Richard Wolffe: As the numbers of dead and unemployed grow, Trump looks and sounds smaller // American capitalism has dropped the mask — and its face is cruel and selfish

Trump stands alone: an incredibly shrinking man who looks and sounds smaller as the numbers of dead and unemployed grow ever larger. Even George W Bush’s epically disastrous war in Iraq pales into insignificance. More Americans have died from this pandemic than in Bush’s war of choice: more than 6,000 dead at the most recent count.

Before the revisionists try too hard to make us forget, Trump’s leadership as the virus spread was as loud as a red cap perched on an orange combover. He abolished the pandemic group inside his own national security council, set aside the pandemic playbook left by his predecessor, and proposed cutting the CDC’s funding at the very moment the pandemic was taking hold. He spent February pretending like the pandemic was a hoax or would 
disappear and spent March telling governors to fend for themselves.

So how did he respond to the worst weekly unemployment claims in American history? By changing the subject to the oil industry, suggesting that the Saudis and Russians might just be cutting production. As he bizarrely tweeted: “If it happens, will be GREAT for the oil & gas industry.” Only this sociopath of a president could imagine that what’s good for the oil industry is good for the souls of 10 million newly unemployed Americans....
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/03/united-states-numbers-dead-unemployed-trump-smaller


The champions of capitalism are refusing to admit their ideology has failed
Delilah Friedler: Capitalism Is America’s Religion. The Virus Makes That Clear

American capitalism has dropped the mask — and its face is cruel and selfish
America is also the world’s richest nation. Looking beyond aside our inflated sense of national hubris, it ought to fill every single one of us with rage that our doctors and nurses are scrounging for masks and other medical supplies and that a government agency like the CDC is recommending improvised masks. 

The shortage of supplies is directly the result of a capitalist system so unregulated that it is designed to benefit only shareholders, not societies. States in the U.S. and nations around the world are now desperately competing with one another to buy the much-needed supplies. The Washington Post interviewed state authorities and hospital managers and found, “a broadly dysfunctional system across the United States, with hospitals and health authorities having few options but to rely on largely unknown middlemen whose priority appears to be making a profit...
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/american-capitalism-has-dropped-the-mask-and-its-face-is-cruel-and-selfish/


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