We rethink the week with Val Endress, professor of political communications, Rhode Island College; Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University; and Steven Greene, professor of political science at North Carolina State University.
GET OUT YOUR SHARPIES!
Among other oddities, we discuss Pres. Trump’s strange career in meteorology. He has canceled a planned rally in New Hampshire, making the excuse that a storm is coming up the east coast and he doesn’t want to endanger anyone. Meanwhile, the storm had veered out to sea before Trump canceled the rally. The irony of his claimed excuse is that the only legitimate safety concern engendered by Trump’s rally was that, as in Tulsa, Trump and his supporters were not planning to wear masks or to socially distance. So the entire crowd, the security officers and venue staff, and every person living in the surrounding communities were put at risk of COVID-19.
LIKE RATS OFF A SINKING SHIP
Other Republican officials and their political campaigns are realizing that their own political careers are in jeopardy because they had decided to follow Trump into his fantasy world of anti-science, “COVID is a hoax,” don’t take medically-recommended precautions, and “hurry up and re-open the economy.” Gov. Abbott of Texas had been spouting Trump’s party line until Texans fell victim to one of the most virulent spikes of coronavirus anywhere in the country. With Texas in danger of an intolerable death toll – and, worse than that, of turning blue in the November election – Gov. Abbott is now ordering Texans to wear masks in public, to pull back on reopening the state’s economy, and, essentially, to start listening to the doctors and scientists.
In states around the US, Republican Senators and Governors whose seats were once seen as safe are now running scared. Will they continue to wear Trump’s blinders or will they protect their own political hides?
WHO ARE WE IF WE CAN’T SEND OUR KIDS TO SCHOOL SAFELY?
Whether it’s at the college level or K-12, educators and parents are concerned about whether their children would be putting their lives in danger if they returned to school in-person. On the other hand, how will young people’s brains and their emotions be affected if they see that it’s unsafe to go back to school and get settled into their normal routines? And of course, if the economy is ever safe enough to reopen, what will working parents do if their kids are still not able to go to school?
