The year that ushered in the new norms

America is under existential threat from its own choices in leadership, first Dubya ("W" for Worst Ever president), a minority president having lost the popular vote (but being given the presidency by the vote of one Supreme Court right-wing deity, the curmudgeonly arrogant Scalia) and then the current bloviating, moronically stupid (and incredibly lazy) bankruptor of our country's fortune and values.  He lost the popular vote by a lot, almost three million votes, and in three years he's ruined the US economy, cast the country into a recession if not a Depression by his inept and criminally negligent handling ("I don't feel responsible at all" and my grades and phone calls are "perfect") of the pandemic, gotten himself impeached, made Bush look like he belongs on Mount Rushmore compared to him, ended the American Century which started with our entry into World War II and demoted our great Republic to something resembling a third world banana republic that has to beg for ventilators from Russia and face masks from China for our world-class medical providers due to the president's unbelievable lassitude.

It's the new normal.

8,000 Americans dead in three weeks from the coronavirus with the death toll rising rapidly and no current ability to corral it or even measure it because we have grossly insufficient tests for it available and there's no reliability to the American test's testing ability, with the belief being that fully 1/3 of its negative results are false and it takes a week or more for the results come back anyway which pretty much renders the test useless.  Who was in charge of this train-wreck, which people were warning about in January?  Oh, our train-wreck-in-process do-nothing chief executive.

So we all shelter in place for weeks on the coasts, hand make our own masks to wear as recommended, and practice social distancing which is the only defense we have from the lethal onslaught of this deadly Covid-19 disease, while many states in the south and the west lallygag  around having not shut down, thus creating the petri dish from which the deadly second wave of deaths from this virus will soon come.  But at least the spring flowers are in bloom.