.) You can give China one credit that you can't give our government. The initial efforts to hide the outbreak were by local Chinese officials. Once the national government became involved, actions were swift. In the US, it has been the opposite with the national government aware of the risk and sweeping it under the rug while the state and cities took decisive actions. Trying to blame China is just a deflection of how our government let us down. I say again, if you are unhappy with the response to the Coronavirus, focus on the politicians who work for you and let you down (and the ones who didn't too.)

I never said anything of the kind. I said that this statement of yours is false:

Our federal government downplayed the crisis, saying it will all just fade away like magic.

All Trump said is that one day it will be gone (in the sense of being nothing like the current danger). This is obviously the truth. One day anything you chose to mention will be gone.

"Our federal government downplayed the crisis" - Yep, stand by that one.
"... saying it will all just fade away like magic" - or like a "miracle", yep stand by that one as well. If you want to believe that the President was saying something like "times are tough now, but one day this will be gone like a miracle", you can believe that (or you can go find the quotes yourself and gain all the context you need to come to an informed conclusion.)

Blaming China is a distraction, someone else to blame. You don't have to go overseas to see people who were elected to react to things and did the exact things you accuse Chinese officials of doing.

That's not what I'm trying to tell youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. I just opine that it's time for every nation to work together to cope with this crisis instead of inciting hatred and shifting blame. China also has scads of fervent nationalists roasting US Army for bringing this virus to China, which is another false charge dreamed up by such gonzo people.

You won't believe it. Most Chinese nationalists just think and act like American conservatives, particularly the ones enthusiastic about the alt-right movement while declaiming against the #MeToo movement. And it's galling that some American and Chinese conservatives-yes, China also has conservatives acting like braggarts-don't even raise objections to the idea that a nation needs a strong man like Putin or Maduro to rule the the benighted masses. That's why Trump himself even won a cult following in China after he outfoxed Hillary Clinton with the help of his best friend Putin back to 2016. Why? Because Chinese conservatives thought Trump would treat China well as a, phew, "populist" rather than an "aristocrat" like Hillary Clinton. More to the point, they had hoped that Trump, who's also a business man, would not draw flak from China by getting tough on China. Yet such fantasies were dashed by the self-asserting Trump after he started the trade war with China.

I think you really don't have to belabor the point that some Chinese local officials have been accused of lying because such feckless mandarins living in Wuhan have already been sacked. At the same time, Trump is still the president after he called Covid-19 a hoax. Plus, Trump is said to have given more aid, say, PPE and ventilators, to the states that have more voters voting for him. That's not what a central government is supposed to do; The Economist called it the federal government’s failure. I even conjecture that Tocqueville wouldn't have extolled the virtues of America's democracy if he had been told something like this.

Put another way, Trump is not acting like a leader who wants to save his nation from a crisis. In a sense, he's more acting like Falstaff surrounded by skeevy underlings and soft-headed strategists mistaking themselves for Machiavelli or Bismarck.


The onus is on Joe Biden and his own strategists to defeat Trump and bring hope to America, although he is not a perfect candidate considering his age. To be sure, Trump is also an old geezer.

You could vote for me because I'm much younger than Trump. I wouldn't mind playing footsie with some louche female TV anchors working at Fox News because I'm not even married. Haaaaaaaaa. Just kidding. Actually, I dis Maria Bartiromo because she once scolded her former colleagues-who are mostly liberals- at CNBC after joining FOX Business Network. I'm a fan of MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle . Andrea Mitchell is also a respectable journalist. Her husband is Alan Greenspan, mind you.

Well, I think we will beat Covid-19 and survive.

weve already seen at least 6 mutations of the virus, one oof which has alrady shown a cytokine flood that is unique to toddlers whose immune systems are not fully formed. Thereve been a number of kids that have succumbed to this mutation and its hould be all we can do to keep it out of any additional countries. There is significant genetic evidence that strongly supports the actual train of hosts in the growth of Covid_19-2. from reptile to a series of hosts and intermediate hosts and its all evidencing a natural laterl gene transfer that has to get our attention for future acellular "invasions"

It amazes me that our technology and biochemical knowledge just seems to be competent enought to know where to go to develop symptom palliatives and vaccines.

I just hope our moron president gets his hd out o his ass and start thinking like a real president and not an eternal candidate. I think his party is getting a bit restive at his interminable campaigning while ignoring our sick and dying.

Trump is a resentful petty insecure man who believes if he sticks it to the smarty pants he will magically become a great man. He's so intoxicated by that notion that he sticks it to his friends, his followers and his staff, he thrives on chaos...it entertains him, it's frigging exciting for him. He's a nasty, developmentally stunted, twisted male who just thrashes around in a frenzy to make sure everybody's eyes are on him. We have a deeply disturbed petulant demanding man baby in the Oval Office....we are in deep doo doo friends.

The Republican Party has found another way to deflect attention. Tara Reade alleged that" Joe Biden sexually assaulted her when she worked for him as a staffer. " Tellingly, Trump and his scheming friends want to set tongues wagging about such charges-there will be more- against Joe Biden instead of vitriolic attacks on Trump's handling of Covid-19, thereby helping Trump assuage social discontent. This kind of smear campaign is rampant worldwide.

CNN and MSNBC would do well not to take the bait. Both channels should keep laying bare Trump's misdeeds in handling a crisis like Covid-19 rather than talking about this case or Kavanaugh-Fox News seems to be doing this. At any rate, it's time for the Democratic Party to take this seriously, bolster its liberal base, and bag more swing voters. In additional, the Democratic Party should forsake the illusion that Joe Biden might be able to win the hearts and minds of scores of conservatives loth to vote for Trump.

I'd imagine only some conservative intellectuals would cast their lot with Joe Biden. I could be wrong about this. Anyway, good luck to Joe Biden.

You can stand by it all you want but you're wrong. I have quoted what he actually did say. What quotes am I supposed to find myself that supersede what he actually said? He said, "One day it's like a miracle – it will disappear" and this is factually correct, given the definition of "disappear" that I mentioned above. You altered his quotation to make your point, and, in particular, dropped the "one day." Here's some advice - when quoting someone to criticize him, don't alter his words to support your agenda.

You are holding on to this as hard as you can and that's fine. I didn't put my comments in quotes and I consider my paraphrase of his comments to be completely accurate. On this we will have to disagree. Nor was my original comment specifically attacking the President. My overall point was that US government officials have engaged in the exact same behavior that Chinese officials have engaged in, minimizing the pandemic, putting out misleading statements, falsely touting their performance in addressing the issue. If you want to go ballistic on a country's officials, you don't need to go to China (unless that supports your agenda).

interesting.

your translation doesn't seem to match #45's

___

but cool. you go with it

Isent it irritating that so many can see through the b s?