FEELING GOOD? LET’S FIX THAT FOR YOU

When you’re feeling good, letting the good times roll, don’t you wish it could last longer?

Just a little? I do, too.

But realistically, a good feeling ought to be breathed in and experienced for what it is, not captured in a jar and put on display.

Why not live with expectations things will work out for the best?

It’s as reasonable a response as any other for ‘normal’ people.

Normal is supposed to be a good thing, a safe thing, like “The norm is a standard procedure.”

What happened to normal feeling good?

It starts when good people get manipulated by those with agendas, in this case a man desperate for attention.

Calling people stupid used to be fighting words, but when candidate trump called out his love for under-educated people, they didn’t have any fight in them to respond.

Instead, they embraced his insult and voted to fulfill his destiny as king of idiots.

Then came covid and things changed? No, they did not. This leader played it down, played it up, caught the virus, then continued his play.

The big man wasn’t feeling so good and found a remedy, a treatment, a medical treatment for what ailed him. What ailed him?

COVID19

Did he get the bleach, the bright light, or hydroxychloroquine?

What are the chances he heard some new quacky ideas from whacky news and had doctors follow his instructions instead of the medical science they were trained in?

Remember his drive around while he was in Walter Reed? He needed his fans to see him, he needed to see them. That was his best medicine, although it didn’t work as well for the Secret Service crew in the car.

President Snafu Feeling Good On The Job

Was that a normal situation?

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” tweeted Dr. James Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed and a doctor at George Washington University. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater.”

“This is insanity,” Phillips added.

A wild guy for crazy times sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it’s still in the oven and the timer is still running.

Can anyone with a background in public health tell us what to do now that the Delta variant of the virus is roaming the land?

Who should we turn to for trusted advice? Can we depend on the usual information sources?

Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, sent his well wishes over the weekend as he was be able to continue campaigning while Trump remained hospitalized with the virus he long brushed off at his own campaign events.

“I genuinely feel badly for the president,” Biden, 77, said in an interview with local NBC affiliate WOOD in Michigan. “I hope to God that this is something that he and his wife will be able to tolerate and get through without any lasting impact on them.”

After four years of trump demanding more suck-ups bend to his will, common courtesy seems strange.

But what if Joe isn’t good enough for you?

Fox News To The Rescue

A writer named Don Winslow decided to act on the information and misinformation in the news.

In Winslow’s video, a female narrator tells viewers, “I want you to listen to your own leaders in their own voices. You can’t call this ‘fake news.’ These are your pals unedited.”

It takes a hard swing and connects.

The video goes on to show former President Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise urging Americans to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

This isn’t The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, but it sounds right.

The narrator explains, “Each one of these Republican leaders took the vaccine, and they made damn sure their children took the vaccine. But then, they worked behind the scenes to create a marketing plan, and that’s what it was — targeted at low-information Republican voters that tied your personal freedom to not wearing a mask or taking the vaccine. And tens of millions of you in red states fell for this ridiculous lie.”

Wait. What? Fox News would stoop this low? How low?

“You can’t enter the Fox News building without providing your vaccination information,” the narrator explains. “But on show after show, they tell you not to wear a mask because it’s an assault on your freedom. They are laughing at how gullible you are. And here’s the kicker: While they are laughing at you, you are sending them donations. You are literally paying your Republican leaders to deceive you.”

Just Following Orders? So Getting Ordered Around Is Okay Now?

One last bite to chew on:

Many of those “low-information Republican voters” that Winslow’s video mentions are avid consumers of right-wing media outlets such as Fox News, where Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and other far-right opinion hosts have been more than happy to endanger the lives of their audiences by promoting anti-vaxxer, anti-masker nonsense and trying to convince viewers that Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health experts are their enemy.

Getting a direct shot from the mouths of Fox News men and women is golden for the fans. They eat it up the way the Fox News men and women did during their interviews with the boss, big Roger.

How bad did they want that job? Bad enough to do whatever it took. What did it take?

Competitors know the difference between winners and losers: Winners do what losers can’t, or won’t, do. Fox News people do it all, would do it all again, and look for the chance to show their moxy.

When right-wing media figures promote lies and disinformation about COVID-19, it isn’t necessarily out of total ignorance — sometimes, it is purely a cynical effort to drive ratings or traffic. 

They’re feeling good about ratings and traffic, but their viewers can’t be feeling good about hospitalizations in the family, deaths in the family, or family funerals.

Stay tuned to those stations? Let’s fix that.